The Recipe

The recipe I would like to share has a story to tell which needs to be shared before the questions posed can be answered. Once told, however, I believe there to be a close relationship between the recipe and the subject matter of this course.

My wife comes from a North Central Montana farm family of German descent. Part of the history of many families was the passing down through the generations a recipe for sausage making which was source of pride not to mention some good natured competition. After all if you are participating in a sausage contest there are no losers, only happy people with full stomachs. My father in law, as my good fortune would have it, held a recipe that was one of the best around. Many people tried to make sausage that was tasty as Roger’s but while they might come up with a version that was tasty, the result was, well, not just quite right.

The problem with the recipe was that there was no recipe. Even when I was around to participate in the sausage making, I could not really tell how he was spicing nor could he really tell me. We started with 100 pounds of pork and 100 pounds of venison mixed together with paddle in a large tub. Handfuls of spice were tossed in and mixed in until the meat was well mixed, the meat looked right and had just the right smell. It is not that he would not have been happy to share his knowledge about how much of which spice to add but he never wrote down the recipe.

Some years after my father passed away before we could get the recipe nailed down, my in-laws encouraged me to take up the art to see if I could come up with my own recipe that would be a close representation of what become known as “Roger’s Farm Sausage.” I took up the challenge.

Working from memory, I gathered the spices I remembered he used. I asked other members of the family about what they could remember about how he went about spicing the sausage. Everyone I talked to had a slightly different version of how the process unfolded. Eventually I had enough information to get started so I started grinding, mixing, spicing, stuffing and smoking what hoped would pass for Roger’s Farm Sausage. Curiously, just about everyone who tried it, had a different suggestion what was needed to get sausage closer to the ideal sausage cherished in memory.

Overtime I finally came to understand the reality of certain facts. First, he never made the sausage exactly the same way from year to year. If one spice was too expensive or hard to find, another spice was substituted. He varied the kind of wood he used in the smoker and some years he used liquid smoke and didn’t use wood smoke at all. Second, people remembered different things about how the sausage tasted but they all remembered how they felt eating the sausage. Sunday brunch after Mass always involved a big serving of sausage that had been simmered slowly in a can of beer. The sausage meant the family was together. Finally, the recipe which was finally hammered out over time which was favored by all ended up very different from the first version I tried. The reality is that we all like food spicier now that in years past. The addition of red pepper was an addition of my own which accepted with gusto.

Now to the questions – what constitutes a good recipe? From my perspective the best recipe has a history that intertwines it through the generations and branches of family. The details are not as important as the connection made by just by sharing the meal. Getting the recipe right is part of the charm and enjoyment.

What are the elements we come to expect when reading a recipe? Proportions, measurements, steps, times and temperatures but most important step is the love that goes into the effort. Don’t all the best recipes create the foods we use as an excuse to gather together?

How are the elements arranged? There has to first be a gathering, then an arranging which is followed by the making but there always as to be indication at the end telling when it is time to eat.

Photographs are very helpful in helping you see what are creating should look like at different stages as well was what the finished product should look like. What it comes to sausage, words along will suffice. When the sausage has darkened from pink to a solid brown and is stiff to the touch, it is done. No picture is necessary.

Now for the connection I promised at the start. My story about the recipe reminds me of how Gospels came together. First there was an oral tradition that was handed out across the community and then down through the generations through a period of time measured in centuries. Finally, the Gospel was written down and argued into an acceptable version which was incorporated into the bible.

Dimes, Dogs and Cousins

5 Dimes

This is a short story, but it has many pieces that must come together quickly for any of it to make sense. It was not easy to write or read because affairs of the heart can be bittersweet to embrace. We were at the short end of a long goodbye, and the road before us grew steeper with every step.

This is a story about dimes, cousins, a father, a telephone man with a kind heart, his wife, an old yellow dog, and God's infinite mercy.

