Jerusalem Jackson Greer's Blog, page 11
April 29, 2016
Grace for your Weekend – Friday Favs 4/29/16
Hey friends! The skies are dark and rainy here, but thankfully there is always some sunshine to be found on the interwebs if one looks hard enough!
Here are the places I am finding grace and sunny inspiration this weekend:
On Feast
Diabetes is a real problem on my dad’s side of the family, primarily due to a lack of healthy eating choices – lots of refined sugar and white starches, very little (if any) fresh produce, and almost zero exercise. In the past few years I have seen too many people I love have their quality of life greatly diminished due to this lack prevention, and I have also seen the toll that their poor health takes on their caregivers. And so, in the past couple of weeks I have begun making some lifestyle changes, embracing the grace of second chances, and starting fresh – beginning with my sugar intake and my activity level.
It is no secret that I have a sweet tooth, but as much as I love most things sugary, it is not a love I am willing to die for. But still, the sweet tooth remains. So, what to do? For me, right now, the most obvious solution is fresh fruit, and treats that I can make using fresh fruits without adding refined sugar.
With summer coming I am on the hunt for sorbet and frozen yogurt recipes that fit this category – things I can make at home from locally grown produce and natural ingredients. I think that this Five-Minute Strawberry Frozen Yogurt recipe from Just A Taste fits the bill perfectly and I cannot wait to try it with some fresh Arkansas strawberries!
On Farm
Sweet Man has been leading the charge to get our first garden in the ground, and the boys and I have been helping as much as we can, but it is a huge garden and there are so many plants being planted that I am losing track of what is what – especially the places where we are planting straight seed. This weekend promises to be a wet one, so I am hoping that Miles and I can knock this great little project out and then get them in the ground while the soil is still soft!
On Fun
With my second book coming out next spring, the time has come to begin to think again about marketing again (something writers themselves have to think about more than their publishers these days…) When my first book came out I was completely stumbling in the dark, trying to find ways to promote my book and my message that felt authentic but smart. I can’t help but wonder how much better and how less alone I might have felt, had the Hope * Writers Podcast and Hope * Writers* website existed then. Listening to this podcast is so much fun because I can identify with many of the first-time writer mistakes that the host themselves admitting to having made, and I am learning (and being affirmed in what I am already doing) from their insights about things like how to engage on Instagram and staying on message. If you are working on a book or hoping to work on a book, or if you are a blogger looking to expand your platform, you might want to check them out. *Note: Their website is a subscription service, but they have a one week trial happening now for just $1 – go to hopewriters.com/trial to check it out.
On Fluff
The time has come to make-over my dining table to better fit this house, and I am thinking that something along the lines of painting the table white and adding grainsack stripes on the sides, might just be the way to go… If so, this is tutorial seems to be the most comprehensive of all the ones I have found. Also, I might be a *bit* grainsack-stripe and ticking stripe obsessed right now.
On Family
Same-Sex Couples Can Now Adopt Children In All 50 States
When I posted this on my FB page yesterday my lovely friend and fellow #preacherlady, Vanessa summed up what I was thinking as I celebrated this news:
This is so close to my heart. It was adopting that opened my eyes to so many things, including the truly precious gift of a home that so many gay couples were willing to give. They are often willing and able to love and care for kids who would otherwise be stuck in the foster-care system their whole lives. It breaks my heart that the church for so long has said to other parts of the body of Christ “We have no need of you” when they so obviously, so painfully DO need them. YES! YES to this!
Yes and amen! God set’s the lonely in families – and now more families can find each other!
On Faith
The Message changed the way I read the bible, and brought a fresh wind of faith into my life at a time when I was extremely parched and dry. This translation is still a go-to source for me when studying scripture, preparing sermons, and in my writing, so I love this conversation between Eugene Peterson (who translated The Message) and Bono. The film is about 20 minutes long, but so well worth the time.
