Red Clover

 

Bethany (#5) has been cooking up a new business on Etsy.  (She will tell you that she definitely prefers this kind of cooking to the traditional variety.)   K. is in school full time and Bethany is looking for ways to supplement the family budget.  I think her products are quite awesome.  I'm using several of them and they are great!  Check it out.  Red Clover Creations.  And if you like what you see please share.

Scandinavian Sweet Soup

My neighbor Carl likes to cook.  Yesterday he brought by some Scandinavian Sweet Soup.  Plums, peaches, raisins, lemons floating in a spiced sauce.  Yummy!  Perfect for a snowy winter night.

Class of '71

I've been getting Facebook messages from old high school friends.  Our 40th (shock of shocks) reunion is scheduled for sometime this summer and the organizers have started to move and shake.  I haven't seriously thought of this time period for ages.  I pulled out my high school yearbooks tonight for the first time in probably 30 years.  Talk about a bizarre time warp. Forty years just collapsed and disappeared.  I attended high school in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  Class of '71.  It was enlightening reading what people wrote in my book.  With some distance I saw some things that maybe were more obscure first time around - or perhaps I had just forgotten them.  In any case, distance  brings new eyes to the situation.  (Note to those of you tempted to throw out your yearbooks.  Don't.  At some point they can provide a bit of therapeutic insight into a time of life most people remember with some degree of angst.)  And they provide great fodder for your children to be amazed and amused on all fronts.

Things I've learned from Jacques Lusseyran

Light and Truth  found within the walls of Buchenwald:

It's not what a man has but what he is that makes the difference in happiness.  

"We had our poor and our rich at Buchenwald as they have everywhere.  Only you couldn't recognize them by their clothes or their decorations...The rich were the ones who did not think of themselves, or only rarely, for a minute or two in an emergency.  They were the ones who had given up the ridiculous notion that the concentration camp was the end of everything, a piece of hell, an unjust punishment, a wrong done them which they had not deserved."

Joy comes from inner light, not outer circumstances.   

"I had never lived so fully before."

Our difficulties often have higher purposes:  

"Sickness had rescued me from fear, it had even rescued me from death."  

In the end Life conquers over death and evil whether we live on here or in another place.

"Life had become a substance within me.  It broke into my cage, pushed by a force a thousand times stronger than I.  It was certainly not made of flesh and blood, not even of ideas.  It came towards me like a shimmering wave, like the caress of light. I could see it beyond ,my eyes and my forehead and above my head.  It touched me and filled me to overflowing.  I let myself float upon it."  

Faith connects us to the Source of Life:

"There were names which I mumbled from the depths of my astonishment.  No doubt my lips did not speak them, but they had their own song: Providence, the Guardian Angel, Jesus Christ, God."  I didn't try to turn it over in my mind.  It was not just the time for metaphysics.  I drew my strength from the spring.  I kept on drinking and drinking still more.  I was not going to leave that celestial stream.  For that matter it was not strange to me, having come to me right after my old accident when I found I was blind.  Here was the same thing all over again, the Life which sustained the life in me."

We can do many things of ourselves but in the end we need divinity:

"It is true I was quite unable to help myself.  All of us are incapable of helping ourselves...But there was one thing left which I could do; not refuse God's help, the breath he was blowing upon me.  That was the one battle I had to fight, hard and wonderful all at once." 

It is estimated that over 56,000 people died at Buchenwald.  I chose the artistic picture above for my post but it does not represent the horror that went on there.  Of the 2000 Frenchmen incarcerated with Jacques Lusseyran that day in January of 1944 only 30 survived.

How amazing that even from the most horrific of events in the earth's history, light and truth can surface and lend it's strength to us who struggle even in freedom and material prosperity. 

Happy Informational Valentine's Day!

"The history of Valentine's Day — and its patron saint — is shrouded in mystery. But we do know that February has long been a month of romance. St. Valentine's Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. So, who was Saint Valentine and how did he become associated with this ancient rite? Today, the Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred.

One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men — his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.

Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons where they were often beaten and tortured.

According to one legend, Valentine actually sent the first "valentine" greeting himself. While in prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl — who may have been his jailor's daughter — who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed "From your Valentine," an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories certainly emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic, and, most importantly, romantic figure. It's no surprise that by the Middle Ages, Valentine was one of the most popular saints in England and France."

