Roasting Pan

      We cooked a ham for Easter yesterday (actually, it was three hours heating up a ham) and after letting the roasting pan soak overnight, I got around to washing it today.

Our un-pristine pan

   We only use the roasting pan once or twice a year and for the most part it's still pretty pristine. Today, though, after I'd given it a thorough cleansing, it was no longer pristine---you could see where the juice of the meat had seemingly soaked right into it. This is pretty well aligned with any roasting pan I've ever been associated with and it was with a certain sense of nostalgia that the roasting pan today did not come out totally clean. 
   In this way, it is developing a kind of history of its own and every time it gets used the history will become deeper and more varied. Part of what I appreciate about it is the familial aspect. The pan is only brought out when there are gatherings of family and loved ones and it is with some respect that I bring it into the kitchen on these occasions.

Ah yes...the chip

   Almost immediately after we bought it a few few years ago, we noticed a chip in the lid. As it was brand-new, there was some discussion about returning to the store. I remember standing there looking at the chip and, as much as it was a flaw, it was also totally in line with any other porcelain enamel roasting pan I'd ever known---there was always some kind of dent or chip or flaw and the fact that our new roasting pan now had one of those really only endeared it to me, in a funny kind of way. We kept that pan and I'm glad we did. I also look forward to the next time we need to add another thin layer to its history and feed a bunch of us around a family table. 
   
   

The Deconverted Mr. Ripley

     This year, for Christmas, I received a copy of the book "Life Beyond Belief: A Preacher's Deconversion".
   It was written by a gentleman named Bob Ripley who, for the last 30 years, has been an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada. Fifteen of those years were spent as the senior minister at Metropolitan United Church, one of the most prominent United churches in Canada, here in London, Ontario. For 25 years, he has also been a syndicated columnist, writing weekly about religion and spiritual matters.
   I have read his column in the London Free Press off and on over the years and always found them to be informative, entertaining and easy to read. For those many years his readers knew him as "Rev. Bob Ripley". Then things changed.
   I was reading his column a few weeks ago and noticed that there was no longer a "Rev." in front of his name. This struck me as being strange but I kind of passed it off. Then, shortly thereafter, I read an article about him in the Free Press and discovered that he had renounced his faith and become an atheist.
   My reaction to this was not hmm, that's kind of interesting, it was more like woo hoo, that's cool!
   I am an atheist myself and find I am drawn to people who either believe in deities strongly or, conversely, don't believe in them at all. My question for either group always seems to be why?
   In Bob Ripley's case, I found it fascinating that a person who for all appearances had been living and breathing Christianity these many years had seemingly suddenly just...changed his mind!

