My Small World of Rice Pudding

The only form of  rice I ever recall eating while growing up was Mom’s version of rice pudding.  She mixed rice and milk with a liberal dose of sugar and a dash of salt and cooked it on the stove top for what seemed like an hour constantly watching it and stirring it.  I think she may have added a healthy dab of butter into the mix, but I’m not sure.  When the mixture thickened, she added a touch of vanilla extract and some raisins.  The rice pudding was served warm in a large bowl on the dinner table and enjoyed by all.  

Yesterday, seeing a little left-over cooked rice in the fridge, I suddenly remembered Mom’s rice pudding.  The memory was so strong that I could almost smell and taste it.  I’ve made rice pudding before, usually baking it in the oven, but I’ve never given much thought to Mom’s version of rice pudding, nor have I ever tried to duplicate it.  I decided to give it a try with that left-over rice.  I was successful in the sense that my rice pudding of last night came very close to matching up with my memory of Mom’s very own.  I even used raisins!

Mom’s rice pudding was the only form of rice I knew until I left home and entered the military.  I was amazed at how military cooks could conger up so many different ways to cook rice.  I discovered rice was not a dessert for most people.  It was an important dietary staple.  While my family ate potatoes with almost every meal, I found that other folk enjoyed rice at every meal.

My limited knowledge about rice was matched by my limited knowledge about everything.  I was a Baptist and I knew that in my town there were five other churches:  Roman Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Wesleyan and Christian “Dutch” Reformed.  I knew there were also “those Jehovah Witnesses.” Just as I thought rice was only a dessert, so I thought these churches were the only ones.  Can you imagine my surprise when I learned there were 356 different kinds of Baptist churches in the world!

What does all this have to do with anything?  It has much to do about everything.  What an eye-opener to discover that rice was more than a dessert.  What a surprise when I found that there were many more churches than just those that existed in my little town.  The world outside was bigger than the one I lived in—and that is still true.  I enjoyed recreating my Mom’s version of rice pudding last night, but I can never go back to thinking of rice as only a dessert.  

Rice in Costa Rica

A One Neighborhood World

We live in a world of geographic, scientific, technologic and economic oneness. We live in one neighborhood and we must learn to live together without segregation of any form (racial, religious, economic, etc.) otherwise we will perish.  No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone.  We must live together and we must be concerned about one another.  We are a global village whether we like it or not.  

Zhongxing Telecommunications Equipment Corporation (ZTE) is one of China’s leading technology exporters.  The company violated U.S. sanctions on North Korea and Iran.  Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross put “ZTE” out of business by penalizing the company $1.19 billion in fines and by barring U.S. companies from doing business with ZTE.  That action will result in more than 75,000 people losing their jobs in China.  It will also affect the American economy since ZTE purchases 80%  (about $2.34 billion in 2017) of its technology and components from U.S. companies.  On Sunday, Mr. Trump called for the Commerce Department to find “a way to get (ZTE) back into business, fast.”  (This is a simplified summary of a very complex issue).

Last year Consumer Cellular had a special offer on a ZTE Wireless Home Phone Base providing phone service to cordless or corded home phones (using Consumer Cellular service).  I bought the ZTE Phone Base and eliminated my “landline” phone service.  I share this only to illustrate that ZTE is not some remote company in far-off  China, but actually is present right here in my own home. ZTE and China, along with North Korea and Iran, are members of this one neighborhood world in which we live.  It is a reality—and nothing—not isolationism, nationalism, or any form of tribalism is going to change this “matter of fact.”  This is not a “Cain and Abel” world anymore, nor was it ever meant to be.  We are neighbors, dependent on one another.  For our own security and that of our brothers and sisters in the neighborhood we must learn to get along.  National security alone will no longer cut it.  International security is required, making the world safe and secure for every people of every nation.

Yesterday at the opening of the American Embassy in Jerusalem, while many were being injured and killed on the Gaza  Strip, two alleged Christian clergy prayed before an isolated group of all-white and affluent folk. Both of these clergy persons have promoted and encouraged their followers to live in a  “Cain and Abel world.” You can’t build a neighborhood with a self-righteous bigotry that implies that the majority of your neighbors are nothing but evil heretics!

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that murders the prophets and
stones the messengers sent to her!  How often have I longed
 to gather your children, as a hen gathers her brood under
her wings; but you would not let me."