Let's start with the dimes. Oakley was my 14-year-old yellow Labrador. That is her in the picture above. When I composed these thoughts, she was in the last days of renal failure and was suffering from what is, for a large dog, extreme old age. We went for a walk, not a long one, at least in terms of distance, but it was just far enough. Along the way, I found a dime in the street along the curb, just a house down the way from our home. It was shiny and bright, so it caught my eye. I picked it up and stuck it in my pocket to throw in the old crystal ashtray I keep on my dresser for spare change. A few steps later I found a second dime, this one had even more shine but did not given evidence of having been run over by traffic. Even though it was way lying in, away from the curb, more out where it was easy to run over. I put the second dime in the pocket with the first one. Turning the corner at the end of the block, I found a third dime, this one in the middle of the street, but it was shiny new and had clearly not been there before the heavy rains that fell during the passing thunderstorm earlier that day. A fourth dime showed up a few steps further up the hill. I put it in my pocket with the others, and we continued slowly up the hill.

A few steps later, I realized in a flash that the dimes were not turning up by coincidence. I was meant to find them—they were there for me to see and, in being seen, to deliver a message. It was not the first time I had a mysterious encounter with dimes appearing seemingly out of nowhere.

Now that the old yellow dog and the dimes have been introduced, it is time to talk about cousins. My father and Pat Power Christianson were first cousins. They were very close growing up, even though her family ranched in Central Washington and our family ranched along the Big Hole River outside Twin Bridges. In the way the passage of years can loosen family ties, our families followed different paths in the years following my father's death when I was 11. We rarely saw Pat and her family. I don't recall having met her children before her daughter Carri, named after my grandmother, contacted my aunt, the widow of my father's brother, and asked to get together with us.

We met and quickly became very close, perhaps sensing in each other what our parents had shared together as cousins so many years ago. By the time we met, Pat had passed away after a long struggle with cancer. Before she died, she and Carri determined that if there was a way for Pat to communicate with Carri, she would leave dimes where Carri would find them. Carri told me she would occasionally find dimes in unexpected places at unexpected times, but the dimes would turn up when Carri needed to find one.

Shortly after we met for the first time, when she brought her triplets to meet the family, Carri and I were coming in through the side door of my house, and one of us spotted a dime stuck in the doormat. Over the next couple of days, we found several more. Laughing at the "coincidences," we agreed that her mother was happy that Carri and I were together and getting to know each other.

I have very little understanding of such phenomena. As a Catholic steeped in Catholic tradition and theology, there is no real explanation for how dimes would mysteriously show up as the dimes did for Carri and me, both when we were apart and when we were together. I believe in matters of faith some things happen for which there is no rational reason. That is, in fact, what faith is all about, belief in a God who can move through time and space to touch a human heart in astonishing ways, including the mysterious presence of dimes.

Since Carri and I met, I have had dimes show up occasionally, but all that really happened was picking up the dime, smiling at the pleasant memories of other times I found dimes, and stuffing the coins in my pocket. That is not what happened the night I walked around the block with the dog.

It is time to expand the story. Roy Halvorson and his wife Helen lived down the alley behind my grandparents, and the Halvorson and Trent families forged a friendship that kept our families bonded through the generations for more than 7 decades. Roy was a great hunter, as were my grandfather, father and uncles, and they often hunted together. Roy had a world-class Labrador retriever named Yippy, and from Yippy came several litters of award-winning puppies. Yippy and her progeny were one of the early lines of blue-blood Labrador Retriever royalty, and from Yippy came the first yellow Labrador to become a field trial grand champion.

In 1959, my father was in his early twenties and still finishing college because he had to drop out when I was born in 1955. He and my mother had virtually nothing while my dad scratched his way through college, and my mother worked as a secretary. Yippy's puppies sold for what would have been a small fortune in the 50s, but Roy found it in his heart to let my father "buy" a puppy from one of the same litters as Buck, the first yellow champion. She was a little thing named Gypsy, and she was the first yellow Labrador female in a long line of successive yellow females in my life from that day until this. For 56 years, my life has been wrapped up and bound together with one dog after the other. With Oakley, the fifth dog, the line came to an end.

Some years later, when Yippy had finally grown old and died, Roy's wife, Helen, comforted my broken heart by telling me in her particular and direct way the price we pay for unconditional love is to have to learn what it means to know loss. Whatever you think you have means minimal unless you mourn the loss of it when it is gone. Those words flooded back every time the chapter for one of my dogs ended. The words are still valid. You really appreciate the value of a good dog when you experience the grief that follows its passing.

