by tashmcgill | Dec 5, 2013 | Church, Culture & Ideas, Spirituality
To anyone else watching that Saturday night, we were just two women, obviously friends, walking along a bridge – talking furiously, taking photos for tourists and watching the world go by.
But really, amongst the laughter and shared memories – we were clinging to one another. My dear friend and I are undesirably separated; first by an ocean and then by lives no longer conducive to near constant communication. So these moments together were precious, more precious than words can aptly describe or pictures display.
We’re both real women – one married, one not. Both in creative, unusual occupations, both smart, compassionate and both lonely for authentic expressions of womanhood in our everyday lives. Both leaning on each other to find a roadmap through this life and spirituality that honours our beliefs, our character and our relationship with God. Neither of us certain of where we fit or find a place in the Church as we know it, without having to compromise or apologise for something of our being.
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by tashmcgill | Sep 24, 2013 | Church, Community, Culture & Ideas, Spirituality
“I want to see us become a family, the body of Christ become a home for the world.”
I’ve had a dream for my life as long as I can remember. Not a daydream or a wishful thinking kind of dream, but an actual dream that comes in the night, whether the darkness is quiet or full of storm.
It comes sometimes only once a year, sometimes every week. It is often inspired by absence as much as by presence.
In this dream, I live in a big house with wide windows that slide right open, just over from a large table and a big kitchen that opens to the whole living space. The table is surrounded by mismatched chairs and the light is warm, gentle. The room is full of life.
In that house, I am constantly talking, listening, laughing and cooking. I am endlessly wrestling with children’s happy embracing and high-pitched giggling. There is always someone just arriving to join the table. There is always someone being welcomed and I always wake, feeling that I have come home.
What can it mean, that after all these years, my dream is the same? (more…)
by tashmcgill | Apr 25, 2013 | Culture & Ideas
I remember making a cake from packet mix when I was about 9 years old, in the matchbox kitchen of the shoebox unit we lived in with our mother. There was little room for improvisation with the recipe, I mean, really, adding a couple of eggs and some butter was hardly going to rocket this cake to memorial status. So recently intrigued by how adding food colouring to nearly any batter produced colour without flavour, I added red and blue to the cake and coloured the icing green. My brain still recalls that it tasted of blueberry vanilla. In fact, it was just vanilla. Purple and green vanilla cake. I thought it was hilarious.
So, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve come to this baking thing late in life. I remember various transgressions on my part through my early cooking years – a gunmetal grey F16 fighter jet birthday cake, flat scones, burst muffins and soggy pastry. I’ve no shame in admitting that I’ll happily use someone else’s guaranteed store-bought pastry to be assured of success in recent years. Now pies, tarts, you name it – leave my kitchen to happy homes and happy bellies. Baking has been a skill to master, a challenge to conquer even if cheating is required.
Bread, however, is another story. I like making it. I like that every dough is slightly different. I love the sound it makes hitting on the bowl as it changes through each stage. I love that it takes hours, consumes your attention. I’m yet to make a bread starter of my own, but the idea of a living starter of my own allures me with it’s ancient artistry.
Bread makes no pretenses about it’s demand for your attention, nor does it have any qualms asking to be left alone. It can be as individual as paint colours in final textures, finishes, flavours. I especially like that bread dough can look like a failure for the first 15 minutes, until the glutens hit their stride and transform into something moreish and chewy. It reminds me of people – you have to learn how to judge the moment and not beat them down too much, too soon and sometimes to just hold on a little longer.
Bread doesn’t need much adornment to satisfy you, either. Nothing more than a little oil or butter to be shown in it’s best light. Again, like the best people – in their simplest form, they are complete.
I like that bread is often best made in batches, not in single loaves. Worth sharing. Better for sharing. And while bread will bide time overnight if necessary, from the moment yeast hits water a process of inevitability has begun. Rise a little, rise a lot – so long as the yeast is alive, then your bread will come to life too. The cycle begins and then it continues.
Bread is simple, honest, universal and yet, personal because all bread eventually is finished by hand, prodded into shape.
Bread reminds me of people – you have to learn how to judge the moment and not beat them down too much or just hold on a little longer before giving up.
