Sola Christus

One old holiday and one new holiday

There are quite a few American students here in St. Andrews, and if one plans ahead, a person, American or not, can actually have more than one Thanksgiving. I had two this week. One at my house, and one at my friends' house.

  I like this one. Casey in the reflection; Jesse cutting the bird, and Dash waiting oh so patiently.

 He is so interested in cooking, it certainly seems like he will be a good cook in the future. 

 Our lovely feast, including cornbread made by Chera's mom! 

Before the dessert, Jesse pulled out Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving special. I love that show! Ah, the toast and jelly beans. Casey made the lovely turkey (both the paper and the real one). I tried to get a picture of Morley, but he was much too excited to slow down.

Today is St. Andrew's Day, the patron saint of Scotland. So, the town had a big celebration on this weekend, including a projection show in the Cathedral. Here are a few shots of the ruins in the lights. Amazing!

Happy Birthday Jack!

Today, is CS Lewis' birthday. He would be 111 today, November 29. This year I made my first (hopefully of many) visits to the Kilns, Jack's house in Oxford. Below are some of the pictures I took when I was there. For about the last nine years, I don't think a year has gone by that I haven't read one of Jack's birthday, so happy birthday to one of my absolute favorite authors. 

 The outside of the house

 Jack's bedroom 

 Jack's study. The group that owns the house is trying to reproduce the titles that Lewis' actually owned along with his canon. Sadly, none of the furnishings are original, although they are period pieces.

A morsel of poem

I make my mother's cranberry relish that has lots of yummy things in it. Turkey just isn't turkey without this mouthwatering, tangy, sweet, tart, blood red spoonful on my plate.

When I heard this poem on The Writer's Almanac, I was glad to find that someone else had found this similar love. 

Cranberry Orange Relish

by John Engels

A pound of ripe cranberries, for two days
macerate in a dark rum, then do not
treat them gently, but bruise,
mash, pulp, squash
with a wooden pestle
to an abundance of juices, in fact
until the juices seem on the verge

of overswelling the bowl, then drop in
two fistsful, maybe three, of fine-
chopped orange with rind, two golden
blobs of it, and crush
it in, and then add sugar, no thin
sprinkling, but a cupful dumped
and awakened with a wooden spoon

to a thick suffusion, drench of sourness, bite of color,
then for two days let conjoin
the lonely taste of cranberry,
the joyous orange, the rum, in some
warm corner of the kitchen, until
the bowl faintly becomes
audible, a scarce wash of sound, a tiny
bubbling, and then
in a glass bowl set it out
and let it be eaten last, to offset
gravied breast and thigh
of the heavy fowl, liverish
stuffing, the effete
potato, lethargy of pumpkins

gone leaden in their crusts, let it be eaten
so that our hearts may be together overrun
with comparable sweetnesses,
tart gratitudes, until finally,
dawdling and groaning, we bear them
to the various hungerings
of our beds, lightened
of their desolations.

Here's a turkey for you

From my favorite humorous website and myself, Happy Thanksgiving to you!

 

Courtesy of Cake Wrecks

Looking for that day

My old church in South Carolina, North Hills, recently put out a worship CD. It is live, and may not seem like the best quality, but when I listen to it, I can hear the people in the congregation and the voices I worshiped with. And I miss Home. My real home. With almost 7 weeks of constant nerve (though finally lessening) nerve pain, I keep going back to this song. Now, every time I listen I long for that day.My favorite verse:

Then all hurt and pain will cease
And we'lll be with Him forever
And in His glory we will live

(Ignore the cheesy pictures, please.)

So this is the way it really is...

Every PhD student I know here in St. Andrews has had the same problem: interpreting his or her adviser's handwriting. Frequently, we will visit each other's offices with pages in hand asking "Can you read this?"

So, here's what it looks like:

 

Jazz for wee ones

One of my new favorite artists is Katy Bowser. I first discovered her on  Wake Thy Slumbering Children by Indelible Grace. Her arrangement of "Come Then, Lord Jesus" is beautiful and her voice gives the yearning words a perfect platform.

Just in time for Christmas, She is releasing a new cd for kids (and probably enjoyed by big people too) that has original songs with a jazz flavor. I am tempted to by the cd just for the mouth song. Check out Coal Train Railroad. With this link you can even have two songs for free! Enjoy!

4 weeks or 12 years

Today is the 28th day since I hurt my back. Yesterday was more painful than it has been in several days; I also spent the almost the entire day alone in the house, and I was quite discouraged.

Providentially, as I was reading Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper, the following quote from John Bunyan's pamphlet "Advice to Sufferers." If you haven't ever heard of John Bunyan, you should read his works. He was in prison for twelve years for preaching. He wrote Pilgrim's Progress, a piece of spiritual writing that shaped American Colonial culture, because so many of them owned this book.  

I thought I would share this quote, it was an encouragement to me. What's 4 weeks or 12 years, if we know Who plans that time out?

"If, therefore, when thou hast fled, thou art taken, be not offended at God or man: not at God, for thou art his servant, thy life and thy all are his; not at man, for he is but God’s rod, and is ordained, in this, to do thee good. Hast thou escaped? Laugh. Art thou taken? Laugh. I mean, be pleased which howsoever things shall go, for that the scales are still in God’s hand." (p. 75 in Don't Waste Your Life)

Dancing Rats

This will be a short book review, compared to some of my other ones. For almost the entire month of October I have been in bed, getting over a slipped disc, which means limited movement (from a lot of pain) and a lot of medication. In the beginning it was really hard for me to pay attention to anything longer than a TV show. One of the frustrating things about this whole experience has been my inability to read with my usual ease. So, my friend Chera brought over a lovely, short book. Even though it is a young adult book, I still found it difficult to concentrate in the first few weeks, but it is delightful.

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett is a quick little read about a cat, Maurice, who finds a group of talking rats. But, they aren't only talking rats, they are slowly becoming more and more sentient.They learn about writing and try to create their own system of writing, and they even begin to wonder about dreams and the afterlife. But, this isn't merely a philosophical book loosely draped in fiction (although it does bring up interesting questions about person-hood) it is really a delightful book. It is kind of like a humorous let's make fun of all the other fairy tales book. Maurice and his group of rats, including Peaches, Dangerous Beans, and Inbrine, have a marvelous adventure when they were just expecting to wrack up some easy money.

Who should read this book? People who like fairy tales or folklore, People who like the topsy-turvieness of "The Princess Bride" or "Ella Enchanted," People who like puns and words. (Note: I do not like "Princess Bride." In fact, I hate it. I was forced to watch it too many times as a child, but I did enjoy this book immensely. And, no, it wasn't just the pain medication.)

Who should not read the book? Anyone with musophobia. 

Give Maurice a try. I think you will like him (even if he is a cat).

A passage from The Amazing Maurice:

"It was another cellar. And it was full of water. In fact, what it was full of was not exactly water. It was what water eventually becomes when rat cages drain into it, and gutters up above drain into it, and it has a chance to sit and bubble gently to itself for a year or so. To call it 'mud' would be an insult to perfectly respectable swamps all over the world. Maurice landed in it. It went 'gloop.'" (p. 155)

Manifestos not mottos

Mottos are easy to get away from. They change; they are snappy; they are forgettable. Manifestos are something one signs on to. Something that encapsulates one's beliefs.

This month's Catapult Magazine has my stumbling starts to write a personal manifesto. Ironically, I was published in this same ezine at about the same time. So, do you have a manifesto?