Yellow Labradors mean more to me than just being pets. Over the years, 4 other Labradors came into my life and owned my heart. Each of them thought much more of me than I ever deserved. Each of them loved me more than I could ever love them. Each of them brought me comfort, happiness and consolation during inconsolable times. They challenged me to be consistent, giving, disciplined, and considerate. Each made me a better man, but none more so than this fifth and last one, Oakley. She taught me more than all of the rest and, as ancient as she was, is still teaching me even though she passed. I sensed at the time of this experience she would also be the last of the line. So far, that has proven to be true.

My life was changing in ways I could barely comprehend, and the changes happened in ways I would have never expected. Perhaps I had finally grown up, or at least grown. I realized that I no longer lived in my father's shadow, but I was still comfortable with being out in the whole light of life.

The sadness then came not from just the imminent loss of Oakley, which came to pass a few days later, but the passing of a way of life. It was my choice, a decision made in recognition of the changing stages of life I might be called to go where a dog could not accompany me. No one and nothing forced the decision to not get a new puppy on me, and if I changed my mind, nothing would prevent the change. Perhaps some new puppy will come my way, but it is unlikely.

We started with dimes, and now we return to dimes. Why was I finding them? The dimes were an unambiguous message of something, and I believe the message came from Pat. Since my father and I never had the chance to make a pact-like Carri and Pat, I believe he and Pat are together, and my father had Pat send me dimes to let me know everything will be all right. I could let go. He was waiting for this dog to join the other 4 dogs already with him.

So there. The story was told, well, almost told. There was also the matter of the fifth dime I saw lying across the deck from me beneath the BBQ grill as the story flowed from inside out. There is also the mercy of a loving God through whose grace family, friends and 5 good dogs have blessed my life.

Five dimes. Five dogs. I get it. I was a little closer to being able to say goodbye. I am still not quite there yet, but I am okay with that. Acceptance is the consolation of grief, and acceptance comes only through faith that this life is just a chapter and there is more to come. I don't know how sound this theology is, but why I die, I want to go wherever my Labradors went. Can you imagine eternity spent with such love?

Matthew 28:16-20

The disciples worshiped him but they doubted. How very curious. These were the 11 men who had been tapped on the shoulder and called out of the only life they knew to follow a charismatic man who was like no other man in history. They saw him walk on water, multiply loaves, change water in wine, heal the sick, drive out demons and, even more incredibly, raise the dead. They were with him in the upper room when he predicted his passion, they watched as he was arrested, scourged, crucified, died and was buried. They saw him resurrected and glorified, appear and disappear from their presence. They touched his wounds, ate with him, listened with him, talked with him and walked with him and yet they doubted.

What, by that point in time, could they still doubt? They doubted for the same reason we doubt. As much as they know and for as much as we know, we only know a little, just a bit of the mystery which is the trinity.

It is easy to talk about the one God with three faces, God the father, Jesus the savior and the Holy Spirit and to rationalize the concept of three in one but can we really grasp it. I mean really, really grasp it. We can’t so we worship we can grasp but doubt the rest.

I love a good mystery. I like to read good murder mysteries like those written by James Lee Burke who can draw you into his stories by animating characters who are flawed but capable of nobility and you can become so caught up in the flow of the story you forget to watch for the clues which will lead you to the final revelation of who dunnit at the end of the book. The theology of his books is intensely powerful but not in a traditional manner even though the main character, the antagonist and his family are devoutly Catholic. The stories are filled with Cain versus Able dynamics with vengeance, greed, jealousy all driving the behaviors of every richly drawn character. The end always results in redemption for those who confront evil in imperfect ways and justice for the wrongdoers.

The victims, despite being human and flawed with their humanity, are innocent. Even when the puzzle is solved and the story is ended, there is a mystery which continues, a mystery which conceals how they carry on beyond the end of the words.

British murder mysteries on BBC also fascinate me. The best of them provide a look at place and time where crime seems but familiar but out of place. The main characters always seem to be most unlikely of victims and criminals and often times when the final scene plays out, the murderer often seems as surprised to discover they committed the crime as the victims when they realized they were being murder.

