Some Things I've made:

Hey folks!  I'm struggling with stuffy head and migraines today so I'm just gonna post some pics of some knitting I've done.  It's a reminder to me to pick up some of my old hobbies and get back to them. The feeling of accomplishment and relaxation I get is invaluable. I've forgotten this lesson too often.

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This first is part of a shawl I've been working on.  It's using a discontinued colorway yarn from KnitPicks.com 

Here's a close up detail of the pattern in a different color.  I completed this shawl and gave it away.

This is an entrelac beret. I made another in a blue colorway. Both of them have a new home.  I like this pattern and will probably make more.  I'm kinda in love with berets.

Here's another pattern that I really liked.  This one starts with a bias edge which you can see in the picture on the right.  After knitting the band, you pick up stitches evenly all the way around and then purl your little heart out over and over, interspersed with a knit stitch every so often.  That's what makes the teardrop pattern.  I'm not a big fan of purl stitches so I turned it inside out and knit my heart out with a few purl stitches thrown in.  I gave this beret away as well.  I've started another one but got sidetracked...(who hasn't?) <grin>

This little guy is an MS Bear. There is a symptom of MS called an MS Hug.  It's a tightening of the muscles around the abdomen and is quite uncomfortable and even painful, depending on the severity.  This little guy is marketed by the MS Society and proceeds are used help those with MS deal with the variety of MS symptoms that we experience. I got this one for myself as a reminder that there is support out there, even for those who are alone in their struggle.  The fancy scarf, however, is from some left over "yarn."  I was making fancy scarves for friends and had a bit left over so my MS Bear Hug got some ruffles. 

Have a great day everyone! 

Chicken Pot Pie - Comfort food for cold weather!

We all have our favorite cold weather comfort food. Mine is frozen chicken pot pie. I'm not sure why, except that it brings back happy childhood memories. When I was a child, my mother would sometimes stick a frozen pot-pie in the oven for lunch. It seemed like it took so very long to cook it, I'd be half starved before it was ready. (Perspectives of kids, huh?) I've tried several microwave pot-pies but none of them took me back to those days. Then a friend introduced me to this recipe.  This makes a LOT of food. In fact, make a couple of them and you can feed the potluck at church pretty easily. If you are cooking for one, make sure you've got some freezer containers ready.

The directions call for a 9x13 pan but you really need a very deep pan for everything.  Also, the amount of time required to cook is directly related to whether you allow the veggies to thaw first.  I recommend you allow them to thaw at least half way.

Today I have decided to mix it all together and make them up in regular pie pans.  I've got enough dough for 3 pies, we'll see how it goes.

Quick and Easy Chicken Pot Pie

1 can Cream of Mushroom soup
1 can Cream of Celery soup
1 can Cream of Chicken soup
2 cans (Large cans) of Chicken
1 tsp rosemary (very important!)
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt
1 small or medium bag of frozen veggies (peas, carrots, corn, whatever)
1/2 bag of chunk style hashbrowns
4 large pie crusts

SPRAY PAN with NON-STICK spray... In 9x13 pan (deep is good) place 2 of the pie crusts (overlapping is fine). Mix above ingredients well and place in pan. Cover with the other two crusts. Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes until crust is browned and pie is heated through.

Use your judgement on the amount of veggies and hashbrowns but don't use so many that they don't get coated with the soup mixture when mixed.

I like a lot of crust so one day I might try this by lining the bottom of the pan with either biscuits or Pillsbury crescent rolls!  (or maybe replace the top crust with the biscuits...yum!)

If you make this, please let me know how it comes out and whether you adjusted anything.

Happy baking!

Silence...

I love audiobooks. I've been a member at Audible since one of my best friends got me hooked early in 2009. I have hundreds of books. This means that I listen a lot! When I'm not listening to a book, then it's music or even the TV. 


I live alone but there seems to always be something making noise.  Why is that, I wonder?  I find myself listening to a book and checking my email at the same time.  I play instrumental music when I'm reading a book.  Why do I insist on so much audio/video stimulation?

