Vegan Cooking Adventures!

This is going to be a fun update (because I refuse to talk about how stressful school is right now!). I have been having a lot of fun cooking vegan, so I thought I would share pictures of fun things I have cooked/baked. *Warning* If you're hungry right now, the pictures may make you hungrier :-P

 First, vegan chilli! I made this last Sunday for a dinner I had on Monday. I invited my fellow group-mates over who are going to El Salvador with me this summer, and we had a lovely meal and chatted for a long time. It was really nice to get to know them a little bit, and hopefully we'll have more fellowship time (maybe trying to speak in Spanish??) before we leave in May!

 I also made my own granola! I burned about half the batch (I'll do better next time...) but the half that didn't get burned turned out pretty well! It was a yummy treat the night UNC played Duke in basketball. Oh, and who won that game? Right, Duke did. hehe. (yes, that was for you, Rachel and Andrew)

 I also made my own peanut butter. For some reason being vegan also makes me want to make things from scratch a lot more. Hence, the all natural peanut butter. It's super easy to make, too! I love my food processor :-)

 Today I baked vegan banana muffins! They are SOOO yummy. Even Kat and TJ think so, and I honestly didn't think I'd see the day where TJ admitted something vegan was good! :-) I have really liked the vegan banana muffins that our refectory makes, and since they aren't allowed to give me their recipe, I made some using a recipe online (and switching it up a little bit, and adding the banana slices on top). These will make for lovely breakfast muffins this week :-)

Aaaand today I also baked bread. It's always nice to have homemade bread to eat throughout the week. This is the usual recipe I use, which luckily is vegan. Most of the above recipes come from Lesley and Davids cookbook (THANK YOU!!), so it's also like tasting a little bit of "home" :-)

Speaking of home, this week at work I got to send a book to Hobart and William Smith! They requested a book from Duke! I don't normally send out the books (I usually receive them from other libraries), so it was REALLY exciting that A.) I was doing that job on Monday, and B.) that we were sending a book to HWS! I sent it with lots and lots of love :-)

 Today during my church's annual meeting I finished these fingerless gloves for myself. Pretty snazzy, eh? I'm still trying to find time to knit, even in the midst of the crazyness. For example, last week we had to go to two lectures of Amy-Jill Levine (who I totally had the guts to go talk to after- she's super cool! Describes herself as a Jewish Yankee feminist. Why wouldn't I love her??), and during her lectures is when I knit most of these. :-)

Lastly, for those of you who haven't seen this work of art that my roommates and I did last weekend, you're in for a treat. This is a song from the movie Pitch Perfect, and we jazzed it up for ya. So, enjoy!! 

Have a wonderful wonderful week, and keep all the first-years in your thoughts as we study for mid-terms! (I have ones in Old Testament and Hebrew, ok that's it about school!)

Peace, Love Love Love, and Smiles, 
Christa

Forming, Flossing, and Fasting

Forming

Today I went on my spring semester Spiritual Formation Retreat, and it was amazing. It was from 9-4, and I expected to want to take a nap when I got home, but I was so energized that I ate a snack and got to writing this blog entry :-P  

  

The retreat was about spiritual discernment, and it was led by Sister Joanna, who is quite possibly the coolest sister ever!! We talked about how we make decisions, and how God is acting in our decisions. One thing I particularly liked was when Sister Joanna told us that of course the decision we make matters, but it doesn’t matter as much as how God shapes us through the process of discerning. We talked about how our choices embody our values; how spiritual discernment may not always be practical or logical; how discerning is an act of faith that God is at work in my life and that God loves me. She emphasized how the head and heart are involved in discerning.

I really liked how the stress was on how we make decisions with God, as a collaboration. It was never implied that God is forcing us into any specific path, but that we’re working together toward living a more holy life.  I resonated with her incarnation analogy- God cares about humanity and where we are right now. Everything is rooted in reality; God is personal; take myself as I am and not who I dream of being (a big one for me…); taking others as they are; accepting the here and now with all the ambiguity. Being able to be in the moment. She called this part “holiness lived out incarnationally,” and I just really liked it. I want to get to know Sister Joanna a lot better.