   At the same time I discovered that Rev. Bob Ripley was now just plain old Bob Ripley, I also found out that he had written a book describing in some detail the lengthy and difficult (as you can imagine) process he'd undergone in coming to the realization that there is no God. This, then, the book I requested for Christmas (the irony is not lost on me) and this, then, the book I received!
   A lifetime spent studying theology and spiritual matters has made Ripley a knowledgeable man, not only in regard to Christianity but also most of the other major religions. Throughout the book, he will often draw comparisons between the religions.
   What he ends up describing, as he writes, was the slow and steady realization he came to that the things we are being asked to believe in the writings and teachings of the major religions (most notably, in this case, the Bible) are simply things which make little sense. We are asked to believe things that could not have happened and we are asked to believe things which modern day science has disproved. He also takes great pains to point out, with quotes, the discrepancies between the different Gospels in the Bible as to what happened when, where and how. After awhile, it became quite apparent that the Bible was very much a man-made thing and maybe not so much the word of God.
   He also points to his increasing interest, as an adult, in the scientific world as one of the things which started guiding him to his deconversion. Faced with the ever-increasing things we find out almost daily about the universe, it was impossible for him to reconcile his religious beliefs with what he knew to be actual fact.
   More than anything, he became a man who was distressed with what he saw as groups of people who had, from ancient time times up to the present, used religion as a reason for inflicting suffering upon other groups of people. He quotes passages from the Bible and other religious tomes which call for the destruction of enemies and non-believers. He goes on to provide historical examples of religion being invoked solely to justify greed and power-mongering.
   As I read, I personally found myself feeling more justified and reassured in my own beliefs. In terms of religion I am nothing more than a layperson in my understanding of things. Here then, in black and white, was a man who knew what he was talking about and had come to many of the same conclusions I had!
   As you might have guessed, Bob Ripley has lost some friends. New friends, however, have been made. He also says there are aspects of the Church he misses, such as the music and the fellowship. I can only imagine the inner turmoil the man must have been going through, to think about the thousands he ministered to or counselled, the weddings he performed and the funerals he officiated over all in the guise of being a man of God and then to feel it necessary to renounce all that.
   He relates that one of his former parishioners talked to him after he proclaimed himself an atheist and thanked him for having helped her through a difficult time. Sometimes words of support do the trick, regardless of whether there's divine inspiration for them or not!
   Bob continues to write his column and if you're interested in reading the particular column he wrote about his life-altering decision, you can read it here. As I mentioned before, I enjoyed reading his work when he was still an ordained minister. At the same time, I viewed him as a Christian writing about principally Christian things and, being an atheist, there was always at least a subliminal grain of doubt nestled there in my brain. Now, he has erased whatever small misgivings I might have had and there is a somewhat more welcoming and comfortable space for him.
   I read "Life Beyond Belief" in two days, interspersed with much holiday goings-on. It is obviously a thought-provoking read. On the back cover, one of the book's reviewers, Rev. Dr. Daniel Meester of the Old First Reformed Church in Brooklyn, NY declares, "If you're a Christian, you should take this book seriously, and if you're not...you'll find companionship." I would echo that.
   A humourous note. On Christmas Day, my wife, Doralyn and I were in the kitchen, working on dinner prep. My mother-in-law was in the livingroom and had picked up and was perusing my new copy of Ripley's book. She called out to us and made a reference to "Ripley". Doralyn didn't quite hear her and asked me what she'd said. I told her the reference had been to the Bob Ripley book. Doralyn said, "Oh..I thought she was talking about Ripley's Believe It Or Not..." At which point I replied, "Apparently he doesn't!"   
   
   

Jesus, God and Facebook

   There is no shortage of inspiration on Facebook these days. There are inspirational videos, inspirational songs, inspirational posters and, on my Facebook screens lately, inspirational Bible quotations.
   We have a friend who occasionally posts Bible quotations as her status at any given time. If you are used to the usual omg's and wtf's on Facebook statuses these days then a Bible quotation really does grab your attention. One can only imagine that if they'd had Facebook a couple of thousand years ago then these kinds of statuses would have been de rigueur. Nowadays, they kind of stop you in your tracks.
   Our friend is a fairly recent born-again Christian and her religion has become an integral part of her life. She attends church, Bible study classes and prayer groups on a regular basis so she does not just give lip service to her new-found faith.
   Apart from Facebook, she invokes God and Jesus (and probably the Holy Ghost, although I am unable to recall a specific occurrence of this) on a pretty regular basis in her daily travels and in a variety of settings. She is not bashful about her religion and I have a hard time faulting her for this--any kind of a strong belief system is a valuable commodity these days.
   If you know me or have followed this blog consistently for any length of time (okay, I am talking to all three of you now) then you are likely aware that I don't believe in deities, the Bible, or organized religion. I am also of the belief that there may not even have been an historical Jesus. So when I see a Bible quote used as a Facebook status or when I hear proclamations that God and/or Jesus is responsible for the occasional nice thing that happens to us, buzzing starts inside my head.
   It's not the kind of buzzing likely to make my head explode. But close.
    More than a lot of other statements people make, comments which are religion-based always make me want to sit down with whoever made them and have a talk.
   What I need to find out from them is why they believe what they believe. I need to find out what they heard or what they read or who they listened to that made them believe so totally in a faith that they then feel empowered to freely interject references to it throughout their daily interactions with people.
    Here's how the dynamic works for me. It can be a beautiful day out and our friend will come along and say something like, "It's a beautiful day out! Thanks be to Jesus!" At this point, my day becomes slightly less beautiful and here's why. I was already enjoying the same beautiful day and subconsciously was giving credit to the change of seasons, the high pressure system, the prevailing westerlies, and whatever meteorological forces there were at play. My friend comes along and essentially tells me I'm wrong, that Jesus made the beautiful day.
   Now, I don't mind being wrong about a whole multitude of things but I hate being beholding to Jesus for anything, let alone the state of the weather. And if Jesus/God is responsible for the great weather then we can only assume that he is just as responsible for the blizzards and typhoons which kill thousands of people each year.
   Some day I would like to sit down with our friend and simply ask her why she believes so strongly. I would actually like to sit down with anyone who is strongly religious (regardless of faith) and ask them what happened to produce this fervour. I would like to find out if it was something they read, was some person influential in their lives, was there something written somewhere which produced this faith or did they witness some act which then made them strongly believe.
    Unless you've witnessed some verifiable miracle, it strikes me that if you've based your faith on something you've read or been told then you're doing nothing more than taking some other person's word for it. That other person could be extremely eloquent and utter things which are uplifting, supportive and make total sense but it is still that person's word for it you're taking (grasping desperately, in some cases).
   In researching for this blog post, I found reams of Bible quotations popping up on the screen, one right after the other. As you scroll down, they take on a very soothing cumulative effect. The fact that they're all from the Bible almost seems irrelevant after awhile. There is such a plethora of uplifting material on the internet these days you could just as easily be scrolling a screen of uplifting quotations by Maya Angelou, Gandhi or Helen Keller and a whole bunch other anonymous persons. Yet, we don't worship these people as gods. And some of these people verifiably existed, much more verifiably than Jesus.

