Immeasurably More

Dear Reader, I disguise my tendencies toward retail therapy by buying practical things that will enhance my life.* This week, after listening to the twitterpated stories of two good friends and seeing my cousin's engagement photo on Facebook, I decided the best thing I could do for myself was to accept the fact that I'm going to continue to be single for a long time.** And having accepted this as fact,  I knew I MUST IMMEDIATELY have an appropriate cookbook, one that wouldn't leave me eating the same leftovers every night for a week. I walked with purpose to my favorite of the three local bookstores.*** I told them I was there for a cooking-for-one cookbook. The proprietress thought they used to have one. The proprietor thought they had sold it. The proprietress thought she would just double check.  She remembered seeing something over here... What she found was The Complete Cooking For Two Cookbook. I considered:  I've liked some other America's T

I've never NOT lived in furnished housing.*  But "furnished apartment" means someone else is going to decided what you sleep on, where you put your clothes and what you cook with.  And every time you move, you sleep differently, fold your clothes to different sizes and re-consider your recipes. To minimize the amount of stuff I'm hauling around the country, I restricted myself to two cookbooks - one specifically about cakes (hooray!) and the other a bound year's worth of Cook's Country magazines**.  After a week of eating dinner out (or eating leftovers from dinners out), I sat down with Cook's Country to find a recipe for the weekend.  A few pictures caught my eye, but the recipes were disheartening; first, brown on the stove, then transfer to the oven. While I have no complaints about the basic equipment in my current kitchen - all major and most minor appliances are provided - it's certainly fair to say the intended lodger is here for short s

Jayne and I had decided to blow off work and talk about men in a way we never would have done when we were younger and more responsible.  (Actually, our bosses had pre-approved the vacation time if not the conversation, but I like to think that after sensible teenage and young adult years, we still have a chance of turning into carefree middle aged rebels.)  Jayne was sharing with me the surprise some people had expressed when they learned she was getting divorced and how that had opened her eyes to the compartmentalization in her life; in this case, that her marriage had been slowly deteriorating but she didn't talk about this with anyone - even close friends. I asked Jayne how many "boxes" she had.   "5 - 1 for work, 1 for family, 1 specifically for my ex, 1 for Christian friends, and 1 for non-Christan friends." As she finished, I saw myself 6 months ago.   I was having morning coffee with a friend and my phone beeped its daily 9 am reminder.  My

Dear Reader, Two years after moving to England, I had almost given up hope of finding a church where I would feel at home.  I had visited six churches, two of which I attended regularly for several months, but none of them gave me a feeling of having found "my people".  I was prepared to give up the search, but on a sunny Sunday morning, I made a deal with myself.  I didn't want to go to church, but I did want to have a long walk by the river.  In this case, I could walk along the river to church and even if nothing came of the church visit, I would still have gotten what I really wanted from the morning.  Many sunny (and rainy!) walks later, I was a member and active participant in that little church.  It is anecdotal, to be sure, but perhaps evidence all the same that God calls to us through the things we find beautiful and take pleasure in. Recently, I was asked if I had visited any of the local churches here in my Maine hometown.  I answered that I have not and t

Dear Reader, It started with a simple question.  "Do you like oysters?" My friend Elle had come to see me in Maine for the 4th of July weekend and we were driving along the coast when we passed a restaurant advertising all varieties of seafood including oysters.  Thus the question. Elle admitted that she had never tried oysters but felt that she probably should.  We agreed that it would be awkward to try oysters for the first time while on a date with a refined oyster lover.  If one gagged on the slimey blob, one's romantic destiny might be affected.  And so we agreed that some night when we were out together we would order an oyster each and find out whether we enjoyed eating them. The opportunity came sooner than we expected; the restaurant we chose for dinner had a Raw Bar menu.  Jayne, the third member of our dinner party had also never eaten oysters, so we ordered half a dozen which were delivered in due course with lemon and horseradish. Before we bega

Dear Reader, Sometimes, when we hear the same thing said over and over, we can remember the words and forget the meaning.  For me, this often happens with particularly popular passages from the Bible.  Usually, I read the NIV translation, but this summer I am reading through a translation of the New Testament by JB Phillips.  I particularly like his translation of 1 Corinthians 13 - the Love Chapter - which is often read at weddings but is, in fact, applicable to any type of relationship, even our relationship to ourselves.  And so I thought to share it with you. With Love, ~~ LeAn This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience - it looks for a way of being constructive .  It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance. Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage.   It is not touchy.  It does not compile statistics of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people.  On the contrary,

Dear Reader, I came to New England in anticipation of the autumn colors, but the first leaf has fallen sooner than I expected. Willing to wait for the rest, ~~ LeAn