We Blossom in Openness

Will it rain today?  I’ve checked several different sources.  One source (Yahoo News) says we have a 100% chance of rain today. I have often wondered about what we mean when we use that phrase, “a one-hundred-percent chance!” Another source (Bing) says we will have a 10% chance of rain today!  Which forecast is right?  Wait a minute. I’ll check yet another source.  AccuWeather says it will not rain today, but we can expect “considerable cloudiness.”  I guess weather reports can be as different and varied as any other news report.  If you want a day without rain, you simply search the various sources until you come up with a forecast that says it isn’t going to rain.  If you want news that satisfies your “taste,” or your “social/political leaning” try CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the BBC or NPR.  You’ll find it “raining up a storm” on some of these cable networks, while on others you’ll hear “the sun is shining” and it will continue to shine for days to come.

The azalea plant tucked in the shade and shadow of the boxwood in my backyard and the azalea located in a more open area, bespeaks of this dilemma in weather forecasting and in reporting the news.  The azalea planted in the deeper shade of the boxwood has blossomed only partially, while the azalea in the more open area is in full bloom.  If you look closely at the pink azalea, you can see that it is covered with promise, literally smothered in buds awaiting blossoming.  If it only had more “openness” it would be in full bloom rather than in partial bloom.

This “openness” is essential to getting all the buds of the weather forecast or all the buds of the daily news to blossom together.  Azaleas in covered-up, closed, shadowed areas tend to bloom in sporadic fashion.  If given access to more openness the azalea blossoms will unfold together.  “A mind is like a parachute,” according to Frank Zappa.  “It doesn’t work if it is not open” or to continue my analogy, the mind will not blossom fully and with all its potential beauty without openness.

Keeping an open mind about anything is to blossom more fully as a person because you push aside the shadows, the shade, the varied influences and opinions surrounding whatever the issue.  Openness means to give access, to clear away, and to provide an  unhindered, unobstructed view of the subject.   It seems almost a natural tendency for us to be lazy in this regard.  Rather than doing the hard work of “thinking” we allow some cable network, newspaper, party, or philosophy do our thinking for us.  We’ll never fully blossom that way.  Intellectual openness is necessary for us to blossom fully as human beings.  We must move into openness, escaping the shadows, the shade, and the influences all around us, and do our own thinking.

Dear Mom

“The truth is that I am someone’s wife.  I am also someone’s mother.  I am someone’s daughter, and someone’s sister.  But those are not things that define me, or make me valuable in this world.  I have value because I am a person.”  (Author unknown)

Dear Mom,

Forgive me for seeing you only as “Mom” and missing the essence of who you were apart from being a mother to me—to all seven of us.  You did an exceptional job in the “Mom” role.  You put up with all our shenanigans of those early years (and the later years, too) with a patience beyond belief.  I remember you “yelling” at us in frustration, and “taking up the switch cut from the lilac bush” to straighten us out when we disobeyed or went astray.   As I think of those moments, I also remember how you sang to lull me into sleep, even though you could not carry a tune.  Sometimes, I hear you singing still, and in that singing now, as then, I never hear a discordant note!

As the years went by, you (along with Dad) were there, always there for us in all our pursuits, our struggles, and our joys. As parents you allowed us to plow our own furrows in the garden of life—not judging, not advising, not trying to direct (well, maybe sometimes) but simply watching patiently to see how straight our furrows might be.  If they turned out to be crooked, you did not badger us with an “I told you so,” but rather supported us in whatever circumstance or situation we had created for ourselves.  We always knew we were loved “just as we were” at any given moment.

But, Mom, you were more than a mother and I was blind not see it.  You had a “life” apart from motherhood, apart from your seven children, and even apart from Dad.  You had dreams and aspirations and I did not and do not know, even now, what they were.  You experienced your own struggles, your own hopes, your own difficulties, and I never knew or paid much attention to what they were.  You had your circle of friends, a personal faith, a life of your own, that I did not know.  You were my Mom, our Mom, and we were blind to the beauty of the person you were outside of that role.  Forgive me for seeing you only as “Mom.”  I see now that you had value because you were a Person, not just “Mom!”

Mom's Iris bloomed yesterday!

Born Free

I spent yesterday morning doing various chores in the garage.  Since I can’t whistle, I do not whistle while I work.  Since I can’t carry a tune, I do not sing while I work.  But I do listen to music.  I haven’t yet developed the practice of using my iPhone with ear buds.  I should get into that habit I suppose.  I usually listen to “my music” on an iPad (sometimes using a little Bluetooth speaker to enhance the sound—unless the speaker needs to be re-charged—which happens quite often).

Did you know that music can help with your chronic back pain?  I read that somewhere.  Music also, according to research,  can help people with memory loss.  Music can help a person suffering from memory loss remember tunes or songs and get in touch with their history.  This, they say, is because the part of the brain which processes music is located next to memory. Music is therapeutic in many ways.  Longfellow called music “the universal language of mankind.”  Beethoven said music is “a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.”   Sometimes I think Vonnegut had it right when he wrote, “If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:  ‘THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC.’”  