On Fete
One of my goals here at #PreservationAcres is to eventually host some farm-to-table fundraising events for some of our favorite charities. I think printing a menu or favorite quote on a tea towel/napkin for each guest would be a lovely party-favor. I couldn’t find the direct source for this image or project, but I pinned it all the same. Wouldn’t that be a lovely thank you and reminder of a dinner that celebrates a place where healing and love is being provided in the world? I think so. At least it would be useful!
Some Favorite Post Around Here:
Mother’s Day brunch table on the cheap
AND:
I am booking speaking engagements for Fall 2016/Winter 2017
And don’t forget – there is still time to my order my book, A Homemade Year, for Mother’s Day!
Happy weekend friends! May you find the grace in the midst of beauty and mess!
Filed under: Blog Tagged: featured, Friday Favorites
April 26, 2016
On Baptisms and Spring
Spring, that glorious season of new life, is currently in full force here at Preservation Acres, and the signs are all around. For one thing there are the allergies. It as if every tree and bush and blade of grass has been painted with a Technicolor pollen-leaded brush, and while the beauty is breathtaking to behold, I personally, could do without all the congestion.
Our neighbors pastures are filled with playful baby cows, and fuzzy baby sheep which I love to watch, and at our house the weekends have been filled with garden preparations galore , plowing earth, hoeing weeds, spreading fertilizer. And the preparations are not just outside – almost every surface in our house – window sills and tables and the like – have been covered up with peat pots, each filled with teeny tiny squash, peppers, okra, and pole bean seedlings – all sprouting under Nathan’s watchful eye.
In town the restaurants have opened their patios, the shops are displaying sundresses, and Yard Sale signs are cropping up like wildflowers.
New life and fresh starts are all around me.
This past spring Sunday was a preaching Sunday for me – something I do from time to time as a guest speaker out in the world, and as Family Minister at my local church. This Sunday was particularly special because I had the honor of preaching at a Baptism service. And cbecause our church follows the Lectionary cycle, my scriptures were already chosen for me – which can be challenging at times.
This weeks readings were from:
Acts 11:1-18
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35
As the Holy Spirit would have it, these three passages each contained references to fresh starts and new life. In Acts, Peter received a vision which prompted him to pursue a new and fresh path in his ministry, taking the message of Christ outside the confines of his Jewish community, out to the gentiles. In Revelations we read of a New Heaven and a New Earth, of a time when there will be no more tears or suffering, and of One who will make all things new. And then in John, we saw Jesus preparing the disciples for a new way of operating in the world – a way centered solely, above all else, around loving and being loved.
Like the season of spring, each of these passages brought with them a message of hope and new beginnings. A reminder that God is and always has been in the fresh starts and new life business.
The year before I was born, my mother had one of those new life, fresh start conversion experiences of faith herself. An experience that filled her with such a happy love for Jesus and a giddy- amazement at discovering the gift of grace, that her enthusiasm could not help but spill over into every area of her life – including how she chose her baby names. Which, is partially how I came to be named Jerusalem.
At some point, along the time when I was old enough to read, I asked my mother why she chose my name specifically – there were after all, many other perfectly suitable, and less “unique” feminine bible names to choose from.
Her way of answering was to send me after my very first, somewhat-illustrated, but fully translated NIV bible, instructing me to read Revelation 21:1-6.
Which said:
A New Heaven and a New Earth21 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”[a] for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’[b] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.
What my mother was showing me, by answering my question with these verses, was that I wasn’t just named for the city of Jerusalem, but I was named for, in particular, he New Jerusalem, which in my bible was illustrated as a bright golden city, with rays of sunlight bursting forth all around, a glourious site to my six-year-old eyes.
As quickly as I could, I found my bright yellow highlighter (I think maybe all evangelical children are born with the NIV in one hand and a highlighter in the other?) and marked my very first passage of scripture, adding extra lines under the New Jerusalem part.
I would read those verses time and time again over the course of my early childhood, taking in the images of new beginnings and a God who was happy to be in the midst of his creation, and hold them close to my heart.
A lot of time has passed since I first underlined those special verses, and until last week I hadn’t really thought of them much. I knew they were there of course, and now again, on a spring Sunday, I would hear them read in church, and a brief wink of recognition would cross my mind, but other than that, I just hadn’t thought of them in a very long time.
