Tomorrow I will embark on a new culinary journey: the rice krispy treat. I know, I know, it should be a staple in every mother’s toolbox, but it wasn’t a childhood favorite in our house so I never really attempted to hone the skill. I did make an effort at a Christmas tree krispy treat, but failed within the first 2 steps. That’s right, somewhere in between melting butter and melting marshmallows. I attributed the failure to the fact that my intentions were to send the treat to school with the husband and well, those kids didn’t deserve a treat anyway.
But when I called my cousin to find out what I could contribute as they will be spending the weekend amid the mourning activities of calling hours, family & friend time and the funeral, her immediate response was “LBW will be thrilled with a rice krispy treat.” I tried to explain away my previous failures and offer up opportunity to pick her own favorite, to which she replied “I would be thrilled with a rice krispy treat.” Oh, the pressure.
So I ventered to the downtown GreatScot for both a box of generic rice krispies and a bag of Jet Puffs. I’ve been gathering tips for success on the “world’s easiest cookie.” I’ve heard:
Don’t overcook the marshmallows. (How do you know when THAT happens?)
Use fresh krispies. I hope this doesn’t disqualify the generic.
Cut immediately.
Use plenty of butter.
So tomorrow we’ll give it the ol’ college alumni try. I really wish that I could convince the girls that they’d prefer a cake or brownie, but they know what they like. And I feel that the best – and the most – I can do at this time is learn to melt a ‘mallow. I may not have the words to express my condolences or the means to show my support, but by golly I can figure out a way to make these 3 ingredients come together for a pleasant taste sensation.
I suppose nothing says “I’m so sorry about your loss” like a baked good.
Month: February 2011 (Page 3 of 3)
I’m finally home for the afternoon and remaining in an upright, less-pressure-on-the-sinuses position while I watch The Talk (a copycat of The View). They just did a segment on teen violence and apparently there was a YouTube video that went viral of kids beating up another student. I didn’t hear the entire discussion, but it ended on a note of reflection concerning the “other kids” – as in “where are the other kids who should be stopping this?”
One of the hosts started talking about how she does all kinds of things as a mom to try to teach her daughter to do the right things – eat good foods, pick up after playing, share her toys, listen to her parents and teachers, etc. But what she really wants is to raise her daughter in a way that when these things happen, she’ll have the understanding to know it’s wrong and the confidence to do something about it.
It made me really reflect about what it is that I value and what values I teach and model to my children. Yes, I want them to become all the things the host mentioned – a good listener, picks up, blah blah blah. But those things don’t change lives of other people. How do you teach compassion? How do you instill courage?
It reminded me of a recent blog post by Marko (formerly of YS) . Here’s what one professional/academic wrote:
Teenagers know, better than we do, that when we ask them to be Christians, we are asking them to do a very dangerous thing. The only way out is to adopt a “safe” version of Christianity (which might not be Christian at all) that helps them become good, nice people instead of people who love others sacrificially. But as we know, good and nice “Christianity” seldom lasts past high school, since teenagers quickly learn that people can be perfectly good and nice without Jesus anywhere in the picture.
So I think in the future, youth ministry will try to re-weird-ify Christianity, highlighting Jesus’ radical actions and peculiar self-giving love, in an effort to resist the American church’s habit of trying to tame the gospel into a middle class bedtime story. If Christianity is dangerous, then we need to act like it. Teenagers aren’t afraid of risk, but they want to know that Jesus is worth it. Young people are going to demand that we, the church, be who we say we are–people who obviously follow Jesus, which makes us “weird” in a culture based on self-actualization and self-fulfillment–or they’re just not going to bother with us at all.
Just some new perspective and new questions to ask myself about what it means to be a parent.
In the next month the church is going to be exploring “tough questions about Jesus”. Pastor Greg is going to cover things like “Was Jesus God or just a good man” and “Were Jesus’ miracles just an illusion.” In a flash of brilliance, I decided to open it up to our Sunday School group to compose our own list of questions to cover over the next chunk of time. Honestly, the Why Jesus questions aren’t where I spend my time or conversation (not that they’re not worth covering), so we went with a less existential angle. I’d like to share what I’ll be researching so that I can ask the group a series of questions about questions. These are seriously what are on my list:
- The chronological order of the universe: Where were the dinosaurs?
- Why did God “talk” to people before now, but not me? Where is the bush on fire now?
- Alien salvation. Yes, someone wants to know “is there intelligent life forms on other planets and can they be saved?”
- Why suffering?
- What rules still apply? Homosexuality, eating bacon… how do we know?
- What did they eat on the ark?
- Why can’t Matt have multiple wives?
- Was America founded on Christianity?
- What happens to those people before Jesus?
- How did Adam & Eve’s children procreate? (“Sometimes when a brother and a sister love each other very much…. err….” yeah, I’ve got no leads on this one.)
- OT vs. NT: why are they so different?
- Ned just added this one: free will to choose and being predetermined. (Yes, he knows how to keep it light.)
- Then I added: Why go to church?
- If we’re supposed to listen to Christian music, then why did God give Eminem and Beyonce the knack for such catchy beats?
We decided as a group that if we publicize the questions we cover each week, we might get a better turnout. Especially the week on polygamy. I think I might just record Sister Wives. That dude’s hair is pretty self-explanatory on how a trend can just die out.
I’ll trade Pastor Greg Jesus’ Miracles for Alien Salvation any day.