A Road Less Travelled

Last night I was sitting in the kitchen peeling potatoes when Crystal said, “There’s a knot in my intestine!” No, this isn’t a medical condition you should be worried about. We were making sausage. Every Christmas Eve my family eats a traditional Swedish meal. My mother’s side of the family is Swedish. The main dish is a potato sausage we call korv. This sausage is really hard to get. Part of the tradition was watching my mom call most of the butchers in town every year looking for someone who made it. Now that I live in Peoria the closest place to get it is in Chicago. We don’t have the time or money to drive to Chicago to buy korv so Crystal bought a sausage maker and decided we would make our own. It was a surprising amount of fun. Once we got past peeling the potatoes and rinsing the pig gut the process of stuffing was very enjoyable. I am not going to go into great detail because everyone knows sausage is one of those foods you don’t want to know too much about. And some people who read this blog are going to be eating this sausage and the less they know the better. The sausage maker is hand-cranked. It is almost completely silent. You simply put the meat in one end, turn the crank and sausage comes out the other side. Crystal and I were talking and laughing and still the sausage came out the other side. I think this is a much nicer tradition to establish than driving to Chicago would have been.

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O King of the Gentiles and their Desired One, the Cornerstone that makes both one: Come, And deliver man, whom you formed out of the dust of the earth. Amen. Jesus came to the World. He did not come to a small group of people. He came for the Gentiles. I am not completely a Gentile, but I don’t think I would count as a Jew in the Old Testament. So God sent down His Son to save such a Samaritan as me. And now Crystal and I are the same race and the same family. The Cornerstone has made both one. Hallelujah!

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What can I say to one who knows

better than I how sadness goes?

I have for you no words of cheer

but those you’ve giv’n for me to hear.

Please don’t think my silence cold.

I feel more than words can hold.

I’ve wept for you through long dark nights

as clouds obscured the starry heights.

I’ve sighed for you when days of rain

seemed to share your endless pain.

Would that my tears could lessen yours,

could shorten your time on sorrow’s shores.

No words nor tears of mine can do

anything I would wish for you.

The words you know, and though they’re true,

this day must still hold sorrow for you.

There is no cure for this great pain

naught I could do for you to gain.

But take these worthless tears of mine,

let them be at least a sign

of all I feel, of pain we share,

that through the lonely nights I care.

Tears are all I have for you

it’s little enough that I can do.

So anytime in these long years

when you have need, just take my tears.

–Raquel Mutton December 20, 2005

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Peter and I set out to make some brownies this afternoon. (Theresa ground wheat yesterday and today, so we currently have plenty of flour.) Before long we’d mixed them up and poured them in the pan and a horde of children descended to lick out the bowl. The brownies were in the oven so quickly I decided to do some of the other Christmas baking we’d been planning on. Several additions to the shopping list later I settled on something we actually had ingredients for: a loaf of gingerbread with lemon curd to spoon over the top. Samuel attacked the butter for me–as usual I had forgotten to soften it beforehand. I finally had doubts about whether the bowl would stand up to the beating and made him tone down his efforts slightly. As with the brownies, I had to do little more than measure and dump, as most of the mixing was happily provided by children. I still remember the days when I refused to let anyone else touch my baking so as to prove I could do it “all by myself”. But these days are gone. Today I will happily measure and dump and eat the results without a twinge of discontent that someone else did the mixing. After the loaf of gingerbread was in the oven a somewhat smaller horde of children descended on that bowl. I nearly forgot the lemon curd, but I managed to pull together the ingredients in between getting the brownies out of the oven and supervising the children’s snack. I was surprised how quickly it cooked as I have memories of stirring and stirring and stirring and still not having lemon curd. Whether this was caused by a different recipe, shorter arms, or a child’s time sense I don’ t know, but today it barely took any time at all. I poured it out into a bowl and looked around. There were no children in the kitchen. I sneaked a taste of the lemon curd. It was quite good and there were still no children around. I proceeded to lick out the whole pan by myself. This may have been the highlight of the day and the children still don’t know what I did… Two hours ago I set out to make brownies. Now I have a messy kitchen, half a pan of brownies, a loaf of gingerbread, and a bowl of excellent lemon curd. I’d call that a pretty good deal.