The trinity is not a mystery like we encounter in books and on cinema. There is not a puzzle to solve or riddle to unlock. The trinity is mystery, a place where we see a little, understand a little but never more than that. We are not capable of more, not while we have to use human faculties to capture the supernatural as if it were lightning in a bottle. To believe are capable of more leads to the deceit of pride which clouds our vision or, as it is said, clouds our intellect and we understand less and not more.

So we worship but still doubt. God understands that it is why he has revealed more and more himself over time until revelation was completed in the second face of the trinity and then sent the third face, the Holy Spirit, who connects God to us and us to him. The Trinity is a mystery we can only submerse ourselves into like a deep, dark, bottom pool in which we can float effortlessly but accomplish nothing more. To be at peace in the mystery whether it is for a few minutes or even longer is the reward for worship.

Still we doubt but still we are forgiven.

Sadducees Set A Trap

Oh how smug those Sadducees were. Oh how clever they imagined themselves to be. Can’t you see them nodding their heads at each other with knowing smirks on their faces? “We have got him now,” they said to one another.

The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, as we learned in the gospel. For them there was nothing like a everlasting life for humans nor did they believe in the existence of angels. Life on earth was a reflection of heaven which ended with individual death. The only thing that survived was the tribe, the community of believers who passed knowledge, as they perceived it, from one generation to the next. On the contrary, the Pharisees had a clunky and ill-defined concept of the afterlife. Only those who listened closely to Jesus were blessed with a better understanding of what was come after death.

They, the Sadducees, did not think Jesus would be able to outwit their neatly constructed trap without contradicting the Law of Moses. They were wrong. He turned their argument right back against them. Explaining resurrection in simple terms, Jesus said we would be like angels. Earthly things like marriage would remain behind on earth where they properly belong to living and we are living are expected to live according to the law as instructed by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

In the resurrection everything changes. There is no contradiction of the law because the law has been fulfilled. The law applies to human, not to angels.

Scripture does not describe how the Sadducees reacted to being caught in their own trap so we can use our imagination to color in the blank spots on the canvass. The smirks were wiped away and they no doubt were left sputtering and grumbling.

What lesson today can we draw this from the passage? What happens when we act like the Sadducees?  Inevitably we fall into the trap we ourselves set by not humbly asking for God guide us. The message for us two-fold. First, God is the God of the living. Revelation has been all about how we should live, constantly mindful we were created in his image and hopeful for justice and mercy as our days speed toward human death. Second, informed by our belief, we have an image of our life after death through the gift of the resurrection. God is the God of the living and, if we believe, we will never die but will live forever with him. There is no contradiction for us, only understanding.

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God of Moses, let our hope to be like angels after death encourage us to live today as you have taught us.

Samaritan Woman at the Well - Take 2

Another Look at the Samaritan Woman at the well

When we arrive at the door of this gospel and enter in we have the choice of identifying with Jesus and his disciples or with the Samaritan Woman. It is, for me today, an act of arrogance to presume I am with the one with the answers to the questions the Samaritan Woman asked of Jesus. This gospel is like every other. We need to ask the question of who we are on a daily basis. The answer yesterday may not be the answer for today or tomorrow. The challenge is to humbly ask the question and then to humbly search the answer.

Today the person I am in this gospel is the Samaritan woman. Let me tell you why.

In the life of every human there are days when we are up and days when we are down. Yesterday was not an up day. I was feeling the pressure of being the leader of large team and feeling disheartened because of the need to engage a member of the team in a very serious and very serious difficult discussion about performance. The person was a long time peer who ended up being a subordinate and the transition of our relationship has had some bumps and twists.

The issue of dealing with a team member was just one thing on a long list of things I felt were weighing down. It was as if I had found myself sailing into the open fist of gale and as the fingers of the storm closed in around me I felt deep discouragement close in around me.

I am usually able to mask down days by using the tools I have learned over the years. Finding reasons for gratitude, doing a random act of kindness, seeking the quiet world of mediation all usually help me get through the day without lashing out or withdrawing. Yesterday my evil twin was not having any part of it.

Finally late in the morning Lynn, one of my fellow managers, became concerned by the quiet in my office since my office tends to be a place of some noisy laughter, joking and conversation. I was able to share some of my feelings with her and, being a fellow Catholic familiar with my faith practices, she looked me in the eye and gave me some very sage advice.

