Companions.

Companions.

We cannot tell the exact moment a friendship is formed; as in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses, there is at last one that makes the heart run over.

Companion
My phone buzzes in the middle of the night, a repetitive staccato. Someone’s mind is wrestling and restless with contention, causing sleeplessness. No wonder, as I wake from my slumber containing a dream of you anyway, that my eyes and hands are flickering open reaching for contact before I’m even aware. I know the sound of your thoughts on the black sky and the moonlight wakes me before they reach me.

What is this strange entanglement of thoughts and presence that wraps around me? You reach deep into my mind and extract all sorts of secrets and goodness. You shine light into spaces I had kept away and make them appear beautiful for your knowing them, and I in turn, have a knowing of you that makes the heart full, the drop of running-over has landed on the parched soil of the soul. I am connected with all the intangible parts of me.

Companion is the word that stretches into my memory. A friend who is frequently in the company of another, a traveller on the journey who accompanies you. The ‘other’ of another.

Thomas Merton said ‘The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.

 

On Friendship
Kahlil Gibran

Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.”
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

 

 

The Beauty of Baking Bread.

The Beauty of Baking Bread.

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

 

Great Discoveries, Thanks To Friends.

Not only is this little film iconic in it’s depiction of the pain and struggle of the creative process … but I also think it depicts the true trajectory of what leadership in the 3rd church looks like. Mainly this is inspired from time spent with someone I consider to be the most progressive, insightful & biblical church leader I’ve ever known. Look for more on that story later on … but for now… enjoy!



(ht to brendan smith of stereotype.co.nz)

(ht to dani

Welcome to Soul Pancake. Worth signing up for and definitely having a look around. I haven’t watched all the Oprah interview yet, but I think it’s ingenious, very 3.0 and entertaining if nothing else. Way to enter the spiritual discussion, outside the realms of academia. Of course, the cynic in me wonders how long before it gets swallowed up and overrun by the pious and well-meaning.

The Harmony Of Voice.

This is brilliant.
It’s an acapella version of the song Typical by band mutemath.

From Dwight’s Journal of Music
Boston, September 13, 1856.

It has long been a matter of wonder with us, considering the flood of wishy-washy, common-place, mechanical and un-religious psalmody in which we have been weltering, that someone has not felt moved to give us in convenient form, the incomparable old German Chorals as harmonized by John Sebastian Bach. Could these be studied in our more advanced choirs, our choral societies, our musical classes and “Conventions”, their influence in developing a love and taste for what is true, and pure, and high, and really devotional in sacred music, would be incalculable. It is not possible that no one can once become familiar with Bach’s Chorals and not love them – not feel that the highest ends of music are wonderfully realized in their most soul-ful and unworldly harmony. Bach never wrote for money or for cheap effect; he was a religious artist; his artistic efforts were his aspiration to the beautiful and good and true – to the Most High. All that he did was genuine. Hence his works never grow old. To those who study them now, a century since his death, they are the newest of the new. “In all his works he stands out great and bold and new.”

——

Congregational singing in unison is the practice all over Germany, and hence the Bach Chorals are not used there in the churches. We, on the contrary, have our small trained choirs, who sing in parts. Why, then, should we not, instead of common-place and trashy psalmody, make some use of those purest, noblest models of four-part sacred music that exist? The reasons why we have not done it are obvious. In the first place, as work of Art, they imply a more refined and cultivated taste than has prevailed or ever can prevail in our church, so long as we have only the cheap and easy psalmody of everybody’s manufacture for the musical religious sense to feed upon. And then it might spoil the enormous trade in psalmody, to allow the love for the true thing to be nurtured; for just so surely as any company of singer, who have music in their souls, shall get familiar with these chorals, will they find the common psalmody become “flat, stale and unprofitable.” (We do not mean, of course, “Old Hundred” and the few grand old tunes.) In the next place the rhythm and metre of these old German hymns is so peculiar in most cases, abounding in double endings, or what is called female rhymes, that the tunes cannot be used much in connection with our hymnbooks. The Bach Chorals cannot supplant the psalm-tunes in our common forms of worship until the forms themselves are changed. But not the less is it desirable to have them made accessible. They may be put to excellent uses, of which we name the following:

1.
They may be sung as voluntary piece for the opening or closing of service by choirs; and they suit equally well the largest or the smallest (simple quartet) choir; provided they be executed with the utmost precision and true feeling by good, well-trained voices.
2.
They may be used with admirable effect in alternation with congregational singing; a verse of the latter, with organ accompaniment, in strong, homely unison, followed by a verse of the former, by trained voices, without accompaniment, the same hymn responding as it were from a more spiritual height, glorified in the fine harmonies and modulations of Bach; for as he has treated them, you have the religious essence of the music expressed, and purified from all that is low and common.
3.
For great Choral or Oratorio Societies, to be sung in their more miscellaneous sacred concerts, or at the beginning and ending of a performance. Nothing has made a finer impression in such concert here than two of these same Chorals, similarly treated by Mendelssohn in his “St. Paul.” When perfectly sung by a great mass of voices, as our Mendelssohn Choral Society gave them, the effect is sublime.
4.
In little private musical clubs and circles they will afford the very best sort of practice.
5.
For organists and pianist, to be used simply as instrumental pieces, their purity and marvellous beauty and significance of harmony must commend them. There is more religious satisfaction in just playing them on the piano, then in listening to most of the music to be heard in any of our churches. The way in which each of the four parts, and each note in each, so perfectly serves the end of the great whole, is in itself a type of pure devotion.