Unlike Albert Einstein, I do not think in music, live my daydreams in music, or see my life in terms of music, but I do find that music expresses my feelings, thoughts, and dreams that I  cannot always put into words.  Do you remember the song, “Born Free,” made popular by Andy Williams some years ago?   I heard it yesterday.   I stopped what I was doing, sat down, and listened to it several times over.  The tune fits the lyrics perfectly or do the lyrics fit the tune perfectly?  I’m not sure which, but tune and lyrics together make a powerful statement.  Or did it speak to me because I’m suffering from memory loss and the tune and lyrics helped me get in touch with a history I must never let die.

Born free, as free as the wind blows

As free as the grass grows

Born free to follow your heart

Live free, and beauty surrounds you

The world still astounds you

Each time you look at a star

Stay free, where no walls divide you

You’re free as the roaring tide

So there’s no need to hide

Born free, and life is worth living

But only worth living 

‘cause you’re born free

My Mother's Iris
First Bloom of the 2018 Season

Much Ado About Nothing?

Is it just much ado about nothing?  Is the eruption of toxic rhetoric really all that bad?  Hasn't it always been so?  We've always had comedians like Michelle Wolf making jokes about our politicians.  There is nothing new about that.  What is new is the nasty way in which it is being done.  Will Rogers never met a person he didn't like though he had great difficulty with the politicians of his time, but never once in all his joking did he maliciously insult, disparage, denigrate, dehumanize, or demonize another human being.

I remember my reaction to South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson shouting out "You Lie!" to President Obama when he spoke to a joint session of Congress in 2009.  I thought that was a really "low blow" and totally unnecessary.  But that was nothing compared to what has developed since.  And if this issue doesn't bother you, concern you, or disturb you, all I can say is that it should.

It doesn't matter whether it comes from a preacher, an actor, a Facebook post, a Tweet, an ignoramus, a scholar, a comedian, a pundit, or a politician--the "putting down" of another person has no place in any public discourse or forum.  I don't mean we can't talk about differences of opinion, or facts, and that kind of thing--I simply mean that we have no business diminishing another person in order to protect or cover our own little territories.

Some use the word "civility" to explain how we ought to treat one another.  Some use the word "decency."  Neither word really seems adequate.  What if I said we need to be "constitutional" in our dealings with one another?  That would "fit" everybody--conservative, liberal, progressive, Republican, Democrat, and Independent--would it not?  So let's be constitutional--hold these truths to be self-evident:  "that all men (women, children, all races, religions, all sexual orientations, etc. etc.) are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."  I have no business, nor do you, or those in positions of power and wealth, to tear down, to insult, to embarrass, denigrate, demonize, belittle, or dehumanize anyone.  I don't think I'm making much ado about nothing.  The present rhetoric that divides, destroys and demonizes any human being eventually divides, destroys and demonizes my own humanness.

On Becoming a Person

My senior thesis in seminary was titled “Psychotheology, ”  suggesting that there were and are significant similarities in Paul Tillich’s theological term, “The New Being” (in Jesus the Christ) and Carl Roger’s psychological term  “the fully functioning person.”  That thesis was, in a way, my profession of faith.  It was my statement at that time about what I thought the ministry of Jesus was about in terms of the person and as a consequence, then, of what the church was meant to be and to do.  I thought then and still do that the Gospel of Jesus was about new life for the individual, he or she becoming  a “new” person, whose goal was and is to build community among all peoples.  Time, experience, and growth have not changed my mind, but rather clarified  and enlarged the original thesis.

Tillich’s “new being” and Roger’s “fully functioning person” I argued then, and argue still, are one and the same.  The most important thing in all the world is the fulfillment of humanity (my  humanity, your humanity and everybody’s humanity)—persons becoming fully human, becoming all they are meant to be, attempting to live their lives as authentically as Jesus lived his life.  

This “new being,” this “born again” person, this “fully functioning” person no longer lives in self-concealment or according to the expectations of others.  He or she is open to the changing, fluid, process which is who he or she is.  This new being recognizes and accepts this same process in other persons.  He or she accepts with open hands what is going on within—listening sensitively to the inner self (actually the many selves within)—ever moving toward the “is-ness” of who he or she is.  Kierkegaard said this “new life” means “to be that self which one truly is.”  This is not an easy way to move.  Jesus said the way is  narrow and never easy—suggesting that this new life is a journey which never ends.  It is a continuing way of life—a fulfillment which is never completed.  

Am I a “new being?”  Am I “born again” in this sense?  I want to be this “fully functioning” person—but even in my finest moments I realize that such fulfillment is never complete, nor can it be.  A fully functioning person is and remains a human being after all—always in the process of becoming a person.  

We are called to Ascend...