Monthly Archives: January 2021

Spiritual Practice At Home: An Introduction

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At the beginning of the pandemic, I started baking bread. Since that time I have collected many of the receipes in a small binder, being the person I am, I wrote an introduction to that Binder, this is that introduction.

I was with my grandmother one afternoon; I am not sure where we were going but we meandered by Jones St. Outside of Wheeling West Virginia to the apartment she and my grandfather lived in when they were first married. She told me rent was 30 dollars, 15 to be paid twice a month. She talked about the months when there wasn’t enough money or work to go around. In these times she would say to my grandfather, “I can’t afford food and rent, what should I do?”

He responded saying, “Pay the rent, buy flour, and I will make bread.”

I don’t remember much about this context, I don’t remember why we were talking about it, but the strangest thing I do remember while listening to her, is that she told this story as if she were reliving every moment in her head. She wasn’t sad , or angry about it, she was simply thoughtful.

My grandmother had a pantry, full of canned vegetables, fruits, and all other things necessary to survive. Today a “prepper” might call it a 6-month pantry, she just called it the basement. They grew their own food, canned their own vegetables, and once a year made a giant batch of applesauce. If I were to ask her why they did it all I am sure she wouldn’t understand the question she would just say something like, “That’s just what we did.” I know looking back, that she grew up during the great depression, and that the memories of hard times were burned into her being, she came from a generation that truly understood that all jobs, money, and security were passing. What held her together, was her family, her faith, and trust that even if the worst happened, she was not alone.

I don’t think my generation understood that, and I don’t know if the generation before me did either. But the generation that are children now… they may know better than ever, life can be turned upside down in an instant, and in moments systems can fail. I wonder if they will be more like my grandparents, I wonder if they will have pantries full of home-grown vegetables, and applesauce.

When the nation went under quarantine for Covid-19 I thought about my grandmother as I read through Facebook and saw someone post a recipe to make a sourdough starter. I had time and I didn’t have anywhere to go. So I thought of my grandmother’s story and my grandfather’s words, “Pay the rent, buy flour, and I will make bread.” But I never asked Grandma while she was alive, so I had to learn now, how to bake bread.

These recipes did not come from Grandma, they came from the internet and from friends. They are my process to baking bread.

Chewing and the Art of Biting off Too Much.

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Like many of you the most recent pandemic has been very difficult for me. I learned a lot about myself, most of which is that I was not prepared to live though a pandemic. During this time, I often found that I was keeping myself busy. During times like this I often learn something new and continue to work through older things I’ve learned. Basically, I pick up hobbies. I did find however, that through quarantine I struggled with my depression and anxiety. And just in case you are curious, I don’t bare shame about my depression and anxiety. In fact, I am open about them. I choose, as a minister and all-around human being, to be open about them because of social stigma around mental health. Mental health is no different than any other health issue, in fact the refusal to practice self-care around mental health exacerbates other issues you may have. But that isn’t the topic I have chosen for today.

As a religious person, I try to practice spirituality, you might have heard this called spiritual practice. One of the ways I do this is through living authentically. Jean-Paul Sartre once said, “My life and my philosophy are one and the same.” When I consider spiritual practice, I think of Brother Lawrence and Saint Therese Lafleur. I think of my life lived as spiritual practice, also what makes me feel alive. The biggest thing that helps me through difficult time is throwing myself into something I’ve never done and learning a moderate proficiency in it. Often these are the things I post about in my blogs. The problem is that during the pandemic I started to learn a lot of different things, and the one thing I didn’t feel like was processing those things spiritually.

I had plans, during the pandemic do write about my Commodore 64, but before I could I started baking. I actually prepared some articles on the baking but before them I threw myself into a live action role playing game called “Call of Cthulhu.” I was considering an article on that, when I began to work on my ham radio license.

While all this was happening, I lost two canine members of the family, you may have seen my post about Princess, two weeks later we lost our friend Gizmo, he was a shock, his death broke me. Oh and there was work, adapting the church to a fully online model took a lot of time. I no longer just though about how to have a service, but how to do it livestreaming and archiving legally.

However, having said all of that, I hope to still add posts about bread baking, my Commodore 64, RPG, Ham Radio, spirituality, and even my friend Gizmo. I am beginning to feel renewed, let’s hope for a while.