Lastly, two quotes from the handouts that I really like:
 

“Perhaps music and dance, then, offer an illuminating image of what it means to ‘discern God’s will’. We hear the Spirit’s music in creation, in our own gifts, in life as it unfolds in us and in the world around us, and in the word of God. God’s gracious invitation is that we dance to that music.” From Dance to the Music of the Spirit by Fr. David Lonsdale

“Mourn the possibilities you ignored as well as the opportunities you missed. Your life is a path of letting go and dying. If you accept life to be this way, you will be able to commit to relationships more easily and become more content.” From The Art of Discernment by Stefan Kiechle.

Flossing

I woke up one morning this week with a bad taste in my mouth and a depressing thought weighing on my heart. I dismissed the depressing thought, knowing it would take a while for that to go away, and thought about why I had the bad taste in my mouth even though I brush my teeth every night. As I looked down at the sink I saw it. Floss. 

I haven’t been flossing. Like any habit, it’s hard to get back into once you’ve stopped. But for me, flossing is especially hard when I haven’t done it in a while. Flossing hurts; it’s painful. My mouth may bleed. It’s very uncomfortable and I may wince; I could possibly tear up if I floss too hard. Blood mixes with saliva and it is just all-around unpleasant. 

 

But my gums heal. Not only do they heal, but they get healthy. It’s hard to have a healthy mouth without flossing- I can’t have the pearly whites without suffering a little bit of pain. I’ll feel better in the long run if I just get over the fear of the pain. 

[slight change in metaphor] Once I do floss, I have to endure the pain for a bit as my gums get stronger. Most importantly, I can’t stop flossing and let me gums weaken. I may want to avoid it to avoid the blood, but eventually my gums won’t bleed anymore. What used to be painful won’t hurt anymore.

 
Sometimes, hard conversations (oops, I mean flossing…) need to happen. They may hurt, but in the long run, everything will be happy and healthy. Needless to say, I started flossing again this week, and although my teeth can still be sore, it was the best thing that could have happened, and I’m showing off my pearly whites a lot more now!

Fasting

So Lent starts next week! I’m actually looking forward to my Lenten disciplines, even though I know they will be difficult. 

For my food fast, I will be doing the same thing I did last year- going Vegan. This means no meat, egg, or dairy products. I’m predicting I will miss chicken the most, since that was the hardest thing last year. Other than that, I think it will be ok. I’m looking forward to being more creative in my cooking and baking. It will also be hard whenever I go out to eat or eat and friends’ houses. But I’m hoping since a lot of my friends are also observing various fasts that they will be supportive of me.

 
I will also be giving up Facebook. Facebook is my main source of procrastination (especially when I’m writing a paper on my computer). Since all of my homework is an attempt to learn more about God, Facebook is quite literally keeping me from fully embracing God. Funny how that happens. Although I know that I will probably miss out on some social goings-on that would be nice to know about, I think for this time it will be nice to not have the distraction. I will still be updating this blog though, so if you primarily follow it when I post the link on my wall, you should just add your email address to the little box up top there so you don't miss out on anything! :-)

I also want to continue to be very intentional about learning Spanish for my upcoming mission trip this summer! I might even try reading the daily lectionary in Spanish (which could be an epic fail, but at least I will try!)

Jukeboxing

I did a LOT of Hebrew studying this week because I had a big exam on Friday (that I think I beasted! Yay!), and while I studied I listened to the Maccabeats- because really, what else would I listen to? hehe. Here is one of my favorite covers. 

Peace, Love & Lots and Lots of Smiles, 

Christa 

 

It's Just a Moment

Change of Plans

A big update for y'all- Instead of going to Mexico this summer, I will actually be going to El Salvador! The woman I was partnered with for Mexico dropped out of the program, so they are sending me with the team to El Salvador. Many of you know I went there for a short mission trip in high school, so I am really excited to go back!!