Lewis Black, with a slightly angrier religious quote.

   I consider the Bible to be no more than the words of men; men who have passed on stories from other men, men who have transcribed those stories they heard and men who have transcribed other men's transcriptions. If there is a God, he may have entered into it somewhere as well but what we got was one man's interpretation of his interaction with God, or the gods. There are newer versions of the Bible these days which have done away with the stiltedly formal language of the Bible our generation grew up with (I'm almost sixty) and you can imagine that some day there will be slang and street language in there, as well. All because humans wrote it and it will be humans who re-write it.
   There is a well-known communications exercise which involves a group of people sitting in a circle. The leader of the group whispers a brief, scripted story to the person beside them. This person then tries to whisper the same story to the person beside them. Eventually, this story gets whispered all the way around the circle. When the last person has heard the story, they are asked to repeat their version of it, aloud, to the rest of the group. This person's story is generally almost unrecognizable from the original. What happened along the way was that people would use slightly different language, perhaps language they felt more personally comfortable with as they passed the story on. A part of the story might have seemed more significant to one person than the other so it got emphasized a little more. The more times this happened, the more disjointed the story would become. One of the things to remember is that this also happens within the space of maybe ten minutes. Bible stories have been rolling around for thousands of years! How do you think the original stories might have changed, in the intervening years...?

   So I want to ask my friend what she bases her faith on. I want to find out whether it is blind faith or a faith constructed on any foundation of  evidence. When she tells me what she bases her faith on, I want to ask why? I don't want to know in an inquisitional kind of way but people who put their faith right out there for others to experience should be prepared for the experience to become interactive. In fact, I think they should almost want it to be. 
  

New Year's Resolutions 2012 Re-visited

   Last year, about this time and in an earlier blog post, I listed off my resolutions for 2012. I usually make up some kind of a list every year or at least give the subject some thought. This year, though, I have an actual, documented list from the previous year to refer back to, in order to see how well I did in honouring my "commitments". Here are the results.

1. Lose some weight  Yay, I actually did this one! Started running three times a week in August, courtesy of my Sweetheart, and have lost round about twenty pounds. I also suspect that going gluten-free may have had something to do with this, once again, courtesy of you-know-who!

2. Write more  Well, I sort of accomplished this. Mainly, I didn't write any less. I also created another blog called "Strides", which concerns itself with my running adventure. The thought behind the resolution, though, was to maybe work on an actual novel or short story. This did not happen, mainly due to lack of an idea and, probably, the constant blogging I was already doing. I do, however, now have an idea for a short story...


What they were...

3. Do something with my music  Still a work in progress, although I at least now have something on CD rather than on tape.

4. Sell the house and/or keep the house  We decided to keep the house, at least for the time being, but selling is still an option somewhere down the road. The idea that we might be here for awhile, though, has energized me to make some improvements. This, in turn, might make it easier to sell on down the road.

5. Do something "outside the box" at work  Never happened, really. This may morph into "just try and do your job well".

6. Be artistic  I had wanted to do something creative and artistic, maybe painting or something like that. This never happened, either, so it goes back on the list!

7. See my boys more  I'm not so sure this didn't get worse, rather than better, we went through long stretches without getting together. Some of it was busy schedules, some of it was just trying to make a large get-together when smaller ones would have done the trick. So we'll aim for smaller ones...