“You need to go to Mass at noon. Just go. The Mass always changes you,” she said. I started to protest about my schedule being full but she just held up her index finger, pointed it at me and said, “Just go.” I willing to be you could all predict what happened next. I went to Mass.

I would like to say the gospel of the Mass was about the Samaritan woman but it wasn’t. The Gospel was from John 16 in which Jesus tells the disciples that the Holy Spirit would come to them to reveal more to them when they could bear to hear.

What was revealed to me was that today I was Samaritan woman who, absorbed in a dreary life of chaos and uncertainty, came to the well to draw water to drink but instead was overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit. Her life was changed and she went down a new path which would lead her to being the person she was always intended to be.

In the Mass and through the Eucharist, this Samaritan woman, me, encountered Christ and was reminded of the power of the waters of baptism which send us forward into the waters of life which flow from God.

The fist which had been closing in around me opened again and while the seas I sailed in were still stormy, I could once again see the destination and understood what God wanted from me. That made all the difference.

That was today. If tomorrow I am called upon to answer the question again how would I respond? All I can do is to pray for the strength to answer if tested. 

The Samaritan Woman at the Well

Earlier this spring, I was riding with a colleague named Wendy to a business meeting. Our route took us a past a group of motorcycle riders who had gathered along the curb in front storefront building facing Main street. The riders were a stereotypical bunch sporting leathers with all manner of patches, and scary looking helmets and leather hats. Most of the men were bearded and were either shaved-head bald or wearing long hair. The women in their company were also a predictably appearing bunch. All in all they were a pretty intimidating bunch.

As we drove by, I could feel my passenger literally tighten up in anxiety because some of the group were less than an arm’s length away. Her concern became even more palpable when the light turned red causing us to stop immediately beside the riders and their friends. There we were, stopped in the middle of the street, hemmed in by cars in front, behind and beside us with a motorcycle gang right there. I mean RIGHT there. If one of the bunch decided to bust out a window of the car and grab her, there would have been nothing we could do. Wendy, my passenger, was obviously very much aware of that fact.

After a few moment’s silence, during which she nervously tried to avoid looking toward the crowd she finally spoke, “Interesting looking folks.”

“They are a pretty scary bunch,” I agreed. “Funny thing though,” I continued, after a moment’s pause, “I would trust any one of them with every dollar I own and a new born child if had one.”

She turned to look me in eyes to see if I was serious. “I am not kidding,” I added in answer to her unasked question. “What you don’t know is every one of those people is a devout Christian and despite what they look like, they live out the gospel as well as anyone I know.”

I then explained we had stopped in front of their church building, a converted insurance office and the group, members of the Set Free ministry, had gathered for a memorial service for the one of the members of the church. Just then one of the guys recognized me, waving and calling out my name with a big smile. He and several of the others whom I proudly call “brother” or “sister” came over to the car. I rolled down the passenger side window so I could visit with them. Wendy remained rigid and smiled nervously while we chatted. In a minute or two, the light changed to green so we had to pull away while exchanging farewells and prayer promises. Wendy finally started breathe but remained a little ashen.

My friend and colleague did what many of us would do in the same circumstance if we did not know the whole story. Instead of seeing the face of God and recognizing all of the Christian symbols on their clothing, she only saw what she was conditioned to see and was afraid.

In the gospel of the Samaritan Woman at the Well, Jesus could very well have seen the Samaritan woman as a defiled foreigner, someone to ignore or avoid, or, perhaps, even be frightened of. Jesus did something very much unexpected by the woman by revealing himself to her. With his revelation and her acceptance of his teaching, her purpose in life metamorphosed from being a worn out survivor of a miserable existence to becoming his first missionary to her people. It was she who was to carry the message and she did just that. She was certain he was about to put her down through derision and insult but instead he lifted her up to an extraordinary future with a supernatural push.

My friends from the Set Free ministry are more like us than they are different. Someone unexpected carried the message to them. They believed it and their new beliefs changed them. We sit in different churches but we hear the same gospel from the same God and we have same challenge to spread the gospel to those who need to hear it.

After she was able to think about what she experienced, Wendy said she had heard about “people like that” but had never met a “Christian motorcycle gang” before and she seemed genuinely impressed by them but also expressed surprise that a supposedly squeaky clean Catholic guy like me was so well known to them. If she only knew…. I have much, much more in common with many of them than a shared faith.

