When you can't see anymore

I did not grow up with a lot of baking. My mom did bake some, but mostly I remember the comforting clang of the wok and the bubbling of our rice cooker.

But then I married my Anglo husband and shortly thereafter discovered I was gluten sensitive. And when we moved away from California to Austin, my husband's beloved sourdough bread became harder to find. All of this gave me a lot of motivation to learn to bake.

I started with gluten-free baking to satisfy my occassional cravings for bready type foods--pancakes and muffins and such. Then a few years later, when we moved to Austin, I started learning how to make sourdough bread for N.  As I become more comfortable with the oven, I also started to learn to roast meats and vegetables in the oven. 

Now, 5 years in, I've got my own rhythms down. With meat, I am big on using a probe thermometer. No more guessing about done-ness, just look at the temp. With gluten free baking, I use almond meal with various cheaper flours I can get at Asian stores (rice flour, sticky rice flour, tapioca starch). I weigh my ingredients on a kitchen scale allowing me to scale proportions easily. 
The result of this internalizing is that someone asked for my cobbler recipe and I wrote:

The 'biscuit' topping was 2 parts almond meal, 1 part corn flour, 2 parts milk, 1 part cold butter, baking powder, salt, sugar

Now, that actually works GREAT for me. But it's a pretty horrible recipe for most people and especially this friend.

For my everyday life, it's good and appropriate to develop rhythms and habits so that I'm not having to think about every. single. thing. But the trade off is that it becomes harder to not think in those ways, but it's vitally important to do so for other people.

I am realizing that when I quickly dismiss something as "dumb"--another political view, another way of  parenting, another way of organizing life--I'm using my built in heuristics. My habitual way of thinking and making decisions is preventing me from seeing the other considerations people have. What I fear is that some of my habits of thought are so ingrained that I'm truly blind, unable to even realize I have a blind spot, and thus unable to back up and try again.

My cobbler recipe take II:

Peach cobbler--
FRUIT INNARDS
6 cups peaches, sliced & peeled
1/2 c sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 tbsp lemon
1/4 tsp cinnamon
--Over med-low heat, stirring frequently, bring to a boil, after 1 min pour into 9" pie pan or 8" square pan
--pre-heat oven to 400 dgr

BISCUIT TOPPING
6 oz almond meal
3 oz corn flour (the kind used to make tortillas)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
 3 oz (6 tbsp) cold butter 
6 oz milk

--whisk together dry ingredients
--cut or pinch in butter
--add milk and stir together til everything is wet, will be pretty goopy and wet
--scoop lumps over the peach mix (I had about 8-9 lumps)
--for a decorative touch sprinkle with sugar crystals

--bake at 400 dgr for 20 minutes or until brown on top
--serve warm with vanilla ice cream

Advent--the time is now

Well, I was going to have deep musings about advent. But about 2 hrs ago we got a call from our friends that she has gone into labor. Since we live 2 miles from the hospital and they live 20 miles away, we are at least hosting their son.

No deep thoughts but much anticipation of a birth.

The urgent long view

My current conundrum is that we don't know how many days on earth we get. I was remembering my friend Brian this morning. He has no more days; I have no more days with him. I still find that deeply saddening.

If I knew I had only 30 more days in my life, I would feel a deep sense of urgency to call some of my best friends and tell them, "I have 30 more days and beyond that my hope is in Jesus Christ, beyond that I believe I will experience beauty and majesty that we only get a taste of in this life, beyond that I will be in eternity with God. You too can experience hope, beauty, and majesty in this life and the next because of who Jesus is and what he has done."

But I don't know that. I may well have 30 + 30 years left in my life. And how sweet would be it be to have all those years with these friends and new friends? When I take the long view, I feel I mustn't force my hand, mustn't try and run ahead, mustn't try and rush things. Instead, I should live and enjoy each moment for what it is. Not rushing relationships to me means being a normal friend, not being a weird religious freak who is acquainted with someone. But that means that it might be year 8 in a relationship before someone says, "Will you pray for me and my family;" something that happened just last week. Year 8! In the urgent world, who has time for year 8? But in light of eternity, what is 8 years? Nothing.

In any event, I feel kind of stuck. So there it is, the problem of the urgent long view.