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Tonight was kind of weird. I started dinner with the kids without Seth and Crystal because life happened to us. When Seth and Crystal got home I lit the fifth candle and the darkness took a step back. O Dawn of the East, brightness of light eternal, and Sun of Justice: Come, and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. Amen. The Sun of God has risen in the east and His light has shone into the darkness of our sin. The beauty of the Sunrise still enchants me. May it ever and always. Amen.

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“O Key of David, and scepter of the House of Israel, who opens and no man shuts, who shuts and no man opens: Come, and bring forth the captive from his prison, he who sits in darkness and in the shadow of death. Amen. Tonight Arianna lit the fourth candle. Jesus has come to open doors and let people in and to close doors and keep people out. One day we were pulled through the darkness to the front porch and Jesus opened the door and let us in. Inside was light and warmth and love. There are people outside who have been locked out. One of the reasons they are Outside is that our Brother wants to keep us safe. We sang and prayed for the Root of Jesse to come and deal death to Death. Amen and Amen.

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There’s a blog post that’s been sitting in my head for weeks now. I tried writing it once but I couldn’t figure out how to express all of it without writing pages and pages of explanation and connections to other thoughts. In this post I’m just going to try to communicate the core idea. If this works maybe I can fill in some connections in later posts. It all started one evening when I was very frustrated with my life. Only very small parts of my life, but there a lot of different small parts. Life just didn’t seem to be fitting together the way it should. My writing projects were the same way. I had ideas but there weren’t coming out right. It just didn’t fit. Then, all at once, something clicked together before I even had words to express it. These seemingly unrelated frustrations all had one root. I’m not a child anymore. True, I already knew that, but I hadn’t realized that I was still trying to relate to the world as a child. It’s very difficult to explain what I mean by that. I have very gradually been growing up for many years. For the past several years or more, I have been more responsible and mature and generally more grown-up than many other people in my age group. It’s not as though I suddenly understood that I have responsibilities, because I have known that for a very long time. Perhaps some of this moment of understanding had to do with how I relate to these responsibilities. Children have a lot more wiggle room in their responsibilities. If they truly have a valid excuse to get out of a chore then the world does not fall apart. Either an adult does it for them, or it just waits. It’s not quite the same for adults. If James and Theresa are out on a date then either I cook supper–no matter how valid an excuse I may have– or the children and I don’t eat. In a true emergency there are people I could call for help, but my responsibilities have more weight than children’s responsibilities. Responsibilities didn’t really surprise me, though. There was something else I realized which caught me off guard. It’s the flip side of responsibility. It could be called privilege, but the concept I have in mind has more weight than that. It combines the right and ability to do something. It’s the oomph to carry through with a job. It’s my status in the community of people around me. I’m not just in-training anymore. If I am an adult, then I don’t just have responsibilities to fulfill. I have the ability to fulfill them. When I come out of my corner it will not be to wander around in hopes of being vaguely useful. It will be to look around for what needs to be done and do it. I may not be very good at it, but I’m sure I can manage. After all, I am an adult now.

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Last night was Seth’s work’s Christmas party and so we missed a day. Tonight we celebrated the third day of our Chanukah. O Root of Jesse, that stands for an ensign of the people, before whom the kings keep silence and unto whom the Gentiles shall make supplication: Come, to deliver us and tarry not. Seth talked about Jesus is our king. He has come and the whole earth is His to order. We sang the first three verses of O Come, O Come Emmanuel, the second being one I have not seen in a hymnal. O come thou Wisdom from on High, Who orders all things far and nigh, To us the path of knowledge show, And cause us in her way to go We sat around the table and sang. Samuel demonstrated to us his fabulous lungs and almost drowned out the rest of us. Noah knows the tune of the refrain and was humming with us. I was torn between laughing at how ridiculous we sounded with Samuel making his joyful noise and crying about how beautiful it was. Three candles flickered on the table and lit our night. Even so, come Lord come.