Whether we like it or not, the commercial Christmas season is here.  We are inundated with all manner of visual stimulation. Lights adorn houses, streets, trees and we even create huge spectacles of lights as drive-thru attractions.  Wherever we go, chances are we will hear Christmas music playing in the store, restaurant or even the hair care salon.

Facebook is inundating everyone with "click bait" and it seems to be getting worse.  Click bait can be easily identified by phrases like "you won't believe what happened" or "a diet secret the doctor's don't want you to know about."  The sensational headlines entice you click to see "what happened" or read that "diet secret" and yet, when you do, you get very little outside of pop up videos and advertisements.  There are the flashing ads down the right side of the screen, misleading graphics that suggest a video but only lead you to another advertising website.  It's click bait because every time one of those advertisements gets "seen", someone gets paid.

Where is the silence?  Where do stop all the incoming information and just sit quietly with no noise and perhaps a simple candle for light?  I've gotten so used to the flood of stimulation that it takes a specific effort of will to simply stop and turn off all the stuff and just be.

Be still and know that I am God.  The hardest part of that is the "be still" part.  I challenge you to an hour of stillness each day.  If you can't be completely without stimulation, start slowly.  Turn off the radio in the car.  Leave the TV off and play instrumental music instead. Listen to an audiobook with your eyes closed.  Start by limiting your amount of stimulation to one source at a time.

Good Luck!

Shopping on Thanksgiving.

I've been thinking about the call to not shop on Thanksgiving Day. It is an attempt to show our displeasure at corporations that force their workers to work, rather than giving them all time at home with their families.  But what about those who rely on "holiday pay?"  I have known several people who volunteer to work on these days because they need the money.  Not just the money for another day of work but the time and a half or double time they might make.  I have been one of those waitresses who offered to work the holidays for the money. 

Will not shopping on Thanksgiving make a change in the corporate world? No, probably not.  There are stores who are acting self-righteous, however, in the hopes that you will choose them over those "thoughtless/heartless" other stores.  It's marketing. It's emotional manipulation.

Stay home with your family because you value your family and friends and want to share a meal and give thanks for the abundance that you have.  Go help at a shelter or soup kitchen to share your abundance with those less fortunate. Do this often, not just on Thanksgiving Day.

Remember that there are folks working on Thanksgiving because they need the money. Remember that there is such a pay disparity because we've allowed it.  Somehow the political talking heads have convinced us that raising the minimum wage is a bad thing, even those of us who are making barely above minimum wage.  Is there the same outcry when the CEOs get a pay hike? What about when the Senate and House raise their wages?

Let's stop focusing on the effect and start focusing on the cause. The root cause is greed. Our system oppresses the poor and exalts the wealthy. Jesus talked about how the Kingdom of God is like a number of things - none of those included a capitalist economy that looked after the wealthy and let the poor fend for themselves.  None of those included a society that blamed he poor for being poor. This world needs more humility in the face of these internet memes of outrage. It's easy to click like, feel a moment of self-righteous indignation and move on.   The real question is, what are you going to do to address the underlying systemic issues? 

Apparently it isn't voting...but that's another blog post. 

Spiritual wounds...

In CPE training we often talk about spiritual wounds.  When we visit patients, one of our responsibilities is to assess the spiritual needs of the patient. I learned this past week that the Memphis VA Medical Center is THE place for veterans to receive care due to spinal cord injury. There is a special wing dedicated to spinal cord injury patients.  The majority of the patients I've seen there are in the hospital for their annual check up.  Their general attitude is upbeat for the most part.  It is a bit different than other folks in the hospital who are most often there due to a medical crisis of some sort. 

These men (for I've only met men in this unit so far) are resilient. They really just want to get the tedious tests out of the way and get home. Sometimes they are requesting a new power wheelchair because theirs is worn out.  Based on my, admittedly very limited, experience, they have come to terms with their mobility challenges.

All of this is to say that spiritual wounds are often not about the obvious things. One gentleman was telling me that he and his wife were growing apart. Another was frustrated that they have been waiting on a consultation regarding surgery for several hours. Yet another was complaining about the hospital food. While people who use wheelchairs have a particular set of challenges, often their spiritual wound (if there is one) is no different than anyone else might have. 