8. Talk to my brother  Well, I not only talked to him but we actually went out to Calgary and visited. Unfortunately, this was all the result of our Dad passing away back in March. Dad will only pass away once, however, so we'll just have to do it on our own now.

9. Spend more time at my Dad's  When I originally wrote this, I had no idea that my Dad would become ill in about a month and the pass away about a month after that. So I actually spent much more time at Dad's place and at the hospital, as it turned out. Obviously, I will no longer need to do this. At the same time, however, much of the physical stuff that was Dad's is now here at our place and there are constant reminders of him everywhere. It also doesn't feel as though his spirit is very far off.

10. Find a chair that doesn't hurt my ass so much  This was in acknowledgement that I spend a lot of time sitting and blogging. Nothing much has changed, although I do tend to move around the room a little more. Actually, my ass is starting to hurt right now!

   So that's a recap of last year's resolutions and how they turned out. There's a little room for improvement I guess but some things got at least more than a cursory glance.
    Shortly, I'll be working on this year's list and will publish it soon. I think there will likely be a combination of the old and some new on this year's, we'll have to see. In the meantime, I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and All the Best in 2013!!

This Christmas

   If you are a writer in any way, shape or form then it's pretty difficult to view all that goes on during the Christmas and holiday season and not feel compelled to write about it. It's an all-consuming time of year, for a variety of reasons, and one's personal energy is directed towards it and very little else, for the duration.

   The whole season has a marathon quality to it; in order to successfully complete it, you must balance short bursts of energy with stretches of easier running wherein you are able to catch your breath. But you never really rest. If you are not physically involved with all that needs doing, you are at least mentally consumed with Christmas and all its preparation.
   Apart from the actual work involved, it also seems like a time of year for reflection. Christmas always for some reason brings thoughts of Christmases past. Sometimes you remember the gifts you got, sometimes you remember weather and a trip you needed to make, sometimes you recall a relative you were able to see for the first time in many years.
   Your remembrances of Christmas when you were a child are likely vastly different than the ones as an adult. Mine as a child were strictly of the magical variety--the almost unbearable excitement of bedtime on Christmas Eve, the irresistible urge to peel back the wrapped corners of presents, just to catch a glimpse of what was underneath, the appearance in the house of mandarin oranges, waking up Christmas morning to a stocking lying on the floor beside our beds, the laying out of milk and cookies for Santa and the discovery of elf footprints on the windowsills. Pretty heady stuff for a couple of young boys.
   As an adult, of course, Christmas took on a whole different significance. There is a space of time wherein you are an adult without kids and Christmas, more than anything, becomes a time when you travel back home to briefly reconnect with family. This may be only a trip across town or it may be a trip across the country. It is a time in your life when you have begun to view your adult parents as an adult yourself. This can sometimes be an experience.
   Then, at some point, you hopefully will begin to experience Christmas as a parent for the first time in your life. This is a stage when suddenly the magic around Christmas can creep back into your life, as you begin to impart it to your children.
   As you then get older and your kids have figured out the whole "Santa" thing (for you "still-believers" out there I am not going to reveal what the "Santa" thing is...) Christmas may begin to take on new significance.
   Suddenly you are trying to cram Christmas into an already jam-packed life and in an effort to maintain the spirit of the season and provide positive experiences for people, you try to accommodate everyone. When (and if) you make it through this experience, you are likely exhausted and wondering why you do this to yourself every year.
   I am at a point in my life when suddenly I am wondering whether Jesus even actually existed and, if he did, was he all he is said to be. Celebrating his birth to the extent we do has now become problematic for me.
   On Christmas Eve, I found myself in a church with friends and family, taking part in a candlelight service. My forays into churches for the last thirty years or so have been relegated to weddings and funerals so this was a bit of a different experience for me. I know what the idea was. The idea was for a couple of us adults to recapture some of the Xmas magic we remembered from growing up. Also, I think part of the idea was pass on some of it to our kids who were present.

