1 Corinthians 13: Speaking the Language of Love

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"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal."  1 Corinthians 13

I once believed I would like to learn all the languages in the world--or at least be fluent in fifteen or twenty of them.  Sounds lofty, right?  To be able to converse meaningully with the largest percentage of the world's people, enrich my own learning, and simply be able to say I was super-lingual.

Truth be told, I'm still only fluent in one language.  I've had years of time, and other desires and priorities took precedence, but it's a desire I remember every now and then, like when I read the first verse of "the love chapter".  Speaking the languages of people AND the language or languages of heaven?

I admit it.  I still like that idea.

Maybe not enough to run down and buy Rosetta Stone this afternoon, but enough to dig out my German dictionary or my old Spanish textbook for a little review.  When they and I are in the same state and all out of boxes, anyway.

I think a lot of us want to have something to say, and a lot of us wish we could learn these other languages to increase our ability to say the things we want to say.  We think if our vocabulary increases, and we incorporate an Alaskan native's myriad of words for natural wonders like snow, we could be that much clearer with our thoughts, our feelings, the ideas we convey.  Specifity seems clearer, and the more languages we would know, the more specific we could be, and thus perhaps the clearer we could be.

Then, we'd be understood.  We'd have something to contribute.  We'd be of value to those who hear our words.

 Paul, though, gives me something to ponder.

If I could speak all the languages of the world and of heaven--super fluently--and I had tons to say and I said it all well and I even had tons of relevant things to say and people who needed to hear them, did hear them.....

I could still be saying nothing, and I could still be blabbering meaningless sounds.

No matter how fluent I was.  No matter how carefully I chose the words.

Because it's not language and fluency and clarity and important things to say that give words meaning and make them worthwhile or beneficial, but love.

Motive matters, even when people around us only see the outward appearance.  God still sees the heart.  He sees whether all we say is motivated by love like everything He says is motivated by love, and how so often it's not, like everything Satan says is not.

And yet again I have a choice. 

Are my words going to represent Jesus, who is saving love personified, or are they going to represent His adversary--the devil, Satan--who day and night brings hateful accusations against the very ones Jesus seeks to save?  (See Revelation 12:10.)

If I want to have something meaningful to say in even one language, I had better choose the language of love.

This Week in the Home Gardens: Two Venues

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This Tomatillo Verde plant is not the tallest one, but to this point it carries the highest number of baby tomatillo fruits.  Of course, I'm showing you the biggest fruit, the way it looked a few days ago.

 

 

These zinnias came from {very} old seeds, and are growing in the mother-in-law garden.  Which is also the father-in-law garden, of course, now that fishing season in Alaska is over.  I'm still amazed they grew, and it's fun to be visiting right when they're beginning to bloom.

 

 

We planted sunflowers in two gardens.  In one garden, a cutworm or some such evil creature ate all but one of them.  In the other garden, all of the sunflowers are at least up to my neck, and some are taller than my head.  The tall ones seem to love the location with more full sun than I was able to provide in the other location, as well as soil that has been faithfully composted for several years rather than the soil that is just getting its first start in supporting these large forms of life.

 

 

Our potato experiment:  I've seen on Pinterest all kind of ideas for providing potato plants with a lot of soil in which to grow more potatoes that if they are just stuck in the ground in a row.  I have no report on how it's going--I just know the plants have grown amazingly tall, and we're all hoping there are as many tubers underneath the ground as there are beautiful leaves above their cage. 

 

 

The basil plants in both gardens still look small; however, we've been following a particular pruning method that multiplies the number of stems per plant.  Thus, each pruning returns a bigger harvest.  We have yet to experience a gigantic harvest, but it does increase each time.  Which makes us happy, and makes for a good mess of tomato-basil goodness. 

Lentil Eggplant Stew Recipe (Vegan, Gluten Free)

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I don't think it would be possible for me to own too many cookbooks, or have too many recipes in my box, or too many food ideas pinned on my Pinterest boards.  Are you with me?

A woman I met last year suggested a cookbook party--we'd all bring our favorite cookbooks, and look at them together.  That's it.  No cooking, just idea gathering.  No mess, just beautiful photos of mouth-watering food. 

If we had further developed the idea, perhaps we would have had a potluck of a few recipes to go with our looking, or asked our husbands to cook us a meal, or brown bagged it, because I'm sure we couldn't have gotten away with a total lack of food at a cookbook party.

But doesn't it sound fun? 

It did to me.  I could read cookbooks for hours.





Thus when my dad hollered from the other room that he had something to show me, and I came in with no idea what it might be, and looked at old family photo albums and prints and talked about whose faces were whose, a little wooden box at the bottom especially intrigued me. 

I opened it, of course, to find a small treasury of recipe cards.  Which was especially exciting, because as I understand it, my grandmother fed her family a vegan diet long before such a thing would have been easy.  Or normal.

Right then and there, I resolved to try the recipes in her box for myself.  Well, maybe not ALL of them.  But certainly to read them all, as I would a cookbook at a cookbook party, and try a few at least.  It's a tangible connection to family history, right?

