Tuesday Tea Time!

Holy Tuesday Tea Time!

I'm coming to you late today as it was my first day at my new job. It was a great day with many warm welcomes & unpacking & figuring out a few calendar items as December is a very busy month in the church worker's calendar.

As people continue to ask about our trip to Japan, the best part was simply being with family we hadn't seen in a very long time (aside from FaceTime). We got to see some really great things & admire God's creation. One of my favorite days really was the day we walked nearly 13 miles.

That particular day we took the train to walk to a temple, then took the train to walk around the imperial gardens, then took a train to walk around an area of Tokyo we had yet to adventure. Then we hit a wall & rested in a shopping mall because we were going on a food tour that night.

When you sign up for a food tour in Tokyo you may imagine things like raw fish. I know that's what we were prepared to have. Instead we walked through back alleys that we would've never gone down on our own to a fabulous little place were locals often go after work. Everything was grilled in front of us as we were seated "at the bar" & enjoyed skewers of vegetables & meat & seafood. Then we walked to get a traditional Japanese sweet. And then we went for more food. The last meal was a meal that we grilled at our tables. It was a mix of some form of lettuce, fish roe (though there were other combinations with other meats), a few other vegetables, & a broth. It essentially reminded us of a dish of hash. The best part was when Z awed the natives with his skills trying the dessert rolls. It was essentially a Japanese crepe with fruit & red bean.

Then we made our way back to our hotel. And that was the day we walked & walked & didn't loose our feet!

Tuesday Tea Time!

This Tuesday Tea Time I don't have any recent funnies to share unfortunately. Last week was truly a unique week with one funny & crazy happening for the first three or four days. How often in life does that happen?!

The last couple of days have been chillier so still no sun-tea has been made. Not only has the chilly weather prevented making sun-tea, but the space in our fridge, or lack thereof has as well.

One thing Z & I do, when the rest of life seems totally chaotic, is eat well. This Mothering Day my family treated me with dark chocolate brownies with walnuts in them (my favorite simple dessert) & homemade pizza - using one friend's family dough recipe, another friend's marinara sauce recipe, & our own toppings of cheese, artichoke hearts, kale, & sun-dried tomatoes. SO tasty!

It was a great day with good reflection on what mother's day means. One friend - who has a baby that'll be 1.5 next month already - shared her idea of mother's day is not about her, but rather "My job is to recognize anyone who has shown mothering love reminiscent of the selfless sacrificial love of God."

What a beautiful spin on a "holiday" we have made so normalized & commercialized!

Sunday Snippits: good, bad, & awesome!

GOOD: Any week with a free ice cream cone is a good week, right? While many places had free cone day on Monday or Tuesday, we had to wait till Friday to have our free cone. It was well worth the wait as the week was not without treats & the weather was not any warmer at the end of the week than the beginning of the week. Ice cream was only a piece of this goodness though as the week was filled with great conversations, my first official yoga class in many years, more good food, a clean house (mostly), & naturally more really great food. We waited all week to make our Irish meal in honor of St Patrick's day & man alive, it was delicious! Iowa girl eats & I could be friends no doubt! Check out the Wine-Braised Beef Shepherd's Pie recipe, definitely worth your time!

BAD: While there plenty of eye catching & head tilting news pieces out there to report on, they've already been reported on. My idea of bad is when life is so heavy, you can't seem to take one more step. This past week a colleague posted about one event after another after another of heavy life pieces mostly, if not entirely, out of her control. Despite it all, with the help of others, she continued to put one foot in front of the other & be there for those pieces  of her life that needed her AND she was still able to celebrate another piece of life. Way to turn bad into...

AWESOME: Watching an old favorite of a movie, still being able to quote along with the lines, & still thinking it's pretty much one of the best movies ever. 10 Things I Hate About You is that movie for me.

WORD: Reading pieces of Mark & essays from Mindy.

coming up: Love, Life, Spirit, & Sparkle!

Sunday Snippits:good, bad, & awesome!

GOOD: Watching a movie you enjoy the day after watching a movie that horrified you. There are certain movies that you see the previews for & think along the lines of 'if I watch that it will need to be in my home so that I can turn it off or walk away when I want.' Then you find yourself renting the movie & so enthralled by the story line that is horrifying you that you don't turn it off or walk away. I followed Gravity with two episodes of How I Met Your Mother's final season that I'm still working on finishing. Then the next day I chose to watch the movie The Hundred Foot Journey. This second movie was much more my speed! The love for food, travel, adventure & connection to life struggle is beautifully woven into reality throughout the story.

