Blog Archives

The acorn and the oak

1/29/2019

Every seedpod holds a kernel of hope, the potential for new life. In a way it defines the whole journey of life. Seed is the beginning and the end.

The wonder of the first shoot coming through the earth, the unfurling of the first bud and the radiance of the full blown flower all remind me that life is a process, that it takes time to blossom. But as I’m discovering, eventually the flower fades and the seedpod becomes the essence of the continuity of life.

It’s often the most overlooked part of any plant. We smell the rose but how often do we admire the hip? Old age feels a lot like that. Often overlooked, frequently dismissed and yet filled to overflowing with life experience and hard earned wisdom, the sort that only the storms of life can birth. But experience and wisdom that can live on beyond us as we hand it onto the next generation … like seed sprinkled on fresh ground.

But the pod must be broken for the seed to be set free and in many ways it's the broken people who have the most to give. Those who’ve endured. The resilient souls who’ve been battered and bruised by the storms of life but not given up. People who faced life head on and lived it to the full. Time and life have matured them and their legacy is rich.

I love these pods hand painted by nature, appliqued with lichen and moss, knobbly and gnarled, as if life has adorned them with added beauty through the seasons of their existence. Oh that the wrinkles I see each morning in the mirror had the same degree of charm!

The more seedpods I photograph, the more amazed I am at the uniqueness of their detail and design and their multiplicity of styles … each handmade for its purpose. Some need a raging fire to open them up and some, a gentle breeze.

They remind me of people. There are the tough, rugged, no nonsense type that are hard to crack, the free spirited ones that have leaned to fly, and the wild, flamboyant ones that fire the imagination with their passion and energy. Sound like folks you know?

I wonder how fully we realise our uniqueness and how precious that is? Its hard for most of us to see ourselves as unique but to us has been given what no other person has ever had. Created for a purpose that no one else can fulfil in the way we can. It fills me with awe.

Dan Allender says, We are, in fact, a unique, once-on-the-earth life that reveals the story of Jesus in a fashion that no one else will ever do in the way we are written to reveal.

The acorn can’t give birth to a rose but it can give birth to a mighty oak. That challenges me to value my uniqueness, all of me, the bits I love and the frailties I wish could be otherwise. To celebrate the person God created me to be and not to want to follow the crowd or want to be other than who I am. I want to be the best version of myself, yet not I, but through Christ in me.

In the words of my new favourite song, "Oh Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer, may all my days bring glory to Your name."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpELMk4-3n8

2 Comments

A fathers gift

1/22/2019

1 Comment

I doubt there was ever anyone with less sporting prowess than me. My dread of the weekly school sports day was only surpassed by my dread of the twice-weekly Physical Education lessons. That was until one most fortunate day when I was taking something to the staff room at the end of lunch. The bell rang and the teachers began rushing back to classes. One of the teachers commented as she hurriedly washed her dishes, “We need a washing up fairy to do our dishes”. I quickly volunteered.

While washing up wasn’t my favourite pastime, as my mother would have told you, in comparison to jumping over one of those ridiculous vaulting horses or running for the umpteenth time around the playground, I took to it with relish. How I managed to make it last a full forty minutes or how the PE teacher let me get away with it I’m not quite sure. Maybe she was relieved that she didn’t have to watch me spread eagled over that damned vaulting horse yet again.

But even my furtive imagination couldn’t work out a way to get out of Friday afternoon sport. Pleading a dose of Bubonic plague did cross my mind. I don’t know which was worse, Tunnel ball, Captain’s ball, basketball or softball. I didn’t fair much better at throwing the javelin, shot-put or discus and the spectacle of me, legs and arms flying in all directions as I landed very short in the long jump, wasn’t a pretty sight.

I do remember getting quite excited about tennis at one stage. My grandmother was the president of the local Royal Blind Society and to raise funds for the organisation we would hire cushions to those watching tennis matches on hard benches at White City. We were then entitled to free entry and I got to see Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewell, Frank Sedgman and Rod Laver, in those wonderful days before professional tennis. It must have captured my imagination, so when tennis was offered as a Friday afternoon sport option, I took it. I did feel very guilty when my parents saved to buy me a tennis racket then after 10 weeks of getting my forehand and backhand decidedly muddled, I realised tennis wasn’t for me.

Golf fared a little better, I loved the green of the fairways and after we passed about the third hole, we would hide in a bunker until close to home time then rush back to the clubhouse breathless from all our hard work. Not that I avoided the game completely. Once on about the second hole I hit the ball so hard it went out of the course, across the road and into the garden of a nearby house. It was then I thought it was probably safer for everyone if I just relaxed in the bunker. Not sure what we did about our scorecards, probably made them up to pass the time away.

In my entire sporting life I only ever succeeded at one thing, hurdling. I have no idea why or how but I was able to fly over those hurdles with a certain degree of grace. I must say I wasn’t the only one surprised!