Well, maybe not so much as I imagined--my dad says he does not remember the Lentil Eggplant Stew at all.  That just meant I tried the recipe when he wasn't home, on a day when the temperatures were a frigid seventy-ish degrees with clouds in the sky and soup with toast and home-made low-sugar plum jam sounded delicious.  (You know, since he wouldn't feel left out of a childhood memory or something.)

It's definitely a lentil stew I would make again.

Lentil Eggplant Stew

1 pound lentils

1 bay leaf 

dash salt

Cover with water, bring to a boil.

1 onion, chopped

2 sticks celery, chopped

3 carrots, chopped

1 eggplant, peeled and chopped in small cubes

Saute vegetables in 2 T olive oil.  Add the vegetables to the lentils, then add:

 

6 oz can tomato paste or 1 1/2 c chopped tomatoes (I used one can of stewed tomatoes)

dash dried basil

dash dried oregano

1/4 t cinnamon (or use coriander if you prefer not to use cinnamon)

1/4 c lemon juice (originally the recipe called for vinegar, but I don't cook with vinegar)

Simmer until all vegetables are soft.  Serve with crackers, toast, or a veggie platter on the side.

How to Avoid Marital Conflict

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View of The Gorge, Oregon (and Washington, across the Columbia River)

"Be kindly considerate of each other’s feelings, and seek to sacredly guard each other’s happiness. You can do this only in the strength and name of Jesus...Make it a rule never to speak a word of censure to each other, but commend and praise whenever you can."
White, Ellen G.  Testimonies for the Church, volume 4, 241-242

Well-rooted Hiking Trail
(credit to husband for the beautiful photo)

"When either of you feels the rising of resentment, make it a rule to go by yourself and humbly pray to God, who will hearken to the prayer which goeth not forth from feigned lips...Every passion must be under the control of enlightened conscience. 'Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful.'"
White, Ellen G.  Testimonies for the Church, volume 4, 243.

 

One of ten waterfalls along our five-mile loop (credit to husband for the beautiful photo)

"If you live upon the plan of addition, adding grace to grace, God will multiply unto you His grace. While you add, God multiplies. If you cherish a habitual impression that God sees and hears all that you do and say, and keeps a faithful record of all your words and actions, and that you must meet it all, then in all you do and say you will seek to follow the dictates of an enlightened and wakeful conscience. Your tongue will be used to the glory of God and will be a source of blessing to yourself and to others."
White, Ellen G.  Testimonies for the Church, volume 4, 244.

Making Low-Sugar Plum Jam

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A girl I met picking plums last week said she likes to make plum syrup and plum jam.  

 

I'll spare you the story of how I ended up there picking plums to begin with, except to say that four adults were out under the trees picking plums for which we had no plan.  Does that seem crazy?  Not in our family.  When we know of food to be harvested, we go do it.  Then we wonder what we'll do with all the stuff we just brought home.

 

Thus we heard her ideas with some relief mixed with sparkling eyes as we thought, That's a really good idea.  Maybe we should have brought buckets instead of bowls like she did.

 

Thing is, sometimes we get home, even with a good idea in our heads, and run out of time to actually do that idea.  Especially when we get home only a few minutes before Sabbath sundown and there are twenty-four hours left before we will be doing any major kitchen work, and the day after that is the all-day air show and the day after that almost everybody goes back to work for the week.

 

Which leaves me. 

Me, with a pile of tiny but tasty plums, and only the internet available to teach me how to make plum jam.  Or syrup.  And I decide that since I made strawberry jam in the spring for the first time, plum jam can't be any harder than all that except for this being alone in the kitchen thing, and the these-things-all-have-pits thing.

Being cautious about acid levels in canning like I am, I read the pectin label and ended up confused:  should I use lemon juice, or not?  Perusing various plum jam recipes on the Ball Canning web site, I at length settled on this one, Jam Maker Plum Jam--Low Sugar.

I'm a little relieved to see today, after the fact, it really did tell me I could make this recipe and then use a water bath to can them.  (You can also use it fresh or freeze it--all of the preservation methods they recommend are found here.)  Because that's what I did the other day.  Anyway, I'll let you visit their links to get the recipe and more detailed instructions.

We all liked the result, with these observations:

• Making the jam without blanching or peeling the plums gave it a tangy, slightly sour taste.
• Making the jam with a generic recipe from the pectin bottle (which would have added some fruit juice concentrate to the mix instead of just sugar) might work well, since it would offset the slight sour a little more.
• Making plum jam out of small plums with only one person on duty takes forever.  Enlist help next time.  The jam process was not nearly so long as the pitting process.

Grandma Remembers her Mother's Garden

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Queen Anne's Lace

 My dad and I recently visited with my grandmother a state away.  She's really quite forgetful, but still has a delightfully large capacity to enjoy the beauty of nature and gardening.

I'm not sure whether I planned for this, or whether the moment simply struck right, but as we sat there, it dawned on me that she might be just the person to look through every page of the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds 2013 catalog with me.