Bread is a lot like humans. We are all better off with a little interaction, a little time invested, a little hope holding on, a little belief and anticipation of the end result. Some of the best bread is finished in a fire, but it’s all good bread. Time is the best thing you can do for us. Time to prove. Time to rest, time to rise to the occasion.
The loaves I’m making today have an awkward beginning. You throw everything together* (see below) into a stand mixer and then beat it to within an inch of it’s life. For the first 20 minutes, it looks like a lumpy pancake batter, too wet to hold together and not remotely resembling any other dough I make.
A lot of folks would give up on this recipe about then, but you have to have faith that it will come together. Put aside how you expected it to happen and just watch it, beating on and on. Eventually something magic happens and the threads of gluten start to pull away from the bowl and follow the finger pulling them. The grip of the dough swings from the side of the bowl to your hand, with more of a desire to cling to itself than to a foreign object. And then you leave it, in an oiled dish – just a little oil to help it out and make it more comfortable you might say.
Let it sit, rest and rise – a few hours at least, then slide it gently to the floured bench, cut into four pieces, dust with cornmeal and leave to prove for another 45mins. Then and only then, pull and prod it into the oblong shape you want, dimple the top slightly with your fingertips, little dimples of love. Finish it for 25mins in a searingly hot oven (really 220 degress celsius for the first ten minutes, then 180). Mist it with water or oil until the crust is firm and crunchy, with a resonant hollow note when you tap the base.
It will make 4 loaves, 1 to eat, 1 to keep and 2 to share. Bread has a funny way of filling your house with warm, toasty fragrance and making your belly happy. It’s a wonderful excuse to fill a house with people too, people eating together, using their hands.
*Recipe:
500g bread flour or 350g bread flour + 150g semolina flour
500ml warm water
15g salt
15g active dried yeast
by tashmcgill | Feb 27, 2013 | Community, Culture & Ideas, Love & Marriage, Poems, Prose & Poetry
I was privileged to attend a beautiful wedding in the weekend, proof sure enough that love still blossoms and people are brave enough to say vows (altogether different to promises) and stand up in front of friends and family to make that commitment to one another. Especially privileged was I, when Paula and Mark asked if I would write a poem to be read at the wedding. Which it turns out, is a beautiful opportunity to put down in words some of what I’ve been reflecting on; the goodness of marriage and the process it is.
More and more, I think that marriage isn’t about finding someone who ticks the boxes, with whom your life fits and feels complete – but choosing someone who you can build a life with. So the image of a garden seems appropriate – we don’t marry because we’ve discovered something beautiful, but because we want to create something beautiful. So this is the poem that I wrote and read for my darling friends. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Feb 7, 2013 | Culture & Ideas, Friendship
“Welcome to the age of self-management, it’s all on you from here.” It was said with a smile, but in a tone that makes the blood run cold. More truth held in the six words at the end of that sentence than I’d heard for quite some time. I was being given a choice about how to respond.
The infallible truth is, my life is a direct result of my choices and actions. Both poor and good choices construct a set of circumstances that I, and I alone, must take responsibility for. Regardless of how we interact with other individuals and how their choices may impact on us, our choices to respond to those circumstances lands the responsibility firmly in our own hands. Your life isn’t what happens to you, it’s how you respond. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Jan 26, 2013 | Culture & Ideas, god ideas
Whether you embrace change, or change is thrust upon you without warning – the process of transformation is long and hard. I have long been a lover of Henri Nouwen’s journal of letters to himself, “The Inner Voice of Love”. If I was to minister to myself; this is what I would remind myself of.
“You need to recognize the difference between change and transformation. You keep expecting that these external circumstances that reflect change around you, will mirror or gauge the change within you. But you don’t change, people can only transform. One thing must become another. You can’t tear out your heart and simply replace it with a new one, much as one relationship cannot be exchanged for another. We must transform. So these external changes you are processing, can transform you internally, if you choose. But you must choose this: it will not simply happen by osmosis. It is too easy to adopt new behaviours and claim newness, when really all you are doing is maintaining a facade. (more…)
