Monday, November 29, 2010

Prayer

Over the past couple of years, I have been struggling with prayer. It never seems that I can settle down and pray for a long period (or even a short period) of time without my mind wondering to something else. Before I know it, I am lost in thought that does not even resemble what I was praying about in the first place. Today, I was reading ahead in a book for next semester's spiritual formation class called The Life You've Always Wanted. I was just reading the chapter on prayer when I came across the following words: "It may well be that when your mind wanders, it is wandering to what your heart most needs to speak with God about". That was when I realized that I was not praying rightly. I have been praying about the things that I think that I should be praying about. C.S. Lewis said that in prayer we must "lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us". My prayer life has just been revolutionized!

Friday, November 26, 2010

Baking Update

The fudge ended up being pretty good. Every time I make fudge it seems like I do not enjoy it, though. So I pondered the question: Why do I never like the fudge that I make? Then I remembered that I have never really liked fudge in the first place!

As for the "truffles", that is a whole other story. I began by mixing the inner truffle. I peeled off all the royal blue Dove chocolate wrappers and melted the contents with some light cream and vanilla. After the filling was smooth as silk, I poured it onto the wax papered baking sheet and threw it in the frig to cool and harden. Next, I melted the semi-sweet chocolate for the coating.

I must note that the recipe CLEARLY stated that I was to leave the filling in the frig for 30 minutes. I left them in for an hour, just for good measure. When I took the filling out of the frig and tried to roll it into a ball, I immediately realized that it just wasnt't going to work. But being the culunary opptimist that I am, I decided to try. I rolled the first section into a little ball and threw it into the pot of hot semi-sweet chocolate.

Of course, the filling started to melt as soon as I put it in the coating. I took it out as fast as I could and threw it in the freezer (which the recipe did not call for). To make a long story short, after all was said and done, I had a sheet full of brown pancakes. It was very sad...

I had a great Thanksgiving, though!

Monday, November 22, 2010

Tis the Season...to Make Fudge!

My latest quest into the previously undiscovered world of baking is that of the perfect recipe for chocolate fudge. Today I realized that I have only one short month until that most joyous of days: Christmas! This year, I decided to get out of the habit of buying everyone gift cards and consumer products. I want to do something for everyone that I have to pour myself into. In other words, I want to give people the one thing that no one has enough of: time. In fact, this is the main reason that I decided to try the recipe for truffles a couple of months ago. But hey! Who needs a good reason to bake truffles? The recipe turned out to be absolutely delicious! But I have my worries about the truffles melting a little and bleeding through the confectioner's sugar coating. So, I found a new recipe that I will be trying tonight that has a hard chocolate coating, as well as a new recipe for fudge that I have only just finished and put in the frig to set.

Here is a picture of the mixture before I poured it!

Sunday, November 14, 2010

The Little Things

I love the sound of the wind blowing through the leaves just as they are about to fall to the ground.

I love the way a poem can make my feelings fly with eagles, even when I don't understand everything it implies.

I love hot tea and a copy of the Norton Anthology of Poetry on a cold day.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its lovliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.


~John Keats

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

When Nothing Else Matters

Have you ever had one of those days that you feel so stressed and so overwhelmed that you are suffocating under the pressure. You feel like someone is literally holding your head under the water and you simply cannot breath. There is no hope, no light at the end of the tunnel--the tunnel goes on forever. In my experience, there is no imaginable pain that the body can feel that outweighs the pain of a mental assault. You pray over and over for God to take it way...or for Him to take you away.

I have been there many times over the past several months and, unfortunately, I still get to that point from time to time. However, I don't stay in that place as long as I once did. There was a time when I would stay in this dark and frightening world for days at a time; only sleep would give me a short escape--a time to catch my breath. Every time I entered into this darkness, I would ask God over and over: why are you letting we go through this? Why wont You just take away the struggle and the torment?

I still do not fully understand the answer to those questions; however, I am at a place now where I can pray away the bad feelings and thoughts. How have I done this? Well, I have not done anything. God has given me the grace that I need to get through a time in my life that is not meant to be easy--a time in my life when God is using the mental turmoil that I am facing to show me that He is the only one who can calm the storm in me. How can we truly know the power of God unless we feel it in our own lives? How can I tell someone who is going through a hard time that God is with them when I have not felt His presence in my hard times?

How did I reach this point? The darkness grew darker, the storm grew stronger, and there was no breath left in my lungs. I didn't even want to go on living my tortured existence. So I gave up. I got to the point where nothing else mattered but God. I just said, "God, I surrender. You win". That day, I felt that I was finally at peace, that I had died. And I felt that I was more awake to the presence of God. It is the single most invigorating sensation to be at peace in the presence of God. It felt exactly like George MacDonald's poem:

Thy fishes breathe but where thy waters roll;

Thy birds fly but within thy airy sea;

My soul breathes only in thy infinite soul;

I breathe, I think, I love, I live but thee.

Oh, breath, oh, sink--O Love, live into me.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Days Four and Five

Day four is a haze. The first place we went was the Bronx to help with the Relief Bus. Each of us did several different things throughout the day. We talked to people, prayed with people and handed out soup and bread. Again, it was fascinating just to hear the stories of the different people that came through. After we left the Relief Bus, we all went to minister to children at a shelter. These children were so very sweet and they had such a good time as we all made paper airplanes and talked.

That night, we all went to the Brooklyn Tabernacle for a prayer meeting. Can I just say that it was absolutely amazing (I say that a lot, don't I?)! The worship was powerful as was the prayer near the end. After that, we went to Junior's for some powerful cheesecake!

The day after, we had free time to see the city. I went with the group going to China Town and Little Italy. We had a great time shopping (haggling) and eating Italian food. Then came the long drive home. It was the experience of a lifetime, not just because of the things we did, but because of the brothers and sisters I met. It was amazing seeing what God can do through people when they surrender to His will.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Day Three; or, It's Only Been Two Days?!

The day started with me waking up at 5:30 AM for kitchen ministry. I don't know why, but I thought someone had woken me up, so I got up, got dressed, and was ready to go down stairs when I looked at my cell and realized I did not have to be down for another hour. So I went back to bed and was woken again at a quarter after six by a fellow team member. Unfortunately, I went back to sleep again and was ten minutes late for work. I was devastated and felt terrible, but I moved on with the rest of the day, a day full of surprises.

The first thing we did after breakfast was get in the van to go to cerebral palsy outreach; or so we thought. Where we ended up was a community garden. Why were we there? To sift through fertilizer, of course! It was actually a lot of fun. I had a great time doing this because it reminded me of when I used to clean stalls for our horses.

When we went back to NYSUM, some us took a nap (myself included). Next we started planning our service for the Bowery Mission Chapel. I, for one, did not know that we would be leading a service, so I was somewhat nervous. But, as was the case with absolutely every activity we undertook, my nerves were put at ease as soon as we got there and after seeing my fully competent teammates in action. The service went relatively smoothly for something that had been planned an hour before.

One of the main things that struck me about this day was that it seemed to me that I had known each of my teammates for weeks. I was amazed how close we had all become. I also became aware that the time passed by rather slowly. I even referred to something we had done only that morning as what we had done "yesterday"! It really seemed to me that we had been there for a week already!