As Christians, we each meet someone like the Samaritan woman at the well almost every day. The challenge is to see what we have in common and not turn away or be frightened because of the differences we perceive separate us. Jesus revealed himself as “I am” to the Samaritans, a people completely alien and foreign to himself and the lesson we should learn from him is to worship God with everyone, not just those who are like us.

In the eyes of God, there was no difference between Jews and Samaritans. Both were called to worship him through the saving mission of Jesus. This lesson is still our challenge –we are to be watchful for the Samaritan Woman we might encounter today so we will have an opportunity to honor God by living out his gospel of love and service to others. 

John 15 1-9

I am the vine, you are the branches.
Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,
because without me you can do nothing.
This passage is one of the most famous, most often quoted and one of the most inspirational for those of us, which, of course, is all of us, who seek a purpose in life beyond the ordinary. Even though very few of us today have ever seen a grapevine in a vineyard, the powerful imagery evoked by Jesus in the Gospel is just as relevant today as it was in His time. Jesus is the vine. God is the vine grower. We are the branches. It is we who bear fruit as long as we remain connected to him. He tells us in the gospel without him we can do nothing. Knowing we have a place and purpose – I have a place and purpose - is very comforting but is not completely soothing for there remains an unanswered question. What fruit are we to bear? If Jesus is the true vine, the fruit we must bear must also be true.

The answers lies bearing fruit by becoming His disciples. To become more like Him. To do what He would have us do which is to serve others as he served us.

Every day, we seek to see the face of Jesus, to remain with him and to remain in him. Recently I spent a day on a river which runs through a land my family has called home for generations. With some brothers in Christ, I joined in worshiping God through appreciation of his creation and appreciation of the gift to enjoy his creation. We floated on waters which have flowed since before our time and which will flow until the end of time. We saw creation but I did not truly see the face God as he passed by my tent. I had yet to bear the fruit we are called to bear.

Returning home, we stopped in a restaurant to grab a pork chop sandwich. While waiting in line, two men came through the door. They were both short in stature and both seemed to be older, perhaps in their 70’s. The clothing they wore was simple and clean but not stylish. One man was black and the other either Asian or Native American. I could not be sure of which.

I was instantly on edge because I was unsure what to expect from them. They appeared as though they might need money or they might want to engage me in a conversation. When they nodded pleasantly and ignored us, I was relieved. I was not going to be asked get outside my comfort zone. They were just a couple of guys out to enjoy a pork chop sandwich just like my friend and I. Even so, I still kept an eye and ear focused on them. I secretly almost hoped they might struggle to pay the bill so I might have an opportunity to contribute to their dinner but money was not an issue. I was hoping for a chance to be a good guy without actually doing anything personal.

After being served, they sat at a table next to us, and I continued to listen in on them from time to time wondering what kind of oddness or weirdness I might hear. All I heard was conversation. They talked about the big fight that night and they talked about the weather. Their conversation was not so different from that of my friend and me.

When it came time to leave, I turned to them and said, “I see we scored a great meal tonight.” 
They both looked at me and, smiling back, responded, “We sure did. Have a great night.”
“You too,” I said and with that my friend and I left.

The Asian/Indian guy, by the way had an opaque left eye that flashed in the light in a seriously spooky way. The black guy was missing several teeth and had a crippled and withered hand. Neither guy was much like me or my friend but God put them in my path to remind me of what it means to see his face and be to be changed by the encounter.

The fruit we are to bear. We sometimes delude ourselves into thinking it has to be something big or important. We are called to comfort the ill, to feed the poor, to offer shelter and food to the hungry. Big stuff. Stuff that requires a sacrifice of time or treasure. But not always. 

Sometimes all we are called to do is just be kind. It can be just that simple.

Today the fruit we must bear to remain in Him might be difficult. It might be hard. It might require us to get outside ourselves and be uncomfortable. We might even be called to change arc of our lives so that we can follow the path he has set for us. More likely, however, it might be nothing more demanding than to smile at someone who is not like you and simply be kind.

Prayer
Give me the strength to remain in you and the courage to bear the fruit of your vine.