Dear Friends,
We invite you to sojourn with us in contemplation this Advent Season.
Today's Meditation features Carrie Newcomer reflecting on making Holiday Cookies--"It's Gonna Take A Miracle."
We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in the church, in healthcare, in the workplace--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.
In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that it is God's economy of abundance: when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.
We hope and pray that you find peace, healing, hope and the infusion of joy in your life!
With our love and care,
Ron and Jean
MEDITATION 860: Carrie Newcomer: "It's Gonna Take a Miracle"
Holiday Essay
Its Gonna Take A Miracle.
CARRIE NEWCOMER
DEC 11
Einstein said, “We can choose to look at the world in one of two ways “as if nothing is a miracle, or as if everything is a miracle.”
I spent today making rosettes. Rosettes are a type of traditional Italian Christmas cookie that my grandmother, Sarah, taught me to make when I was a young woman. This skill had been passed from mother to daughter to granddaughter for as far back as anyone in the family can remember. Every holiday my grandmother would make hundreds of these cookies. She would carefully place them in cardboard shirt boxes lined with paper napkins to be taken to holiday parties and given away as gifts. Most of the recipients had no idea of the time and care it took to make them. It was her private ritual and a secret extravagance of love. Every holiday season I continue the tradition of making hundreds of rosettes, giving them to family and friends gently packed in shirt boxes lined with paper napkins.
To make a rosette cookie one needs vegetable oil, a cast iron skillet, milk, eggs, flour, a dash of sugar, vanilla, and a special rosette iron. The irons consist of a rosette mold that screws onto a 7-inch long metal rod fitted with a wooden handle. The irons I use are in the shape of butterflies and snowflakes. The first step is to heat the hot vegetable oil (which will be used in to deep-frying the cookies) to nearly 400 degrees. I use the modern marvel of an electric wok, which keeps the temperature steady and allows me fry up to eight cookies at a time. But my grand mother always used a small cast iron skillet that was barely big enough for one rosette. Next you beat the eggs, milk, flour, a little sugar, salt and vanilla until the mixture is smooth and the consistency of a thick pancake batter. The rosette iron is dipped into the batter and plunged gracefully into the hot oil. If all factors are perfect, if the batter is the right consistency, If the batter and iron are properly warmed, if the oil is not too hot or too cold, if the iron is not dipped in the batter too deeply, and the iron coated with batter is bounced just so in the hot oil, then the batter will blossom off the iron like a beautiful cream colored flower. After this blossoming the sizzling cookie is fried until golden on one side, turned with a fork to brown on the other side. When both sides are golden, then the delicate cookie is lifted carefully from the oil and placed on paper towels or a clean newspaper to dry. The cookie is cooled and dried, dusted with a bit of powdered sugar and finally placed in a shirt box lined with paper napkins.
Everything must be just so. If the batter is too thin it will not hold together. If the oil is too hot, it will burn the batter immediately to the iron, causing the cookie maker to scrape the iron clean with a knife before trying again. If the irons are too cool then the batter slides off, if the irons are too hot, once again the batter will bake onto the metal before it has a chance to blossom. As the batter gets used up, it’s temperature and consistency changes, which must be taken into account. The same can be said about the oil. So many things can go wrong in the process. My grandmother told me that rosette cookies cannot be made quickly. You must lay out everything carefully and keep track of the temperatures. You must be relaxed as you dip the irons in and out of the oil, as if you didn’t care whether they blossomed or burned. She said to make Rosettes you must be patient and while you are creating the cookies it is good to think of all the people you love, and all the shirt boxes you will give them. She told me it helped to sing and that humming made the batter sweeter. She told me all these things in great seriousness. Then she said if you burn the batter it doesn’t help to swear, and if you must swear do it in Italian.
It is a wonder that anyone of sound mind would devise a confection that required so many things to all go right to be realized. It is a miracle that these cookies happen at all. So every year, I take a day and faithfully make the rosettes. It has become for me a ritual as deep and powerful as counting the beads of a rosary or mala.
Crack an egg, hum a tune.
Pour the milk, say a prayer.
Dip the iron, breathe deep.
Turn the blossom, breathe again.
Think of someone I love.
Smile.
Lay the cookie in the shirtbox.
That first afternoon making cookies with my grandmother was a rite of passage. I was home from college for the holidays. My grandmother was visiting my parents home and told me it was time to learn the good graces of hot oil and patience employed for a purpose. We stood together at my mother GE electric stove in cotton aprons, with the strings wrapped around and brought back to the front and tied in a small bow. My grandmother led me patiently through the ritual steps, showing me with a graceful turn of her wrist how the whole process (when working perfectly) resulted in a blossom of batter that expanded to the edges of the skillet. She showed me, with the patience of age, how to make one cookie at a time, not thinking about laundry or student loans or anything but the matter and batter at hand. She showed me how good rosettes are made with very few ingredients and even though they are lighter than air are exceedingly rich. Rosettes are like songs or kindness or love in that way. They are so simple: flour, milk, eggs and a dash of sugar and vanilla. They are almost weightless and the result of a perfect combination of time, intent and patience.
We can choose to see the world as if nothing is a miracle or as if everything is a miracle.
We can choose to live on store bought cookies, which are serviceable enough and made sweet with much sugar. We can believe in cookies dipped by hand and composed almost entirely of air, made by time and patience and laid out with love in a shirt box lined with paper napkins. We can see the leaves of a tree unfurl each spring like shy and tender green fingers, watch them grow thick and green and lean out into world. We can watch these same leaves become weary of blooming, burst into bright color and finally slip quietly to the earth, floating this way that until coming to rest on the damp autumn ground. We can see the cycle of a leaf as ordinary the result of sunlight, season, carbon and oxygen. Or we can see it as a stunning complexity, a joyous interactive dance that only could have happened with exactly the perfect combination of time, temperature, patience and purpose.
That first afternoon making rosettes with my grandmother I had to scrape off many a failed attempt at blossoming. I remember asking my grandmother, “Will I ever get the hang of this?” She smiled and laughed and said, “Honey, it’s gonna take a miracle.”
But as Einstein so wisely observed, we choose the frame in which we see the world. And so I keep making cookies. I keep counting on miracles. And miracles just keep coming.
Guess who is waiting for a crumbled piece! As soon as Ella hears the rosette irons clanking out of their bag she comes running :-)
Upcoming Events
This Advent we invite you to join us in reflecting on the Freedom Poetry of Advent as offered to us by the work of Maya Angelou. The introduction to this time of reflection includes a quote from Maya:
“I’m always amazed when people walk up to me and say, ‘I’m a Christian.’ I think, ‘Already? You already got it?’ I’m working at it, which means that I try to be kind and fair and generous and respectful and courteous to every human being.” + Maya Angelou
If you are seeking a prayerful focus for Advent, and Maya's works speak to your spirit, we hope that you will join us! We will gather for one hour each Wednesday of Advent (from 7:00-8:00PM) during Advent sharing on the suggested scripture verse, along with the poem by Maya selected for the week, and proposed practices for us to further integrate the sacred messages. You will find Digital and Print options for the Prayer Guide attached to this email.
The link will be the same link we use every Sunday for Eucharist. We will send it out again on Wednesday.