More Baguettes

Baguette blog part 2. Between three of us, we managed to eat 3 out of 4 baguettes at dinner and breakfast. Somehow, when baked as a standard loaf, that amount of bread would last at least two or three days, but when sausage shaped and crunchy, we gobbled it up in half the time and I’ve got more bread in the machine for today!

Was it worth the hours of fussing around timing risings and reshaping, resting, punching down, and so on? Yes. Change is good. It may be the same recipe, yet it tasted different.

Taste and see that the Lord is good. This is the day that the Lord has made.

These days of lock down can be Groundhog Days. Monday can be the same as Friday or Sunday. With a bit of effort, though, the days, like bread dough, can be reshaped and then, somehow, taste different. Present a different experience.

We have introduced one night a week as a sharing night. One week we each chose a favourite piece of music, listened to it and then explained why it was special to us. One week we shared a poem, again expanding on it to relive our first encounter with it, telling what it spoke to us maybe at a past point in our lives, maybe even now. This week we hope to have a trip down memory lane with some home movies (if the old projector still works). I’ve heard of others who are dressing up for a meal once a week or so and having a date night in.

Obviously this is no good if you are locked down alone, but Zoom encounters and skype calls can also reshape time so that our days have variety and interest, re-shaping a day and expanding horizons.

Jesus came to give us life in all its fullness. In our normal, unlocked-in world, that fullness can look like a busy schedule of work and relationships and sporting activities and concerts or plays.

How often in the past I have wished that the world would stop for a day so I could catch up with things! It has stopped now for two months, and I am realising that I don’t want to just get all the jobs done. I also want to enjoy every day.

We still have the same gift of life, the same amount of time, but it sits like a ball waiting for us to choose how to shape it today. Will your day be a plain loaf or a braided brioche or a simple baguette?

Baguettes

Baguettes. Four rises. Four punches down and kneads before division and shaping and two more rises.

The baker online says that adds to the flavour. I don’t quite see how, but I’m trying it.

Then he recommends a pan of boiling water at the bottom of the oven, to make for a crustier crust. And precise scoring of the crust, again to add to the experience of eating it.

I don’t get it. But he’s the expert.

This lock down is full of rises and punches down. Significantly more than four as we head into our eighth week. Globally there is so much pain and anguish. For each of those deaths recorded daily, there are loved ones in abject grief and shock. Many homes feel more like cells than havens by now. Many children are confused and perplexed as they miss their pals and long for some freedom.

We may hear of a bit of a rise tonight. Maybe a relaxing of some of the restrictions. But many of us are bracing for another punch down, if infections begin to rise as a result.

There is a global groan as this pandemic reshapes the world. It will not be as it was. In the pain, though, there  is opportunity. Opportunity to shape a world order informed by compassion. A world where ambitious self-interest gives way to seeking after the greater good, for environment and society.

In this world we have trouble, Jesus confirmed. But we can take heart, for he has overcome the world. Only he knows the best way out of this crisis in which we are flailing. May we emerge from this painful period trusting in God to help us shape a better world.

Teamwork

I looked up from chopping squash for the soup, to see a wee bird pop out of one of the bird houses and her partner to go in. Teamwork, getting food or hatching the eggs: I’m not sure which stage this little family has reached.

Mhairi did our grocery shopping today, and now the lock down seems even more complete. She doesn’t want us getting Covid-19, but frankly, I’d rather get it than have her – or any of the younger generation – contract it. They are carving careers and raising families while we have done that. As much as I don’t want to meet my Maker quite yet, if it were to happen, I would be ready. But I don’t want any younger lives cut short.

So, it has been a struggle. A struggle to be the shielded rather than the shield. For awhile I’ve referred to myself as older, not old. I’ve been relieved that I am not yet 70…quite. Having taken care of family and others who need a hand for so long, it is hard to restrain the urge to keep doing that.

Mhairi returned with everything on the list. As I cleaned out the fridge, washed everything that came in (well, most everything), and made the soup, I checked my impatience at doing these housekeeping tasks when really I’d planned to do some other things. As she has now gone to work upstairs, I can take care of her by preparing nice food. Teamwork.

May God give me the grace to accept changing seasons, and restricted activities, with patience and joy.

Flagging

The sun pours out of a clear blue sky and once again, over-enthusiasm got the better of Don and me. Don planted out the beautiful salmon-pink impatiens we bought a couple of weeks ago, only to find them shrivelled and dead in the morning. An overnight frost took them away, like it did some of the marigolds I hopefully planted a few weeks ago.