BAD: The desire so many of us who love living in the great north have for Spring to appear soon this time of year. It would be scary - in my opinion - if it came earlier than March. However, we pull out all the tricks to endure the gray winter months & are very thankful for the days with cloudless skies & sunshine. Some people just cannot be shook of the grump that sets in & those of us that can even everything out. All in all making us all a bit mad, bonkers, & off our heads!

AWESOME: Days of unexplainable sunshine in Pure Michigan in January! Go with the flow sorta work days, friends reaching out for prayers & sharing in life near & far.

WORD: While I have yet to finish I Am Malala - & maybe I never will - I have been enjoying The Paraclete Book of Hospitality. This is one of several books that I thought I would use for my graduate studies capstone project & simply did not get around to until the last week or so. A short easy ready & being based in Benedictine thought it gives some great Biblical & other references.

coming up: This is a very exciting week filled with many reunions & many gatherings of new friends at the Extravaganza!

Sunday Snippits: good, bad, & awesome!

GOOD: Good is sharing a piece of sunshine - literally or figuratively - with one another. This past week this sunshine was shared with me - & hopefully therefore with others - through the many encounters with others. I heard or read more than once in the past week that seeing another person & living with them is seeing & living with God. This makes perfect sense to me as I have been continually returning to Genesis 1:27 recently. Come, Holy Spirit, come. All in all this past week was a good mix of my many commitments to ministry leadership. There is much excitement in the air for things yet to come!

BAD: The drive of consumerism for more, more, more. With recent cell phone hiccups & a spouse who still owns an old flip phone (gasp!) the workers at the store jump on us like hawks on prey. Seriously people, a phone that makes calls & texts is the basic desire we have. We don't need all your special plans to be able to recycle these phones that much faster when you're companies are already charging an arm & a leg. With as many people that are only using cell phones now & doing away with land lines, I truly think it would only be right if cell phone companies made phones to last more than two years. We don't buy land line phones thinking they'll only last two years so why would we want a cell phone that does that? Good grief!

AWESOME: Julia Child was once quoted for saying, "People who love to eat are always the best people." I'm SO glad to report that according to Julia I am ONE of the best people. Now let's be real, there are hundreds of us who are the best people. This past week though, I hit a wall with appetite & creativity to make new meals. That creativity is stirring making new ideas & new inspiration though already. All I needed was a trip to the produce section at Meijer! Grapefruit Goodness!

WORD: I'm given the opportunity to preach in a couple of weeks, but we have some fun adventures in between so I'm starting to sit with the passages for the week of February 8th. Aside from that, look up at the "GOOD" of today to see a little more!

coming up: Hopefully a continued nice mix of a little work with this call & a little work with that call. It's all about balance! Head up, Heart out, Move to the beat!

Sunday Snippits: good, bad, & ugly

GOOD: I'm always thankful for sunshine when I travel, especially when I travel long distances by myself. So that was a good start to the week. One big theme of the week was food. Oh how I love food! Momma P had sent me back to MI with the goods to make corned beef grilled cheese sandwhiches & left over Irish car bomb cupcakes for St. Paddy's Day. While still recovering from that goodness we made homemade turkey burgers with a few modifications to what's listed in the recipe. Then on Friday we made homemade pizza from a dough & sauce recipe that was gifted to us for one of our wedding showers & never been used. Thank you MTB & the rest of the Tornero family for passing on the goodness! Saturday was a relaxing day with a bit of cleaning, an adventure to the local coffee shop just to get out of the house - even if it's still quite chilly - & some planning for our upcoming trip to Paris. The bonus pieces of the week were chats through G-chat, Skype, phone & attempts at FaceTime with college friends, seminary friends, & family.

BAD: The reality that people have to debate how to react to the death of a church leader who hurt a lot of people. Death is death, it's the end of a person's life & no matter the good or bad that person caused we need to honor that a life is not in our world any longer, but another. For all the articles that have said to not cheer for death of a hurtful person, the people have already cheered simply by wondering if it is okay to do so. Do what you need to take care of yourself.

UGLY: Today my ugly is the cold, but all you have to do see ugly is turn on the news channel or go to check it out online. There is bound to be something about war or hunger or devastation.

WORD: Psalm 128 - "Happy is everyone who fears the Lord." Discuss!

coming up: Singing random songs about the dog, hopefully warmer temps again, snow melting, dancing, & more time getting to know the community in which we live.