But school sport wasn’t the only nightmare. All year I looked forward to the Sunday school picnic, to the annual cream bun – a honey brown, soft sweet bun slashed across the top and filled with mock cream and raspberry jam. I shudder at the thought now, but as a child I thought it was so adventurous. The other highlight was the sandwiches made by the older ladies of the congregation. One lady cooked oodles of silverside, which she shredded and combined with copious amounts of tomato sauce and spread on fresh white bread, I still remember those sandwiches fondly.

But after lunch the nightmare began when I saw them getting our beanbags and ties for the three-legged race and of course the egg and spoon race. I was always grateful to the same elderly ladies who hardboiled the eggs the day before, otherwise I hate to think of the mess I’d have made each time I dropped the egg.

I must have been a great disappointment to my father who was a superb athlete, excelling in many sports, but if he was disappointed, he never showed it. He cheered me on in every endeavour and accepted me just the way I was. He loved me as much when I failed as when I succeeded, which gave me a great sense of freedom to try and explore and discover my strengths and talents.

I didn’t realise at the time what an enormous gift that was – life-changing in fact, to know I wasn’t defined by my failures and inabilities. He believed in me and helped me believe in myself and that anything is possible.

1 Comment

A shared table

1/15/2019

5 Comments

I choose cookbooks the way I choose wine. I remember searching a bottle shop on the Champs-Elysées in Paris with my daughter. We’d decided that wine was the most sensible souvenir to take back to friends and as neither of us knew a great deal about wine, we chose the bottles we considered had the most elegant labels.

But that’s me. I choose restaurants by their ambiance, fabric by its feel and cookbooks by their pictures. I simply would never buy a recipe book without images. Food is meant to be a visual feast so picture-less cookbooks make no sense to me.

Maybe it was those years in high school cookery classes, labouring over the picture-less Commonsense Cookbook, under the tutelage of two very stern and demanding older women who taught me the basics well but made me long for something more adventurous.

Once I began work I bought my very first cookbook, a long narrow, cream coloured edition the name of which I’ve long forgotten. As well as the recipes it had fine pen sketches of heritage buildings around Sydney. I thought it was the height of elegance and sophistication. It had none of the recipes I’d grown up with, junket, lemon sago and lambs fry and bacon. It had recipes with ingredients I’d never heard of but couldn’t wait to try.

I doubt my parents appreciate my new culinary endeavours, such a far cry from lamb cutlets and shepherd’s pie, but they didn’t say so. Maybe my mother was just glad to be out of the kitchen, cooking was a real chore for her, she much preferred the sewing room.

When I married I bought Everyday French Cooking for Australian Homes, quite exotic for the 1960s. Soupe au Potiron sounded so much more appetising than pumpkin soup, a la Provencale looked so much better on the menu than baked fish and what a radical thought to put pineapple with ham. But it was the desserts that captured my imagination and began in me a love affair with all things rich, decadent and creative.

From French cooking to The Cooking of Vienna’s Empire. What an adventure!
Sachertorte ... I made that with great enthusiasm many times and then in Vienna one summer I got to enjoy the real thing at the Hotel Sacher Wien. It was beyond amazing! It was created by a 16-year old apprentice pastry chef in 1832 for Prince Clemens Lothar Metternich. It became the most famous chocolate cake in Vienna. The apprentice became famous and it was his son who established the Hotel where I sat on that balmy summer evening and savoured dessert heaven.

Dobos Torte ... a creation consisting of seven cake layers, each cooked separately, joined together with chocolate cream and topped with a thin layer of toffee cut in wedges and arranged like the 'Opera House sails' with swirls of the chocolate cream supporting each 'sail'.

Apfelstrudelfullung ... time consuming but oh so yummy and Spanishe Windtorte, a baroque triumph in conception, design and execution … a meringue box with decorative outer case and lid, filled with strawberries, toasted hazelnuts, crushed macaroons and chocolate folded through sweetened cream. It took two days to make but it looked truly spectacular and tasted quite otherworldly. It became my favourite thing to make because it looked so beautiful with its crystallised violets adding the final touch.

These days as I thumb through my recipe file, the most precious ones are those in handwriting on scrapes of paper. Ones entitled, Sue’s Zucchini slice and Molly’s Christmas cake. Sue died some years ago but every time I make that recipe I think of her and the good times we shared. My cousin, Molly, and I travelled much of the world together and her recipes trigger a plethora of memories of places we’ve been and things we’ve done, all embodied in some ingredients on a page.

My mother’s handwritten recipe book is there too with her famous date loaf, no-cook afternoon tea fudge and London bun recipes, each page splattered with a generous sprinkle of flour and a good dash of dried butter. It reminds me that even though cooking was a chore for her she fed us with love and maybe more love than those for whom cooking is easy and pleasurable.

I will always enjoy the excitement of getting my hands on a new cookbook with enticing images, but food is about so much more than technique and good ingredients, it’s about relationship and sharing. Sharing my table with people I love and new friends I’m just getting to know.

Food is so fundamental to our very existence and somehow sharing a meal opens a door to sharing ourselves. I love that. I love that a simple sandwich, shared with love, can be as special as the most elegant French quiescence when it’s shared in relationship.