We are over-eager to enter into the freedom of summertime joys. To see the colour return. To smell the fragrances of plenty. To watch the busy bees, the frolicking butterflies, and the hungry birds. To bask in the warm sunshine.

Now our hopes are dashed. Well, our hopes for profusions of yellows and pinks.

I am so ready for this pandemic to disappear. I thought I was bobbing along fine, but last night I couldn’t sleep. It’s like a bereavement, this being denied contact with family and friends. A deep grief, knowing these days bring changes which don’t reverse, especially in children. We can’t recapture those moments of first steps, of first words, of hilarious giggles and warm hugs, of crawling around the floor pushing trains or cars or building lego, of discovering a world of wonder and beauty with inquisitive grandkids. There will be more moments in the future, I know, but these moments, at these stages of development, will be gone.

But we can’t make the same mistake we made with our marigolds and our impatiens. We don’t want to invite disaster by re-engaging too soon. We have to reign in our impulses.

I found comfort in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18. ‘Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles (!!) are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.’

If you’re flagging like I am, I pray for you, too, that today God will help us fix our eyes on Jesus, so that ‘the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace’.

Comfort and Rest

Internet with decent speed is not part of our experience of rural life. We struggle at the best of times. Now, with children doing school work online, work-outs and streaming movies and so on, it can slip further, making skype calls a challenge, Zoom meetings frustrating when several people want to talk at the same time.

Technology is helping us get through this time of lock down, but it is such a poor second to meeting friends and loved ones in person, hugging and just enjoying each other’s company. We are made for relationship, and enforced separation is painful.

On a Skype call last night, there was frequent interference in the form of other voices cutting in and out, other voices having other conversations. I am old enough to remember having a ‘party line’ when I was young. Four households shared the same number, and so we had to take turns using the phone.

I am grateful that our connection to God is not via Skype or Zoom or Meeting Rooms. I am grateful that there is nobody listening in; that the only interference is from my own distracting thoughts. We were made for relationship: first with God, then with other people. During this lock down, I think of all those who are bereaved, anxious, stuck in challenging circumstances or just plain lonely because of the imposed disconnection, and pray that God will break in on any unhelpful thoughts with his loving presence today. May those who are searching for answers find comfort and rest in God.

Up the Tree

The pheasant flew up to a low branch on the huge larch tree outside the window of the living room. We were startled. Usually pheasants flap and rise up briefly before settling back on the ground and running. We’d never seen any fly up into a tree.

Awhile later, as the darkness deepened, we could see that this beautiful bird had worked his way up, higher, onto a branch safe from predators, where he could sleep in peace.

We are in testing times. Predators circle, taking pot shots at our courage, at our love, at our faith. Scripture tells us that we are helpless without Jesus. Without Jesus, we are ‘sitting pheasants’, easy pickings for sin’s attacks. Though we have been raised from death to life, we slip back into the darkness daily, in our thoughts, in our words, in our deeds. Trusting Jesus for everything is the definition of life itself.

I am like that fat pheasant. I don’t fly very well. But I can just about get myself onto the lowest branch of trust in Jesus (with a boost up from the wind of the Spirit). Then, as I recognise where I am, and that I am, indeed, safe, because of his protection, Jesus helps me inch higher up, further in, where he restores courage, renews love, revives faith.

He is light and life. We don’t understand fully, but as we lean in, he reveals more. May this testing time have an outcome that we are all more aware of our absolute dependence on Jesus our Saviour.

Time is short

Time was short today, because I had my weekly outing to the grocery store. I confess that I came home grumpy. I’m getting tired of the mask and fussing with plastic gloves. I’m really tired of washing and wiping down the purchases when I get back.

Then I feel guilty. I have it so good. I can afford to buy the food we want. I can drive to the shop. I come home to a husband and daughter and enjoy a poached egg and coffee which they have prepared. I have no complaints, only gratitude for my undeserved blessings.

In keeping with my ambition to play my cello every day, I squeezed in a quarter of an hour just now. I didn’t bother with my glasses or the music. I played from the heart, to my king. Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna in the highest. The splendour of the king. Thank you, Lord. Praise your name.

How great is our God. I am so grateful that although I have no idea how we will ever get out of this fearful pandemic, God knows. I hold before the throne of grace all those who are suffering with the illness or the loneliness or the bereavement or the anxiety or the exhaustion. Grace and peace in the name of Jesus, our Saviour.