   It was a "nice" service and probably even nicer for true believers. It was also fairly easy to appreciate the sense of community involved. At some point, we recited the Lord's Prayer. This was not a problem for the adults. We realized at the end of the service, though, that our kids had no idea what the words were. In a way, this surprised me but, in a way, it didn't. The Lord's Prayer has long since been removed from  schools and, barring regular church attendance, there is no reason that a young person would be familiar with it. I, myself, felt strange and somewhat hypocritical reciting it, due to the afore-mentioned lack of belief. All in all, it was a strange kind of experience.
   If anything, the value of Christmas for me is that it is a reason to get together. You take the time to think about your family and friends and their situations and arrange to be with them, even if only for an evening. Regardless of the reason, this can never really be a a bad thing. I think one of the best parts of this Christmas was having my two grown boys sharing the same room with us again. This happens way too infrequently and is something to be savoured when it does. Strange to think that it may have been an imaginary child from two thousand years ago that was the reason for it!
  
  
  

Carving

   Yesterday we celebrated the Buren family Christmas, at my brother-in-law Rick's place. What you end up with is a house full of busy adults making dinner preparations and a house full of busy kids being, well, busy!
   Christmas dinner prep has always been a time-honoured tradition, generally with a host of grown-ups (sort of) shoulder-to-shoulder in some one's kitchen doing the where-are-your-serving-bowls-are-the-potatoes-ready ballet. There is a madhouse kind of feel to things somehow and it always seems slightly miraculous to me that a meal actually emerges from all the chaos.
   And in the midst of the chaos, there is imbibing, laughter, reminiscing and a healthy dose of family solidarity. There are not too many other occasions during the year when families are able to take the time to get together like this and, unfortunately minus one bro-in-law, Jim and his family, we were able to accomplish the feat last night.
   At some point in the dinner preparations, there comes the moment when the turkey needs carving. For whatever reason, this has always seemed the most ceremonial part of the Christmas meal to me. The carving responsibility seems to always fall on the shoulders of the man of the house and I guess this is part of the ceremonial quality it holds for me.
   When I was a kid, I have very clear recollections of my Dad at the dinner table, sharpening the carving knife with a sharpening steel, the metallic swish-swish sound making this magical. I'm sure that I associated this sound with the wonderful meal which always followed and just the general excitement for a young boy at Christmas. The sharpening steel itself was always something that intrigued me as a boy, I liked the way it felt and the fact that, as a utensil, it was so different from anything else in the drawer. I would often take it out at other times of the year and drag butter knives along it just to hear the sound. I can remember my brother Bob and I sitting at the dinner table with our knives and forks, swishing them together, simply for the sound they made.
   It didn't even occur to me until I was an adult, however, what my Dad was actually doing, that there was an actual purpose behind all the swish-swish and arm-waving at the head of the table. I had no idea that the knife was being sharpened so that it could slice through the meat that much more efficiently. I now have new-found respect for the whole process.
   At some point when I was a teenager, Dad discovered electric knives. This changed the carving dynamic quite a bit, as you can imagine. Gone was the swish-swish of steel on steel, this being replaced by the bbbbbrrrrttttt of the electric knife. It wasn't quite as traditional as the old way but Dad loved this knife and I'm sure the idea that he was actually able to bring a power tool right to the dining room table and then use it there in front of an audience held enormous appeal.
   I guess I must have watched my Dad carve the bird enough over the years that I somehow was pretty well able to take on the task myself, when the responsibility at some point fell on my shoulders. Carving a turkey was and is no big deal but, at the same time, I don't do it with the same kind of panache as my Dad. He always did the carving at the head of the dining table, with all present. He would go around the table, asking each person what kind of meat they wanted and how much. He would then carve the bird to order. These days, I carve the whole turkey all at once in the kitchen and present the results on platters which then end up on the table. This seems to work fairly well but, I admit, does lack a little of the old formality and ambiance.
   What I have described has been my family Christmas dinner experience and I had made some sort of assumption that this was true of almost every family. In comparing notes with Doralyn while writing this, however, I discovered that this was not the case in her family. Traditionally, her mother carved the turkey in the kitchen and then the cut meat was brought to the table. Not a bad tradition, kind of mirrors our current one, and eliminates some of the "theatrics" at the same time. My experience is that it gets harder and harder anymore to get everyone sitting down and ready to eat all at the same time anyway, there always seems to be someone who needs to head back into the kitchen for some forgotten item or such. With large families, such as last night, there sometimes needs to be two separate tables, as well. Hard to build a lot of carving tradition around a setup like this!
   Rick, by the way, did a fine job of carving last night. This might even have been one of the first times he's done it but the results were great. It's hard to beat a home-cooked turkey dinner and when you have a bunch of people helping out with side dishes you get to feel the love from all over the place!