Highs and Lows

This week was intense- full with intense highs and lows. A real roller-coaster of emotions, that I honestly don't want to delve into too much here. Quickly, highs included a talk with my Bishop and a solidified meeting time for my postulancy interviews, chanting morning prayer, and eating lunch with Ellen Davis; lows included not being able to go to Geneva for Easter, getting my credit card information stolen and fraudulent charges on my account, and other various money/emotional issues. I just keep telling myself not to worry about money too much, everything will be ok. And everything else, well to quote the song below- "It's just a moment, this time will pass."

Spiritual Autobiography

I wanted to write briefly about my experience this week telling my spiritual autobiography to my spiritual formation group. I will preface this by saying that my group is not that close. Last semester, we didn't bond all that much, and I'm SO happy to have my good friend Rachel in the group, or I don't know how I'd get through it each week. Our leader can be insightful at times, but more often we wonder what he's thinking... Usually in spiritual formation (a mandatory, non-credit class for first year M.Div students), students present their spiritual autobiographies during the first semester. Our leader decided he wanted to try doing them our second semester. This was not the best decision on his part. Of course he couldn't have known what our group dynamic would be, but I hope that he uses our experience to inform other classes he may teach. There is such a change in the group since we started telling our stories. We're getting to know each other in this deep personal and spiritual way. There's a profound vulnerability that you feel when you let everything out on the line to a group of people. If you've never written a spiritual autobiography, I highly recommend it. This was my third time (in about a 3 year period), and each time new things come up and are highlighted. I wrote mine this time about the strong women who have shaped me spiritually. Many of those women read this blog- so know that I was thinking about you a lot this week :-) [Also, if anyone from St. Andrew's has Terry McCall's email address and could send that along to me, that would be wonderful.] This was a really good time for me to think about my call and about what brought me to Duke and my current studies. Next weekend I'm going on a discernment retreat (a requirement of Spiritual Formation), so I think it will be a nice time to further reflect on these issues. I am so grateful I was able to verbalize my story to this group, and I am so looking forward to hearing all the other stories.

A Look into my Classes

There were some quotes from readings or lecture this week that stuck out to me, and I thought I would share some of them. 

"In the ancient Mediterranean world, mealtime was a social event whose significance far outdistanced the need to satisfy one’s hunger. To welcome people at the table had become tantamount to extending to them intimacy, solidarity, acceptance; table companions were treated as though they were of one’s extended family. Sharing food encoded messages about hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion, boundaries and crossing boundaries. Who ate with whom, where one sat in relation to whom at the table- such questions as these were charged with social meaning in the time of Jesus and Luke. As a consequence, to refuse table fellowship with people was to ostracize, to treat them as outsiders…" From Joel Green's Theology of the Gospel of Luke which we read in my New Testament class. 

“The medium by which we can embrace the word of God is not our rational intellect but a heart that echoes.” From Eric Peels's Shadow Sides of God. (Don't read it, horrible book) I liked the language of a heart that echoes. :-)

Some Luther for you, from my paper: "I will therefore give myself as a Christ to my neighbor, just as Christ offered Himself to me; I will do nothing in this life except what I see is necessary, profitable, and salutary to my neighbor, since through faith I have an abundance of all good things in Christ.” (Luther, Freedom of a Christian) Since Christ came to relieve us of our sins and to help us ultimately live in this world, we too are expected to make sacrifices in order to help our neighbor. It is through faith, knowledge, and love of Christ that a true Christian can be formed; one who will selflessly act as an offering and sacrifice for a fellow Christian. (My preceptor really liked this part of my paper. haha)

Notes from one of the best Old Testament lectures, in my opinion. Talking about Micah 6:8: "He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

Stephen "Chaps" Chapman- emphasize the verbs in Mic 6:8--we are not just to be just, but to “do” justice; not just to act kindly but to “love” kindness; not just to live humbly, but to “walk” humbly. Justice, Kindness, and Humility- They are theological virtues, they come from God, they require God, and they serve God’s purposes in the world .

Jukebox Time

I'm so grateful for Brent and Natalie, who reminded me last night how awesome U2 is. Thanks wonderful people! This song in particular is meaningful to me right now.  (And I like this version on the video)

And if the night runs over
And if the day won't last
And if your way should falter
Along this stony pass
It's just a moment
This time will pass 

Peace, Love, and Smiles y'all
Christa