The wrong song

In a week when I'm scheduled within an inch of my life, Peggy Seeger's "Lady, What Do You Do All Day?" was the wrong choice of train listening this morning.

On my way home I shop for the dinner
And then have a tidy around
Billy comes in, sits down with the paper,
says "Girl, don't you ever sit down?"
Men of the world, would you think it was right,
Think it was strange, think it was funny
To slog every night at a job for free
After slogging all day for your money?

To be fair, Jeff works more hours than I do, and he did the last grocery run and the last cooking.

Banana bread pudding with caramel sauce

My new favorite thing.

Caramel sauce
Stir together in a small saucepan:

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water

Let it cook over medium heat, not stirring, until it's deep amber colored. Remove from heat and stir in:

1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup milk

Keep in a jar in the fridge and eat on ice cream, apple slices, etc.

Banana bread pudding
This is bread pudding with bananas, not pudding made from banana bread. In a greased 9x9 pan, stir together:

2 mashed bananas
2 cups bread crumbs (I used a large bagel cut into chunks)
3 eggs
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
dash salt
enough milk to cover most of the bread
a drizzle of the caramel sauce - as much as you want

Bake at 350 until it's not too gloppy anymore . . . 30 - 45 minutes. Serve with vanilla ice cream and more caramel sauce.

Blast from the past

Quiz: who wrote this quasi-feminist text, and when?

Let us compare, if it pleases you, the advantages of married women with that which awaits virgins. Though the noble woman boasts of her abundant offspring, yet the more she bears the more she endures. Let her count up the comforts of her children, but let her likewise count up the troubles. She marries and weeps. How many vows does she make with tears. She conceives, and her fruitfulness brings her trouble before offspring. She brings forth and is ill. How sweet a pledge which begins with danger and ends in danger, which will cause pain before pleasure! It is purchased by perils, and is not possessed at her own will.

Why speak of the troubles of nursing, training, and marrying? These are the miseries of those who are fortunate. A mother has heirs, but it increases her sorrows. For we must not speak of adversity, lest the minds of the holiest parents tremble. Consider, my sister, how hard it must be to bear what one must not speak of. ("The problem that has no name", anyone?)

Why should I further speak of the painful ministrations and services due to their husbands from wives, to whom before slaves God gave the command to serve?

. . . . They paint their faces with various colors, fearing not to please their husbands. . . . What madness is here, to change the fashion of nature and seek a painting, and while fearing a husband’s judgment to give up their own. For she is the first to speak against herself who wishes to change that which is natural to her. So, while studying to please others, she displeases herself.

And the answer is . . . Saint Ambrose, writing to his sister in the year 377. Christianity has spent a lot of energy pushing wife- and motherhood as women's true roles. Yet when they would rather promote virginity, it's easy to point out how the roles trap and pain women.

"While studying to please others, she displeases herself." Ouch.

There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?

I'm in charge of the Quaker meeting's Christmas pageant again. Last year someone decided the kids were going to do a mummer's play (traditional English pub play done at Christmastime, in which Saint George fights with a dragon, is slain, and gets raised from the dead). She then failed to show up for the rest of December, leaving me holding the reins. After that I figured I could do it a second year.

The kids first suggested doing the mummer's play again, mostly because they liked the dragon. Then they changed their minds and settled on doing the nativity story from the viewpoint of the animals present, provided they could pick the animals. Currently we have a camel, three dogs, a monkey, a snake, a colony of ants, and . . . a dragon. The good news is we have another month to figure out what the dragon was doing there.

Half an onion

Today when cooking dinner I used half an onion and put the other half in the fridge. I haven't done that in at least three years.

Know what that means? Jeff and I don't live with his parents any more. This week we moved to 380 square feet of our own in Cambridge. I come home and the door is locked because nobody is home before me. Not even a cat. When I cook dinner, there are just two of us to eat it. There's no point in cutting up a whole onion. Jeff doesn't even like onions.

I've been really committed to the idea of living in community ever since I figured out what it was. I've done the vegan women's student co-op, the Quaker center, and the summer camp. I've lived with three different families I'm not related to. I really think group living can be good for children, good for parents, good for old people, good for the environment, good for living cheaply. But here I am in an apartment, in a building full of people I haven't even made eye contact with.

I spent the first twenty-four hours crying. But it's something we need to try. (And eventually the apartment won't be covered in cardboard boxes.)

Knock and it shall be opened?

The New England branch of Quakers is rewriting its book Faith and Practice. This month we were asked to provide feedback for a chapter on worship, starting with this:

Any willing person may come into communion with the Divine without special
ritual, at any time, in any place, under any external circumstance. All that is
required is desire, humility, and a willingness to wait for the Teacher who is
beyond time to come and teach in the present moment. The heart of the life of
the Religious Society of Friends is the communal meeting for worship. It is here
that we have the opportunity to experience the Sacred Presence in a way that
draws us into community and informs our lives, both as individuals and as a
religious body. Vital worship depends far more on a deeply felt longing for God
than on any particular practice.

Upon hearing these words read in business meeting last week, I felt grief at how much they differed from my experience.

In the seven years I’ve attended Friends’ meetings, I’ve never sensed the divine (either in or out of meeting). No meeting for worship has ever felt “gathered” to me. Maybe seven years isn’t long enough, or maybe I’m doing something wrong. I’ve certainly spent a good portion of worship time distracted, but I understand this happens to the best of Quakers.

From what I have heard people of faith say about their spiritual lives, I believe that they are genuinely experiencing something deep and powerful. I don’t think they’re making it up. But I have never tasted it.

During my year at Pendle Hill I described this situation to two Friends. One, from an evangelical meeting in Kenya, answered that I needed to pray harder. The other, from a liberal meeting in California, told me I was so in touch with the universal divine that I wasn’t even sensing it as a separate entity. Neither answer felt particularly helpful to me.

This is the truth I understand: there is no guarantee I will ever experience the divine. Maybe God has me written into her calendar for next Tuesday, and if I am paying attention then I will finally sense her. Maybe it will happen in a few decades. But maybe never.

I don’t expect Quakerism to bend over backwards to include nontheists like me. After all, as this chapter points out, worship is the heart of Quakerism. But it’s painful to hear my experience denied. Perhaps the intended meaning of this paragraph is “nothing outward is required to experience God - no clergy, no special ritual.” But that doesn’t mean that it will definitely happen. Some of us knock at that door and never make it inside.