Divorce, death of father or mother, estrangement from family and a myriad of other possibilities exist that can cause spiritual wounds. This is to say, at some point in our lives, we all will face an event or situation where our spirit can be wounded. Our job as chaplains is to consider whether this wounding is already healed or on the mend and, if not, is there anything we can do to support the patient in the process of healing. 

One of the hardest things for us, as students, is to realize when we're picking at a long healed wound and missing the important clues in front of us.  It's a challenge and one that all pastors face in their work of ministry.  Many people have deep wounds that they have long hidden from others and perhaps even themselves.  As a CPE student, chances are I will only see a patient once before they are discharged.  Do we do the patient a disservice when we dig deep with an inability to follow up?  Maybe, maybe not.  That is a situational call and one that cannot be taught, only learned by experience. 

I often come back to something I learned when working with people experiencing homelessness.  I am there in a ministry of presence. It is not my job to try to FIX anything. That's a hard lesson to learn. 

Anticipation...

The weather man has predicted freezing rain and snow tonight.  Something tells me it will be less impressive than I would like.  I enjoy rain and snow, although not necessarily at the same time.

I like the way the world looks when it snows.  I like how it is so quiet when there's a thick layer of snow on the ground. Memories of my youth playing in the snow come back and I pull out the hot chocolate and a good book. 

Growing up on a farm meant that I had fields worth of snow with which to build a snowman or make snow angels.   I've moved farther south and we rarely have any significant accumulation. It has been raining all day and the temp is hovering just under 40 degrees so it is cold.  I decided not to make a trip to the grocery store and ordered pizza. Apparently I am not the only one with this idea because estimated delivery is an hour and a half. I live a quarter mile from the store. 

Today I am indulging my inner child, waiting in anticipation for a pizza and waiting in anticipation of the coming bad weather, hoping like a little child for a snow day. 

A day of rest...

Sunday is sabbath. It is a day of rest, a day for rejuvenation.  Preachers don't celebrate sabbath on Sunday, of course. We pick a different day of the week. Well, sometimes we do.  Sometimes we don't have time, or at least that's what we tell ourselves. We have this habit of taking a couple hours here and a couple hours there and letting that "add up" to a sabbath day.

This is not a good thing.  God declared a full day as sabbath.  There is a reason for that. We need a full day of no work. We need to know from day to day when we will be able to shut down and just rest.  This means that the day shouldn't be different each week. The same day every seven days of complete rest.  This means no research papers, no sermon prep, no catching up on stuff at home that you didn't get done earlier.  It is a day to enjoy a good book or visit family and friends.  It is a day to work on a favorite hobby. It is a day to simply take your mind off of worries and work and, instead, rejoice in the day that the Lord has made.

The problem for me is scheduling. I procrastinate and I think I do it because I haven't scheduled any down time for myself.  When I have that time scheduled, I am less inclined to put off things I need to do.  It takes practice, however. It also takes setting boundaries.  If it's a sabbath day for me, I don't answer the phone or emails for school question, church questions, and the like.  I can usually tell by the person calling or emailing.  I screen calls closely on my sabbath.  I have had to set these expectations with people and often times they aren't happy about it.  Often the problem is that my sabbath day doesn't coincide with theirs.  It can be frustrating but if you can set aside one day each week for sabbath and communicate that information, then you can get past the frustration in time. 

I write all of this to suggest two things. First is that you need to make sure you have a sabbath day, a day you use for rest and rejuvenation. Take time to be grateful for all the little things along with the big things. 

Secondly, you recognize that your pastor also has a sabbath day which isn't Sunday. Respect their time, please. They are already going to work at home and much more than the 40 hours expected. If your pastor has office hours, use those hours to contact them.  This is not to say that if there is an emergency, don't call your pastor. Please do call them.  Please do keep your pastor in the loop especially regarding hospitalizations.

Be blessed and enjoy your day of rest...