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Well, I just rigged an iron out of boiling water, a spray bottle and a metal bowl. By all rights this shouldn’t have worked. I finished a project I’ve been working on for the last couple of days and it needed to be ironed before it would be completely done. I won’t tell you what the thing is because it is a Christmas gift and the recipient reads this blog. Suffice it to say it is a piece of stiff cloth. And it needed to be ironed. Our iron broke a couple of months ago and we don’t have enough things that need to be ironed to feel pressed to get a new one. I have not felt the lack of iron before today. So here I am with a bumpy piece of stiff cloth that needs to be made into a flat piece of stiff cloth and no iron around. I briefly considered going next door and asking to use their iron, but then I thought, “No, I can figure something out.” And I did! This fact surprises me more than it does you. So I figured an iron is simply really hot metal and steam put into a visually pleasing package. I didn’t have a visually pleasing package, but I was pretty sure I could come up with the individual components. I put some water on to boil, scrounged a spray bottle and found a metal bowl. When the water whistled I poured it into the metal bowl and held the piece of stiff cloth over the bowl to catch the steam. After a while I put the piece of stiff sloth on the counter and ran the now hot metal bowl over it. A few sprays with the spray bottle and voila, an iron. And it worked too! Hurray!! So I now have a suitably flat piece of stiff cloth and there is still no iron in the house.

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My brother Seth is very strange. I know I have mentioned this before. His wife Crystal is equally strange though in a different way. As Seth and Crystal have gotten older their idea of what a celebration looks like has changed and grown. Add in the fact that we Ben-Ezras have a hefty dose of Jewish heritage and you have something special. I believe that Christmas needs to be celebrated to the best of our ability. Holidays are times set aside for praising God for some wonderful thing He has done. The very best thing He ever did was Jesus and so the very best celebration we have should be the celebration of Jesus. Last year Seth and Crystal figured out a set of new traditions to make the celebration of Christ’s birth bigger and more special. For starters they ripped Chanukah kicking and screaming from its place, smooshed it together with an Advent wreath and made it lead up to Christmas Eve eve. The day before Chanukah starts was supposed to have a name, but Seth took too long in figuring one out so we call it the Night of Darkness or the Night of Evil. We turn off all the Christmas lights and we talk about sin. We talk about sorrow and death and mourning. The house is dark and dull. Last year we turned off all the lights and Seth asked the children to get a book for him or to go upstairs and get him one of their toys. Of course they couldn’t do it and Seth talked to them about how sin is like darkness. The next day he talked about how when Jesus was celebrating Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, He called Himself the Light of the World. We lit the first candle and a bit of light came into our darkness. We sang the first verse of O come, O come Emanuel. Every day we lit another candle and talked about another aspect of Jesus and sang another verse of the song. On the last day we turned off all the lights and with all the candles lit we could see just fine. Chanukah started tonight for us. We didn’t do the Night of Evil yesterday because life happened to us so tonight Seth started out talking about sin. He got some string and tied Samuel up. He offered him some more food and said that all he had to do was reach out and take it and he could have it, but of course Samuel couldn’t. Seth talked about bondage and slavery and how Jesus came to set us free. He untied Samuel and gave him more food. Seth helped Samuel light the first candle. Some of the red from the main candle dripped onto the white tea light. It was very moving. Seth read the first of the series of prayers that O come, O come Emanuel is based on. O Wisdom, who came from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end and ordering all things mightily and sweetly; And then we prayed together: Come and teach us the way of prudence. Amen. Seth started talking about wisdom by asking if anyone remembered what wisdom was. Noah chose that moment to point at the candles and say, “See? Wow!” As Seth talked I looked around the table. Justice sat on Crystal’s lap and smiled at us all. The candles reflected in Noah’s eyes when he was still and solemn. Samuel was still very excited about being tied up. Isaac divided his attention between Seth and the present that was coming. Arianna was wearing the knitted hat I made her last year and looked very serious and very silly at the same time. After we prayed we each opened a present. It was a very good night.

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