In many ways my recipe file is a story of my life. It resonates with the sounds of laughter and tears shared over long lunches, snatched moments for coffee and candlelight dinners. It’s overflowing with decades of friendships, recipes swapped, cooking tips passed on, celebrations and commiserations. It holds the best that life can offer, beyond money and possessions, the richest of life’s blessings, friendship, memories and love shared around a table.

5 Comments

Against all odds

1/8/2019

1 Comment

We have become war weary, Lalage Snow insists, and I think she’s right. Weary of a world at war, nations destroying each other in a quest for power, half a world of refugees that no one wants and in the next town and the next street, men and women hell bent on destroying each other.

As a war correspondent, Lalage has seen her share of violence and destruction. She’s seen the suffering and fear firsthand and paid the price emotionally from experiencing the horror of it all. But amidst the background of the senseless annihilation of towns and cities, she has met some resilient souls, men and women who refuse to give in and who’ve found solace and peace in creating a garden.

They’ve cleared enough of the rubble to encourage a rose to grow, to nurture a pot of red geranium and to plant a tree. Somehow they know that a garden nurtures the soul: provides a refuge, a place of comfort and peace despite the horror still surrounding them. In every seed there’s a kernel of hope. And maybe because they’ve experienced so much death, they do what they can to nurture life.

Reading Lalage’s book, War Gardens, it struck me that gardens transcend race, gender, cultures and class. They are equally available to the rich and the poor. The great palaces and Villas of Europe were surrounded with magnificent gardens as a sign of privilege or power. Every nation on earth has its public and botanic gardens, but gardening can be just as available to people of all walks of life and in every corner of the globe, even on a window ledge.

Villa D'Este, Rome

The everyday folk Lalage met in Kabul scrounged seeds wherever they could and persevered, despite the rubble and lack of water, to coax a garden into being, a reminder that there is life amongst death and destruction.

There’s a striking parallel between the resilience of nature and the resilience of the human spirit. The tree grows stronger through the force of the wind and the fury of the storm. Maybe that’s what gives these war weary souls the determination and optimism to find hope in transforming horror and ugliness into a remnant of beauty.

“The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.” Robert Jordan

None of us know what we are capable of until the storms of life have tested us, yet like the oak tree we so often resist the very force that will make us stronger.

A friend has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. She has a young family and she is pushing herself to extraordinary lengths to stay as strong and active for as long as possible for her children. I love her courage and determination.

Another friend has endured many years with a heart which functions at only 29% but he continues to throw himself into life, using his gifts to achieve what often seems impossible.

And then there is Archie of whom I wrote in September 2018. Major surgery for a brain tumour affected his sight, speech, walking, thinking and concentration. He is disciplining himself to learn to play golf, play the pipe organ and take drama classes to help the left side of his brain accommodate for the failures of the right side and regain some semblance of normality.

In the midst of the ravages of debilitating health they are defiantly ‘planting a garden in the rubble of disease’ … choosing life and beauty in place of ugliness and despair. That’s the resilience of the human spirit … the red geranium on the window ledge of our lives.

1 Comment

Got a minute

1/1/2019

1 Comment

Welcome to 2019 … 525,600 minutes of unlived time and you get to choose how you live them … with grace, hope, passion and love, with curiosity, creativity and a sense of wonder.

I like to think of New Year as an open gate onto an untrodden path. I love the excitement of not knowing what lays ahead, what challenges, what opportunities and what I might discover I’m capable of when I step out into that unknown.

One of my favourite games to play with my grandchildren is Got a Minute. It's a simple, clear Perspex cube containing 6 small ‘dice’ with letters on each face and an egg timer. Once the cube is inverted and the egg timer begins, the person who can make the most words from the letters facing upwards in that minute, wins.

It can be quite a challenge depending on the amount of vowels that turn up, but what constantly surprises me is the way we each manage to see different words from the same letters. It's a lot like life. We never know what’s going to turn up and sometimes we are thrown a less than desirable hand but the most important thing is what we see in the hand we are dealt and how we respond to it.

It's a bit like these gates. A gate is a gate one would think, but it all depends on your perspective. Some see it creatively and add a sense of whimsy, others see it as a work of art or a piece of craftsmanship while others make it out of what’s at hand and then there’s the purely practical souls who see only that it does its job.

Of course none of them are right or wrong, the gate still does the job, but each person offers something of themselves in the making and it will always say something about who they are and their perspective on life.

Unknowingly we paint a picture of ourselves in the way we live our lives.

Roald Dahl says, “Above all watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it”.

The magic of seeing someone’s soul as we take the time to observe their life and listen to their heart. For every soul is filled with magic if only we have the eyes to see and are willing to open the gate to our own heart.

So often we lock the gate to protect ourselves and safe and secure, we miss the magic.

May 2019 be for you the year of unlocked gates, open hearts and well trodden paths.

1 Comment

The acorn and the oak

A fathers gift

A shared table

Against all odds

Got a minute

Author

Archives

Categories