Mama cooking!

This is the picture that Daddy kept on his desk at the post office of Mama Cooper.   She did not like it but she did not like any picture.

It caused me to think of it because I am spending my day getting ready to have this major party in Cape and I will be meeting with caterers and taking tours of the building where the party will be held.   I am a good cook because I learned what good cooking is from my Mother.  She was far more interested in cleanliness and what the food was like and nutrition than she was about what it looked like on the table.  I learned that for myself.

But here are some lessons I learned from her:

l.  If you eat right, you will be healthy and your skin will be good for a lifetime.  This means vegetables out of the garden well-seasoned.  She could cook any vegetable better than anyone else could.   She could fry apples, fry okra, do a pot of green beans, turnips and greens, carrots, corn on the cob, and fried corn better than anyone I ever knew.

2.  She was clean as a pin.   Wrapped her head in a scarf before she cooked anything so that not one hair would fall into the cooking.

3.  Best pie baker in the world.  No one can touch her.  She used what the land produced. (6we had 3/4 acre of garden which Sam Henderson grew on the halves with us.)   

4.  When we were sick, we had milk toast or float.   I would almost fake it today to get some from her.

5.  Her utensils (with no dishwasher) were spotless.  And yes, as a dishwasher, I had many pots returned under her watchful eye.

6.  She canned jelly from our grape vines and pickles when people gave her cucumbers.   Whatever she got from farmers, she used.   Tomatoes, when they were plentiful, she canned and we had tomato juice for cooking the entire year.

7.   She taught me to respect food and the people who grow food.   She also taught me to respect the people who sat down at her table.

Last day in the Papacy of Benedict

Last day that Pope Benedict will be Pope.  Tomorrow, he will be looking on like anyone else wondering what is going on inside the Vatican.   I admire him for his willingness to step down.  He says that he never had one moment of privacy and this apparently has been a problem as he ages and faces death on his own.

He says he is tired.  I take him at his word.    Today he gives his last blessing to the throngs of people.   I have a feeling that the greatest blessing he will be giving to himself as he takes that ten minute flight to another monastery and a sense of privacy which has eluded him for all these years.

A high price for a dance performance!

Some of the women in the Bible cannot be held in high esteem as "role models".  One of these is Salome, noted dancer and niece of King Herod.   Sure, she did a great job and turned the old man on and he offered to give her anything, even half of his kingdom, and she asked for the head of John the Baptist, who was in prison.  Her mother put her up to it but the scheme worked and John the Baptist had his head cut off for a reward to the dancing niece.   What a horrible sacrifice she demanded for this stalwart friend of Christ!

What does this story tell us?  There are all kinds of lessons  --mostly bad.   One is don't always listen to your mother unless she is worth listening too!   But the point to me is that people make choices --every minute of every day that have little to do with the facts at hand.   And, often, those choices affect someone else in a grievous, deathly way.

I am going through a time in my life when I need to make a choice that will affect other people far more than it will me.   Help me to look through all my choices and make the one that will help all of us the most.  Help me to know when "Tough Love" is needed to help somone else --not to just get me out of a bad, personal situation of worry.   Don't let me cut off someone's head just to have less personal worry about the situation!
Remind me of this picture of John the Baptist's head on a plate!  There has to be an easier, less demanding way to cope with people who won't abide by the rules that are mine to set!

Pope changes the rules of the game!

The Pope came out for his last last Sunday blessing and thousands came out to see him.  That is a tribute to him and to Catholicism.   He also announced that he was changing the rules for his succession and allowing an earlier start.  When the rest of the Cardinals get there, it is time to get a Pope so that one will be there for Holy Week.   No need mourning for a dead Pope, this one is alive and giving it up voluntarily.  Makes sense to me.

So we will wait to see the white smoke and read all about the possibilities of who will be Pope.   Whoever emerges, there is much to do and much to be reviewed.  Blessings on the one who comes forth now and during the rest of his pilgrimage.

The Doubting Thomas in me!

I can understand the Apostle Thomas.  I am the Doubting Thomas.   I did not used to be.  I took everything with joy and happiness.  Ask anyone who grew up with me.  Raise my parents from the dead and ask them. They would tell you I had a joyful belief.   But I lost them and I went through a devastating divorce and a mind-boggling church fight when I knew I was on the right side of the issue and I found out that I had no idea  what I had gotten myself into.   Most people in the church have no idea why I have removed myself from regular attendance and I write every Sunday morning instead of being Sunday school director and workhorse for First Baptist Church.  But I know why!  I learned, to my eternal dismay, that I made some terrible decisions about the character of everyone who seemed to loom around me and I have continued to doubt my own ability to discern the truth of character of others.   Added to that was the complete mistreatment of me by my own sisters and many of their children and my kindness to them.  Take my sister, Rose Marie.  I have done  nothing to her but somehow she feels justified to remove me from her email and block me on her phone.  I tried to call her this week on her birthday and nothing.   My children and their spouses are the one truth in my life and a few of my trusted friends.   No wonder I doubt;   I have no reason to reach out in faith anymore.  And  I know I have strayed so far from what my parents taught me.   My only consolation is that my Mother told me during the months I was with her that had the same thing happened to her with her relationship with Daddy, she would not have been able to go on. Maybe she knew how hard I had been knocked down spiritually.  But she never dreamed that her own children would behave so badly toward each other!  If she can look down and see this horrible mess, she would turn her back on all of us for not working this out.  And that includes me.

So Thomas, I understand you.   So did the Lord.   He came to you, when you ran from him, and he found you and he told you to put your hands into the wounds.   He gave you something substantial to deal with so that you would find the strength to believe again.   I wish I could be a part of that wonderful moment that you found.  You have no idea how much I wish I could find that moment again!   If I am allowing it to elude me, show me the path to find the moment of joyful belief again!

Annie goes to "Annie"!

Annie Finnegan and I had a great time at the President's Dinner last night and the performance of "Annie"! What a solid performance! Excellent casting! The "Easy Street" number was a show stopper!! Food was excellent also and seeing so many friends!

Hit the bed when I got home at eleven but could not sleep. The music kept going over in my brain. Charles Strouse, you nailed it with "tomorrow" and all the rest! What a delightful evening!

Am I my brother's keeper?

Sitting at home, with ice and sleet coming down, one is forced to deal with two things:  the weather reports telling people where they can go to find shelter and the news reports barraging the air with changes in our country and the focus on the need to help the paychecks of the middle class so that all of us have equality of opportunity.   I rejoice that this is a subject that we think is worth dealing with.   It's what I believe about the words of Jesus most strongly:  "Am I my brothers keeper? asked in the Bible and the words in Matthew 25:40 when the King answered, " Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me."

So as we listen to new words and phrases being thrown out such as Sequestering, country of brown and blacks, and kicking the can down the road  (I wish I had a dollar for every time one of those phrases is used on the air), I must remember that the way we answer those questions says much for us as a country.  Do we have equal access?   Do we have a different face in America?   Can America survive economically sound without changes?    

Change is hard to accept.   But the words of Christ abide.  I believe that I have a responsibility to those who need help and to the downtrodden.  Lord, help me to reach out to those who cannot help themselves.