Sourdough - simplicity

I started a new sourdough this week. People might think sourdough is complicated or difficult but in my experience it is neither, I've found it really simple and forgiving. The other day, I took a clean yogurt pot, put in a spoonful of yogurt, a spoonful of flour and enough tepid water to make it a batter-like consistency. Then I (wrestled it out of the grasp of my little boy who wanted to eat it) put a bit of kitchen roll over it and set it aside. The next day I mixed in some flour and water, and the next day I mixed in some flour and water.... and so on. When it split, I mixed it up again. When it started to look nice and bubbly after about 5 days I knew it was ready! 

To make bread with it I use about 2 parts sourdough to 3 parts flour, a few shakes of salt, a spoonful of sugar (a la Mary Poppins) and enough water to make a dough. I often dribble in some olive oil but it's not essential. The only difference to using yeast is that it takes longer to rise. So you mix it in the morning, prove all day, then shape it in the evening to bake later. 

Oh it makes good bread... 

All right, this loaf came out a little wonky... tastes good though!

And in the end it's just a matter of flour and water... To my mind it couldn't be simpler. 

When you've got your starter going you just feed it some flour and water each day and make whatever you want out of it. If you want it lower maintenance you keep it in the fridge and feed it every few days. I hear you can even freeze it. A goldfish is more work than that and you don't get any bread from a goldfish. And if you get fed up with sourdough you can just throw it away... Unlike the goldfish. A goldfish is for life. 

What if I did that with Love?

1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,^a but have not love, I gain nothing.

We heard this reading from 1 Corinthians Chapter 13 at a wedding last week, and the priest exhorted us to do everything - even or perhaps especially the most mundane things of life - with love. This is the question I have been asking myself over the past week. If I am called to do everything 'with love' how do I go about it. What does it look like to order my day 'with love', how do I do the washing up 'with love', how do I chastise a naughty toddler 'with love'?

Another question has been haunting me recently too, this one arising in a book I was reading (I must admit now, the book bored me and got thrown across the room never to be finished soon after reading this particular quote)

And suddenly, in the middle of the central nave, I realize something very important: the cathedral is me, it is all of us. We are all growing and changing shape, we notice certain weaknesses that need to be corrected, we don't always choose the best solutions, but we carry on regardless, trying to remain upright and decent, in order to do honor not to the walls or the doors or the windows, but to the empty space inside, the space where we worship and venerate what is dearest and most important to us.

― Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

I have been asking myself what or who I put at the centre of my 'cathedral'. Is the inner sanctum of my cathedral reserved, as I would like to think it is, for Christ? Or does my metaphorical cathedral contain nothing more than an engorged and hideous graven image of myself?

Perhaps the two questions come together thus. Christ asks me to perform every action with love. Seeing Christ in all people around me and relating to God in my life of prayer, when my actions honour God, either in prayer or in helping others then I am acting with love. When I centre my life on Christ I cannot help but act with love. When I act with love, I cannot disentangle my life from Christ.

So in the last week, I have been trying more consciously to order my day with moments of prayer, moments to appreciate the people around me and time to practise the gifts that I have been given, knowing that writing and craftwork are calming to my soul because God made me this way. I have been washing up with a willing heart, banishing the tempting thought of resentment - 'Why should I have to wash up from breakfast and lunch' - and making an effort to notice and be grateful when my husband does the chores. I have been trying to calm myself when the little boy is misbehaving so as not to discipline him from a spirit of anger, but with the clear motive of correction.

Still, it's hard work and I haven't managed any of that quite yet. I'm still quite often a noisy gong and a clashing cymbal. But I'm working on it.

A Thought on Trinity Sunday

The Trinity is a mystery, just as it should be. God himself is beyond the perception of man, only through his own revelation can we know about him, only through relationship can we know him. Therefore analogising the Trinity seems to have fallen out of favour since the time of St Patrick, any analogy will fall short. But if we know that to begin with, can we not use an analogy as a starting place to meditate on the truth that God reveals of himself?

I'm sure this analogy has been hashed and rehashed and taken apart many times before, but the one that caught my attention this Trinity Sunday was the idea of light as shown through a prism. The light is one, both before passing through and after, but the prism reveals distinct colours in the light. For me then, the prism represented God's revelation of himself. He reveals himself in three distinct persons while always remaining One. The light loses nothing by being viewed through the prism, each of the colours remains what it always was, radience, but each shows to the onlooker something about the light. God is whole in each of the persons of the Trinity, not a part of a whole, but a whole, but showing himself in three guises, each adds in abundance to the glory of the Unity.

My mother loves to hang crystals at the East facing window at home - call her Pollyanna - in the morning the room is filled with rainbow colours. When the children are visiting she will climb up and spin the crystals, the room becomes a sunrise disco of dancing light and colour. God is so much more than any analogy could ever tell of him, but in a room of light and colour like that it is hard to miss the wonder of radience that he has built into our world. 

Christ is the light of the world, and light brings colour. Am I allowed to meditate on God through this analogy of light and colour?

Reflecting 19/05/16

Today I followed the Liturgy of the Hours for the first time in a long time. It did me a lot of good, but there were two lines in particular that stood out to me and felt very personal. 

From Psalm 126

They wept as they went, went with seed for the sowing;

but with joy they will come, come bearing the sheaves

There has been a lot of weeping lately. We're still waiting for someone to take a chance on offering us a job. We're sowing now, planting seeds that we're not sure will grow, that we think won't grow, but we have no choice but to continue. I had never understood why the sowing of seeds would involve sadness. I now know it's the sadness of uncertainty, fear, anxiety. It's the space where hope should fit, and sometimes does not. But there, in the next line is the promise: they will reap with joy. And the sweetness of the crop will be enhanced by the bitterness of the sowing. There will be a harvest because God does not abandon his people. I must try to feel like I haven't been abandoned. 

From Isaiah 40

Like a shepherd he feeds his flock,

  he gathers the lambs in his arms and lifts them to his breast;

  he carries the pregnant ewes.

The good shepherd extends his utmost tenderness to the pregnant ewes. This touched a pregnant lady's soul. The good shepherd cares well for his pregnant ewe, and the good Lord will not abandon me.

It was all going so well...

and then my laptop died. This is why I haven't written in ages! But I'm up and running again with a new set up and plan to show you all the craft work I've been doing over the last few months and write down some of the strange thoughts that have been floating through my head.

For now though here are a few teaser images to give you an idea of what I've been up to.