She marveled over every page, amazed at how many varieties of each vegetable they sell, how much work it must have taken them to put together such a gorgeous catalog, and how they told the stories of seed history within the pages.  Our mouths watered over recipes, and our eyes danced over each new photo of a tomato or flower.

I think it took us two or three hours, and it wasn't long before I realized I needed a little notebook and a pen, because as we looked, she seemed to remember little details from her childhood and her mother's garden in Tennessee.  I haven't checked the facts with anybody else who might be able to confirm or deny her reports--although I would LOVE to hear more--so these tidbits feel a little random.  Just like the photo of Queen Anne's Lace, above.  It's not connected to anything she told me about the childhood garden.  It's just a pretty flower.

Shall we start our walk through Great Grandmother's garden together?

• Great Grandmother used to make pickled beets.
• Great Grandmother grew celery.  It grew well in the spring, Grandma remembers.  But back then, they just grew one kind--they didn't have so many varieties as Baker Creek does.
• Great Grandmother grew her own popcorn.  You have to dry it, shuck it, and take it off the ear.  They had a round thing with a hand crank to pop it in.  "We used to love to make popcorn," says Grandma.  
• Great Grandmother grew several kinds of gourds.  The family would let them dry, and use them for drinking cups--"you know, the drinking gourd," says Grandma.
• Great Grandmother used to save all her seeds.  Dad remembers them saving tomato and pepper seeds in particular.
• Great Grandmother grew up on a farm.  (I didn't know that before!)
• Great Grandmother and Grandfather rented half a town block for the garden, and "made it produce beautifully."

It's not much, but for me, it's a fascinatingly tiny window into my great grandparents' garden, where my grandmother got her love for all things growing.  Quite possibly, the roots of my own garden love were passed down from that half of a town block, or that farm where Great Grandmother grew up.

Have you ever asked your grandparents about their gardens?  What did you learn about your own history when you did?  I'd love to hear from you!

This Week in the Garden: Tomato Surprise

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Above you can see our large Common Thyme plant.  What?  You couldn't tell it was large?  I feel proud of how many branches it has growing off its main stem.  This is the one we pruned when it was truly a baby, and even though I know it's still only little one, well, it moved a lot as a baby.

 

This is our small Common Thyme Plant.  It's the one we didn't prune.  It's also the one that got left in its cardboard tube when I planted it.  I don't remember why--some of the plants just seemed more stable that way at the time, I guess.  My husband believes that's the reason it's still so much smaller than the other one.  He might be right.

 

Here is the Japanese White Egg.  If you've been reading the weekly garden posts for a while, you know it's a lot bigger than it was to begin with.

 

 Here are my carrot re-plants, which I slipped under some dirt two weeks ago today.  The first ones didn't come up at all, and we never did figure out why, exactly.  The garden changed hands a few times back then, so nobody blamed anybody and we started over.  The second time, I chose the seed packets that were a) still left in the store and b) harvestable in fifty-two days.  That was the shortest time available.  I'm sorry to say they're not heirlooms, but a girl does what a girl has to do when it's July 17 and none of her (also non-heirloom) carrots have come up.

 

George Washington's Love Lies Bleeding plants seem to like it where I put them.  Believe it or not, I've already thinned out about a million.  Maybe I should remove a few more?  It just seems so barbaric, this ripping plants out of the ground just to arbitrarily make space for another one.  Ok.  So I'm not THAT emotional about it.

 

One of the mystery peppers, looking more like a real plant every day.

 

For a few weeks, I had this nagging feeling I was forgetting to plant something.  When the peas I planted didn't come up, I realized I still had okra to put in the ground, and I put the okra in the peas' place.  I know it may be way too late in the season to do this, but I had never grown okra before.  The seeds were a gift to my dad, and without asking I threw them in, watered them, and waited.  So far, so good.  I hope they at least bloom before first frost.

 

Some respectable leaves beginning to show on the Wild Zaatar Oregano.

A good view of the pruning process, shortly after pruning the original main stem.  Now two stems are branching off where there would have been only one before.  Once they get a little higher, we'll prune them, and have four stems instead of two.  Then eight, then sixteen....exponential growth in the garden seems like a great idea.

The tomatillo patch = the largest thing in the garden.  Isn't it lovely?  I keep worrying that none of the flowers will come to full fruit.  Is that a weird thing to worry about?  Sure seems like that would be one thing I would let go of for the bigger things in life.

Tomatillo blossoms.

Did I tell you this particular tomato patch (I have three, which I'm hoping are planted according to variety) is planted in a hole where a little evergreen tree used to grow?  My brother dug it out for my mom, who was overjoyed at the chance to get rid of it.  The tomatoes have seemed happy to be in its hole, and have grown a little faster than the tomatoes in the other patches.

 

Aren't they a beautiful work of art?  Today my husband found blossoms beginning on some of the tomato plants, and upon further inspection we found them on just about every plant.  Isn't that a nice surprise?

Thanks again for tagging along as I wander through our little garden, and document the progress (and maybe a few things we learn as we go).  I hope it's fun for you like it is for me.  :)

How are things in your garden?