I don’t know about other preachers, but when I see scriptures from Revelation on the lectionary schedule, I can’t help but cringe just a bit – images of beast with seven heads and so forth, spring to mind. So you can imagine my relief when I realized this past Sunday’s reading of Revelation was one that I was familiar with personally. Reading over the text, preparing for my sermon, I was able instead to go back to simpler days – back to a time when I didn’t fret over apocalyptic metaphors, or feel the pressure to find prophetic meanings, or historic significance, hidden between the passages. Instead, I found myself reading these verses much like I did when I was six years old. When I read these words as a promise – a promise of what God’s love looks like in action.
this what I heard when I read Revelation 21:1-6:
God was always, and would always be, making all things new, including me.
God’s heart is always to be with his people, in their neighborhood, in their homes, right smack in the middle of them. Like the person who sits down in the middle of a crowded dinner table so they can see and hear everyone, God wants to be right in the middle of all we are doing.
God’s greatest desire was to heal hurts, to wipe away tears, and to bring about new life and fresh starts, leading us away from death, back to life, as many times as it takes.
And it seemed to me – a little seminary-students daughter in the early 1980’s, living in an apartment in sketchy part of Memphis, – that what I saw in those verses were examples of what God’s love looks like. Those verses sound a whole lot like the bible stories my mother told me about Jesus, they sounded like the simple songs we sang in my little Baptist Sunday School classes, and they reminded me of the bedtime prayers that my mother and I prayed. To my child’s heart, it seemed to me that the very same love, that Jesus- love, that filled my mother up from head to toe with a bright shiny light, was the same love found in those special verses in Revelation. It was a love that wiped away tears, that came to sit with people in their sadness, that brought love of fresh starts and new beginnings to any and everyone, no matter who they were.
And so, as a six, seven, and eight year old, I read those verses in Revelation as a promise of not only what would be, but also of what already was.
Just as Spring is the season of new beginnings on earth, baptism is a season of new beginnings as well. On Sunday we baptised a little bitty baby named Abraham. We poured the water of new life over his sweet little head, blessed him with oil, and said prayers together – marking his new journey as a member of the Church.
But this act of Baptism is not just a formality, it is not just something to check of the Christian life to-do list. Instead, it is a sacrament – it is the outward and visible sign of an inward spiritual grace, that we are all invited to take part in. Baptism is a joyous new beginning for everyone present, a chance for everyone present to remember again, what it means to love each other as Christ loves us.
You see, at each and every baptism we are all starting fresh again. Together.
On Sunday, as part of the baptism, everyone present renewed their own baptismal covenant, saying the vows together, once again committing themselves to live as Christ. We also, as the Church, in those vows, promised to be Abraham and his mother’s people. Like Ruth to Naomi, we committed ourselves to be home for them, promising to wipe away tears, to celebrate new beginnings, and to be present in their lives.
And this being present, this loving each other like Christ, this sharing of the Holy Spirit with one another, I think this is how we begin to create a new heaven and a new earth – for each other – here and now.
We begin by loving each other the way the God of Revelation 21: 1-6 loves us: By wiping away tears, by celebrating new beginnings, and by sitting ourselves down, smack in the middle of each other’s lives. This is the gift of community that Christ left his disciples in John 13, and the gift they have passed on to us, the gift we are to continue passing along.
it is the belief that ultimately, above all else, we all belong to each other.
And that it is through this belonging, by our choosing to truly love one another, to live out the actions of love that we see in Revelation 21, to remember our baptism promise, to Christ and each other, that we will find God smack in the middle in our midst, giving water to the thirsty, setting the lonely in families, and making all things new for each of us – again and again and again.
Selah.
Listen Here to the Sermon this Post is Based on
Filed under: Blog, Faith Tagged: featured, sermons
April 18, 2016
10 Years Old
Today is my 10th Blogiversary!
10 years. A whole decade, and what a decade it has been.
My foray into blogging had no real agenda, no real motivation, no plan.
I just knew that I loved the idea of being able to pair pictures with words, and that I wanted to be a part of the creative communities bursting open all around me online.
I had discovered both Dooce and Posie and between the two wildly different as they were – whole worlds of writers, mothers, truth-tellers, bakers, crafters, and more had opened up to me, worlds as I was desperate for as I began my thirties.
I began back before Social Media or Smart Phones were things. I began before personal branding and platform management was even a blip on the radar of things I should worry about. Before sponsorships, or brand ambassadors, or paid content reared their complicated heads.
I began blogging in the old days – when blogging was just blogging. Just telling stories, sharing images, just little bits of something or nothing, depending on the day.
For better, or for worse, this is still how I blog.
Yes, the pictures have gotten better (thankfully,) the site is a little more sophisticated, and I now fret over branding and platforms from time to time, and try to find the ethical and authentic line when taking on sponsorships here and there, but over all my approach is still the same.
This little online space will always be the ultimate catch-all of my life. Part family scrapbook, part diary, part to-list, part recipe box, part coffee chat, part gallery, part shitty-first-drafts, part confessional, part garden journal.
It is a record of my beautimess attempts at living a sacramental life – a life that is filled with the finding, the celebrating, and the looking for all the visible outward signs of inward spiritual graces.
Dinner parties filled with redemption, garden patches planted with hope, thrifted furniture restored and loved, mothering mistakes soaked in grace.
These are the things I blog about, will keep blogging about as long as a I can – imperfectly, erratically, lovingly.
Again and again, I will come back to this place and post for the record all the ways in which I see grace made visible, in little and big ways, ordinary and extraordinary, daily and once-in-a-lifetime ways, because that is what I do here. It is what I have always done (even when I didn’t know it.)
This is a screen shot of my very first blog post. The camera I used was an itty bitty point and shoot, my first digital camera – oh, I was so fancy.
And that question I asked then, I will ask again – with one modification, one change that sums up what I have learned the most in the past ten years…
What do you see?
Wishes, weeds, or wonder?
***************************************
Happy 10 Years Friends! Here is to 10 more!
Filed under: Blog Tagged: featured
April 11, 2016
Embracing the Gifts of Holy Indifference
Growth does not come from fulfilling all your wishes or your immediate impulses. Growth comes from allowing your ego’s story to drop away.
This was my daily Ennegram email last Friday.
Reading that sentence, all bleary eyed on the sofa, coffee in one hand, iPhone in the other, all I could think was, damn.
I am an Enneagram Type 7 with a heavy 8 Wing. Which means, in summary that I both like to keep moving to The Next Great Thing and I like to be in charge of that moving. Very in charge. I see a new bright shiny idea or opportunity and I want hug it and squeeze and call it mine. Today. . Yesterday. Now.
So being told that growth does not come from grabbing each and every shiny thing that passes me by, well that cuts right to the heart of the thing doesn’t it?
Instead, it seems that growth comes from letting my ego’s story drop away. Double damn.
The story of my ego is two-fold – there is the outer story, the protective story, the story that insulates me from pain. And that story is this: That I am special. That I am a bright shiny special thing and aren’t you all lucky that I was born? This is the story that my ego tells me in order to protect me from the second story, the one buried deeper, closer to my heart. The story of that ego, the second ego is this: That I am anything but special. That I am less than special. That I am invisible, inconsequential, null.
Here is the thing that I know after 41 years on this planet: They are both true. And neither matter.
Which is why I have to let them drop away in order for growth to happen.
I have taken to herb gardening in my approaching middle age – specifically herb container gardening on our porch.
The other day in a spurt of inspiration I brought home little peat pots of lavender, oregano, basil, and dill.
Following the directions on the labels, I throughly soaked each peat pot (which are molded from biodegradable wood fiber and sphagnum peat moss,) in more water than I thought possible, until their coloring went from dusty gray to golden brown.
Next, I filled my containers with potting soil, and dug out little wells in which to place each plant.
Finally I tore off the bottom of each peat pot, now soft and pliable from the healthy soaking, and released each herb’s roots, in order that they could make themselves at home in the new soil, in order that they may thrive.
I think maybe letting my ego’s stories drop away looks a lot like the tearing of the peat pot, the ripping away of the safe, the dark, the bound, and the familiar container I surround myself with.
But ripping and tearing hurt – I know this because I gave birth to babies close enough to the edge of ten pounds that I claim that honor.
Yet, when I tore the bottom of those pots, those moulded and stiffly pressed pots, they gave way so easily, so effortlessly. The dirt, long packed in tight and closed off, spilling onto the ground below me without a care in the world.
It was the water that made this possible. The drenching of the pot until neither the plant, nor the earth around it, nor the vessel it rested in, could contain another drop, – that is what made the tearing so easy, the ripping so fluid.
So where does this soaking come for me? How am I to be drenched until neither my mind, nor my soul, nor my heart, can contain another drop? Until I am tender enough that all the layers of ego fall away?
Last week I began a practice of something called The Prayer of Holy Indifference. This practice, based on the prayer of Mary, and the writings by Ruth Haley Barton, to name a few sources, was wonderfully explained and explored by Aaron Niequist on The Practice Tribe podcast. This prayer, as modeled on the podcast, is the practice of intentional abandonment.
It is the abandonment of agenda, of foot-stomping-fit-throwing-I-want-what-I-want wilfulness, of plans, and intentions. It is exchanging expectations and certainty, for an arms-wide-open posture of cooperation with the movement of the Holy Spirit in my life.
It is another process of slowing down, and learning to discern between what is Good and what is Best.
I might be wrong, but I don’t think that God has one perfect outlined plan for my life any more than I believe in one perfect person to marry. Maybe I am just too pragmatic, but the universe seems both too daily and too eternal for that kind of certainty.
But I do believe in the work of the Trinity. I believe that Something happens when we cooperate with the Spirit of God moving in, and through, and around us. And that this cooperation, this entering-into, can result is the water on dry ground. It is the soaking-through with love and grace and courage, joy and hope, peace and kindness.
And that it is this Something that makes us tender, that makes us pliable, so pliable that the stories we tell ourselves about who we are or who we should be, can be ripped to shreds and fall away, allowing our true selves to be freed and untangled.
When I transplanted my herbs, I tore the bottoms of each peat pot, loosened the roots, then placed each plant carefully in its new home, deep inside the well I had prepared. Next, I gently covered the new plant with the prepared soil, patting the earth in around each little tender bush. When I had finished, the last step was to place the plants in full view of the sun, and give them another good soaking. As I emptied a full pitcher of water into the containers, I watched the dirt grow darker and darker, drinking in every drop I poured, sinking in around the new plants, the new life.
And I knew, staring at those little fledgling bunches of green, that if I wanted to enjoy basil on my pizzas and dill on my tilapia, I would have to return, again and again, to this same place. I would have to return to feel the soil, water the earth, pinch the leaves, and learn to read the signs of life and decline, learning how to cooperate with the growth of each plant.
In the same way I will, I suspect, for the rest of my life, this is how growth will come for me as well.
Not by fulfilling all my wishes, or jumping at The Next Great Thing, but instead by returning, time and time again, to practices like The Prayer of Holy Indifference.
I will have to choose over, and over, to cooperate with the Spirits movement – whatever that looks like, whether that reamins I Go or I Remain.
I will have to quiet my own chattering self – the voices that shout Be More Special and the voices that whisper You Will Never Be Enough – in order to hear God’s voice in the weeds.
I will have to drop all the things I hold so tightly to, all the things I am so sure will bring me happiness, in order that I can open my arms wide, turn my face towards the sun, and pray,“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38)
Selah.
Filed under: Blog, Faith, Farm Tagged: featured
April 8, 2016
Friday Favorites – All the things from the week of 4-3-16
It’s baaaack! After a nine-month hiatus, Friday Favs is back!
Now that Book 2 is turned in and we are settling in to life at Preservation Acres, it is time to get back to blogging, including some regular features such as Friday Favorites. So without any further fanfare, here are some of my favorite things this week:
On Faith
Jaybar Crow – A Novel
“As I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures, onto the roadsides and the banks of the rivers, into the houses of sinners and publicans, into the town and the wilderness, toward the membership of all that is here. Well, you can read and see what you think.”
― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow
On Family
Shannan’s post Good Mom
On Farm
Our little farmstead has its own Facebook Page! Go like Preservation Acres and keep up with all our progress!
On Fete
One of the things I have missed since we moved to the farm is entertaining. We have been so consumed with remodels and book writing and figuring out how to manage our land, that there hasn’t been a lot of energy for hosting gatherings. But that is all about to change, as I have a plan up my gingham sleeves… For now though, I am gathering inspiration and I love this farm-to-table meal and table from Darling mag.
On Fluff
My friends Natalie and Luke opened their general store at long last! I want every single thing in stock, especially this scale! Go check out Freckled Hen Farmhouse Shop
On Food
I so badly want to try a Torta like this one from Bread in 5. I think I saw one of these for the first time on The Great British Baking Show (which I ADORE btw,) and I immediately became obsessed. Now I just need to be brave and try it – surely I can do it, right?
And don’t forget to pick up a copy of A Homemade Year!
It is full of great Spring and Summer recipes, entertaining ideas, and inspiration. Makes for a great Mother’s Day or Baby Shower Gift!
Have a lovely weekend friends!
Filed under: Blog Tagged: featured, Friday Favorites
April 5, 2016
Easter 2016 – The End of a Wild Quarter
Dear Friends, the first quarter of 2016 has been a wild ride. I have taken 3 work trips to three states, spoke at one church (besides my own) and two events, finished and turned in the first draft of my second book (yes, it is really happening!) had a pretty major medical procedure done (that took three weeks to recover from instead of the 3 days I anticipated,) survived a 12 service Holy Week that coincided with Spring Break, celebrated Easter, took 20 teenagers and preteens on a Yurting Camping Trip, juggled daily work life, family life (including the addition of new after-school activities) and extended family health/wellness crisis, got a mammogram, attended a funeral, a wedding, 6 ordinations (okay, they were all at once,) an adoption hearing and a surprise last-minute family reunion.
It has all (mostly) been wonderful, and it has all (mostly) been exhausting.
Lots of things fell by the wayside – housework, blogging, my hair roots, and things like remembering to buy my family coordinating clothes for Easter.
So there is no family Easter picture this year. No matching shirts, no cute shoe pictures, no hats. It is what it is.
But I have now been blogging for ten years. TEN YEARS. That’s a decade folks. That’s a kid who can dress, feed, bathe himself, and re-program my phone. Amazing.
Over the next month I will probably reflect on this milestone a bit, maybe even do some retrospective stuff. But for now I am just going to post a few pictures of the tiny bit of Easter decorating that I did this year as part of the archiving of my life. When you have a blog for a decade it becomes so much more than a blog. It becomes an archive, a resource of remembering. I cannot tell you how many times I refered back to my blog while writing Book Two. Over and over I would come here and search a term or a title, trying to remember all the details of a certain moment in our life, a certain thought or emotion. Time and time again I have tried to place memories in the right year, the right context, and this blog, like a good journal or scrapbook, helped me in that pursuit.
And so, for no other reason, than the knowledge that someday I will want to remember the crazy first quarter of 2016 and how we lived through it, I am posting these few little pictures of the touches of Easter that I put out around the house. A remembrance of how it was then.
A remembering of the year we forgot to dye eggs or buy new clothes, but the daffodils went wild in the yard and the Easter Baskets were filled.
A remembering of the year when we learned (again) that We do what we can, with what we have, in the season we find ourselves, and that this way of being is good enough, and is beautiful on it’s own.
Amen and Selah.
Filed under: Blog, Fete Tagged: featured, Holiday
March 24, 2016
Maundy Thursday
March 17, 2016
Dublin Slow Cooker Coddle for St. Patrick’s Day
It’s not too late to get your Irish on for dinner…
Recently I was researching new ideas for a St. Patrick’s Day meal, and I stumbled upon a dish called Dublin Coddle. The name of this dish comes from the verb coddle, meaning to cook food in water below boiling, which in turn derives from caudle, a warm drink given to the sick. Apparently Dublin Coddle has long been a dish that was made to help cure the Saturday morning hangover, following a rousing Friday night at the Pub. The ingredients are simple, filling, and inexpensive, and the dish apparently holds the perfect combination of grease and starch for anyone feeling a little green after indulging a few too many Guinness’s. Which means it might be the perfect dish to take to work to the office for the day after St. Pattys, on the chance that someone is having a little trouble recovering from too many pints of gold. But while I cannot attest to coddles healing powers, I can attest to its deliciousness, as I gave it a test run on a recent weekend. The dish was so easy to make and I spent very little time in the kitchen worrying about it over the course of the day. The kids loved it (though some ketchup might have been added to one bowl) as did my husband, and I think it is safe to say that this coddle will become a slow-cooker staple at our house – especially on the weekends.
DUBLIN CROCK-POT CODDLE
Preparation Time: 5-9 hours (depending)
Servings: 6
Ingredients
3 Sausages (preferably Irish or Mild Sausage)
6 strips of Bacon
4 large potatoes (gold work best)
2 large carrots
1 medium onion
1 beef stock cube
¾ cup of water
1 garlic clove
2 Tablespoons chopped Celery Leaf
Instructions
Heat your oven to 375° Fahrenheit.
Cut your onion into thick slices
Place your sausage and bacon into two separate iron skillets.
Cover the pork with the onion slices – half in each pan.
Cook the sausage, bacon, and onion in the oven for twenty minutes or until the pork is done and the onions are translucent.
Once they are cooked, remove from oven and let cool.
Add 1 cup of water to your crock pot and turn it on high. Drop in the beef stock cube and stir until it dissolves.
Peel, rinse and cut your potatoes into large chunks. Cut up your carrots and peel your garlic glove.
Once the meat and onions are cooled, cut them into large chunks and add to your crock pot.
Add two tablespoons of the bacon grease to the mixture, as well as the clove of garlic.
Top with the potatoes and carrots.
Put the lid on the crock pot and cook at high (4 hours) or low setting (8 hours) until done.
Once done, spoon into a bowl and top with chopped celery leaf.
You can also leave in the crock-pot on the warm setting for up to two hours if you are feeding a come-and-go crew.
So is there a little Irish – anytime meal for you…
And here is one of my most favorite prayers based on the Breastplate of St. Patrick… It is especially wonderful to recite while doing Sun Saluations!
Filed under: Blog, Feast Tagged: Cooking, featured, Holiday
March 9, 2016
Don’t Be Afraid. Be You. – A Guest Post by Jenn Cobb Pyron
I am on a semi-blogging-sabbatical while I finish my second book (prayers please!!) While I am away some very generous friends have offered to step in and keep this place running. Sometimes it takes a village to run a blog! Today I am happy to share this post from my dear friend Jenn who really knows that we can all do hard things!
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“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” ― Frederick Buechner
Last year was a big year for me. I finalized my divorce. My kids and I found a new normal for the three of us. I took control of my finances. And, after years of telling other people’s stories, I began to tell my own. None of it was easy, but 2015 turned out to be one of the best years I’ve ever had.
Now, here is a new year. Beautiful and terrible things will indeed happen. I’ve learned you don’t have to be afraid. You just have to be you. Here are some ways to start:
Get back up. My kids and I took a trip to Colorado last summer. I have never enjoyed mountain biking, but I promised myself I would not spend our entire vacation sitting on the sidelines. So, I hopped on my bike, determined to do my best.
I gripped the brakes the entire way, but I made it down in one piece. On the second run, I rode faster, enjoying the wind in my hair and the sun on my face. Suddenly, I hit a rock and wrecked.
Thankfully, I didn’t break any bones. I was bleeding in multiple places, but I picked up my bike and started walking down the trail. “Don’t you dare walk down this mountain,” said a voice in my head. “Get back on and ride.”
So, I did. All the way down. Smiling and laughing, because there was nothing else to do. The lesson? Take risks. Feel the wind on your face. Enjoy the ride. Expect to fall. Then GET. BACK. UP.
Quit caring what people think of you. This is a hard one. Especially if you’ve always tried to live up to other people’s expectations.
In order to do this, you must accept yourself for the messy, broken person you are. It means changing the tapes playing in your head from self-loathing phrases like “You’re worthless” to gentler ones like “You may not be perfect, but you are enough.”
Once you make peace with yourself – and learn to trust yourself again – it’s easier to quit worrying about what other people think and make decisions based on what makes you a better version of you.
I’m not sure I will ever master this. However, I am much more comfortable speaking my mind and being myself these days. It’s nice. Most days, I really like me.
Dig deep. When we were in Colorado, we went white water rafting. It was not what I expected. I thought we’d paddle when the river was calm and let gravity take us through the rapids. Turns out, we did the opposite.
We paddled hard as soon as we hit the rapids, and we didn’t let up until we cleared them. When the water was the fastest and the rocks were the closest, our guide would yell “Harder! One more!” There were times I didn’t think I could dig any deeper or go any harder. I wasn’t sure I had one more of anything in me. But I always did. And before I knew it, we were out of the rough and back into the calm.
I learned you can’t coast through the darkest days. When you think you don’t have anything left inside you, you have to dig deeper and go harder. I promise, you will always surprise yourself.
Forgive yourself. You’re human. You’re going to screw up. Not everyone is going to like you – or forgive you. Despite the amends I’ve tried to make, there are still people who are hurting from words I’ve said, decisions I’ve made and things I’ve done. Owning that stinks. Period.
You can’t make anyone forgive you – but you can forgive yourself and learn from your mistakes. Tell yourself you’re sorry. Accept your own apology. And then move on.
You may wreck your bike. You may flip your raft. But if you dig deep, you will always find a way to get back to calm, to enjoy the ride, to not be afraid – to be you.
Jennifer Cobb Pyron is the Director of Communications & Planning at Arkansas Children’s Hospital Foundation, where she directs the communications and strategic planning efforts of the fundraising staff. Jennifer is the proud mother of Charles Jr. (15) and Emily (13). She’s a self-proclaimed karaoke queen, part-time comedian and 80s trivia genius. She blogs about her messy life at JennCobbNito.com.
Filed under: Blog, Faith Tagged: featured, Guest Post
March 5, 2016
Life Here Lately
10 days.
10 days until the manuscript is due.
10 days.
The house is a wreck, I have gained at least ten pounds in the past three months, and the tags are expired on my car.
But, Book 2 is almost done.
Well, the first official draft is almost done.
Then comes all the edits.
But that is neither here nor there at the moment.
At the moment it is all about just gettin ‘er done.
It’s been 4 years since I turned in a first draft.
4 years since I sent A Homemade Year into my editors.
3 years since it came out.
10 years since I started blogging.
So much has changed, so much is the same.
I didn’t think it would take this long to write book 2. I thought I would crank out another book lickety split.
But it didn’t happen that way for me.
I had a lot of life to live in-between, a lot of lessons to learn, a lot of ideas to explore.
Maybe this is how I process – slowly.
So here I am, attempting to distill them into some sort of story and order, doing my best to share what it looked like and felt like and meant for all of us when God interrupted our plan to Go and instead told us to Stay.
Told us to Dig In and Slow Down right where we were.
I am sifting, I am unraveling, best I can, that story, those lessons.
Lessons that remain, lessons I am still learning afresh as we practice Slowing Down and Digging In here at Preservation Acres.
And in the middle of it all – in the middle of the remembering and the doing now, life is still going on.
Lunches have to be made, gardens have to be planted, light fixtures have to be replaced, bills have to be paid, prayers said.
All the living that finds its way into all the writing.
10 days.
Have mercy.
Filed under: Blog, Farm Tagged: featured