From History.com

Accepting what is...

I am reading a book  "And There Was Light," by Jacques Lusseyran, a Frenchman who became blind at seven years old.  At age 17 he was a leader in a resistance movement fighting the invading Nazi tyranny in France during WWII.  He later survived 18 months in the Buchenwald  prison camp.  I have been fascinated by his perceptions.  I recently ran into this quote by him while reading another book:

"One should not try to console either those who lost their eyes, or those who have suffered other losses - of money, health, or a loved one.  It is necessary instead to show them what their loss brings them, to show them the gifts the receive in place of what they have lost.  Because there are always gifts.  God wills it so.  Order is restored; nothing ever disappears completely."  


"We wish to force our own conditions on life; this is our real weakness.  We forget that God never creates new conditions for us without giving us the strength to meet them....By all this, I learned at the same time that we should never give way to despair, no matter what brutal and negative events occur in our lives,  just as quickly the same sum of life is given back to us."

(Against the Pollution of the I: Selected Writing of Jacques Lusseyman)

Although I am a believer in consolation and compassion (Jesus wept with Martha and Mary even though he knew that Lazarus would be back to normal in just a matter of minutes)  I really liked Lusseyran's perspective on the gifts that come through adversity.  I do believe that "there are always gifts."

Congratulations Egypt....

Yesterday, you could feel the happiness of the Egyptian people all the way across the world.  I must admit I went around all day with a smile on my face as I thought about their newly acquired freedom and their success in toppling an oppressive regime.   (It reminded me of how I felt the day Elizabeth Smart was found.  The happiness was palpable!)   I am sure the road ahead will be a rocky one for Egypt and perhaps the rest of the world will feel some repercussions as well, but all people deserve the right to be free from fear and recrimination, from imprisonment and torture.  I have thought a great deal about our country these passed few weeks and about the courage of those who brought about our own revolutionary war. Thankfully the Egyptian revolt was mostly peaceful.  I admire the courage of those who were willing to stand up for freedom, human rights and democracy without really knowing what the long-term consequences would be.

I have followed the Egyptian revolt with a bit of fascination.  I couldn't help but remember the two visits Randy and I made to Egypt and our brief contact with the Mubarak inner circle.  We visited Egypt not too long after a terrorist attack on a tourist bus in the Valley of the Kings which resulted in the death of 57 tourists.  Because of that Church Education had decided to take Egypt off of their travel list during their Israel study tour for CES teachers.  Our Egyptian contact worked hard to get our business back and we were the first CES group to visit after the attack.  As tourism is a huge industry in Egypt they were very anxious to retain our business so our tour guide who was very influential in the industry set up a dinner for our group with the Minister of Tourism, who, as we were told, was Mubarak's second in command.  As Randy was the highest ranking authority in our group as the one administrator on the trip, he and I were assigned to sit with the Minister at dinner - one of us on either side of him.  We were taken to a special room an hour before and given instructions on how we were to act and to address "His Excellency."  We were to walk behind him, not with him, eat when he ate etc.  There was quite the little flurry that someone so important was going to be arriving at the hotel.  We ate on an outdoor veranda by a beautiful pool of water.  I'm sure the meal was exquisite although I couldn't really tell you as carrying on small talk with a world government leader was a new experience and it was difficult to focus on eating let alone enjoy it.  When the Minister arrived he was attended to by everyone around who had anything to do with anything.  You could feel the power and importance emanating from him.   He was a very congenial dinner guest.  (Or were we his guests?)   He painted Egypt in a favorable light.  He told us he liked America but not the violence, immorality and corruption that America exports through it's media.  (Couldn't agree more!)   He said it was safe for a woman to walk on the street of Cairo at 2:00 am because of their strict punishment of crime.  During the cultural entertainment afterward he took the opportunity to talk to Randy on the side out of my hearing and ask him if he had been favored with any of Egypt's excellent belly dancing while he was there.  He recommended a celebrity dancer who earned well over a million a year with her gyrating talents.  Randy politely declined the offer.   All in all, our evening with His Excellency was a memorable one.  Oh yes, and did I tell you this was a bit of a publicity stunt.  We were televised on the national news that evening.  It was broadcast to the world that tourism in Egypt was resumed, happy and healthy.

Awesome young men....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynVgDWKWHtU