Here is another piece of "Fall Plowing" by Grant Wood. What a peaceful picture! :-) I love the colors and the soft lines. This piece is taken from the upper right hand corner.

This is a portion of "Fall Plowing" by Grant Wood, a very interesting and wonderful landscape with a farm in the background.
The tree here looks almost Seussian, doesn't it?
Yet so realistic, too, in color, that it is like seeing a photo where things have different shapes but the same colors.

The flutter of falling leaves,
the crisp yet soggy smell,
the wind blowing the fallen leaves,
these have a message to tell -
it's I love to hear so please
be attentive, listen well
as I announce, noisily, happily,
like a tolling, ringing bell-
fall is here! fall is here!
go jump in a pile of leaves, everyone,
and enjoy feeling so tinglingly alive and well!

Quotes...

C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, points out that Christ claimed to forgive sins:
"Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes and stealing other men’s money? ... He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history.

Yet (and this is the strange, significant thing) even His enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit. Still less do unprejudiced readers. Christ says that He is "humble and meek" and we believe Him; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of His sayings."

Lewis also warns "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse."

I’d like to close with a quotes from one of the books stacked on my bedside table, waiting to be finished– Trinity & Reality: An Introduction to the Christian Faith, by Ralph A. Smith.

"Of all the gods in all the religions of the world, only the triune God of the Bible is truly and wholly personal. This point is often not recognized, so we will dwell on it briefly. First consider the non-Christian theism embraced by Jews and Muslims, the belief in a single god who rules the world. By itself, theism will not suffice to give us a truly personal god, for a god who is utterly and simply one–a mere monad–fails to have the qualities we know to be essential to personality. Although an absolute monad, like the god of Islam, is the most exalted non-Christian idea of deity, a monad is a being who is eternally alone–with no other to love, no other with whom to communicate, and no other with whom to have fellowship. In the case of such a solitary god, love fellowship and communication cannot be essential to his being. Indeed, they are no part of the monad at all. But without these qualities it is difficult to imagine that the deity so understood is in any meaningful sense personal. To conceive of a god who does not know love, a god who has never shared, a god for whom a relationship with another is eternally irrelevant, is to conceive of an abstraction, an idea or a thing more than a person.
If, to make his god more personal, a believer in such a deity suggested that his god loved the world after he created it, the result would be a god who changes in time and who needs the world in order to grow into his self-realization as a god of love– a god who becomes personal only with the help of the creation. Suppose one asserted that the monad loved the world from eternity? Then the personality of this deity and his attribute of love would still depend for their existence on the world he created. Creation would be a necessary act of self becoming...of course, neither orthodox Jews nor orthodox Muslims imagine their god as a changing or contingent being...they must be satisfied with a god who exists in an eternal vacuum, even though they will find irresistible the temptation to ascribe personality to the monad."
– (Pages 18 & 19, chapter 2- Personhood and Harmony)

Mary and Martha

Luke10:38-42

Now it happened as they went that He entered a certain village;

and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house.

And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word.

But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said,

"Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me." And Jesus answered and said to her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her."

The issues here are attitude and priorities. Martha’s self pitying complaint ("Lord, do you not care...?") points out that her sister has left her alone to work. Martha was worried, troubled, and probably resentful. She allowed herself to get into a tizzy ("you are worried and troubled about many things") and then blamed her frazzled state on Mary’s lack of help. She could have meditated on the privilege she had, since the Savior had accepted her invitation, to serve Him in her home, but instead thought on the wrongs she thought she’d been done by Mary. She isn’t criticized for her work in the kitchen, or for wanting everything to be "just so"– I don’t think that was directed at Martha, but at the reader. She isn’t criticized for not sitting at Jesus’ feet, since someone did have to make dinner, after all! Perhaps Martha wanted to be sitting there instead–but someone does have to work in the kitchen, and her attitude about that was wrong. The problems here are her personal attitude and priorities–not that she was wielding the pots and pans.

The other issue is priorities. It was a once in history chance, to hear the incarnate Son of God teach during His time on earth prior to His death, burial, resurrection and ascension into Heaven. Mary knew that hearing Jesus teach was more important than keeping Martha company in the kitchen or helping serve dinner. To put the quote in the previous post into a fuller context, before quoting Luke 10:38-42 Pastor Wilson wrote ‘We are familiar with the story of Mary and Martha and how Martha lost her sense of priorities because she was "cumbered about much serving." ’The main point of this section (titled "Priorities") isn’t the flaw of Martha but how to avoid misapplying this passage in daily life. Later in that section Pastor Wilson writes, "So if a mother is harried in the kitchen because a number of her children are out in the living room being selfish, this is not a Mary and Martha situation at all. It’s one where she will have to guard her attitude closely, but the children should not assume (when they are required to pitch in) that this is a case of misplaced priorities. Well actually, it is a case of misplaced priorities– theirs."

Although comments I have read elsewhere indicate that others have trouble understanding this passage, I will say that Jesus’ word on what happened here is the final one, since God is the only one who can see the heart and know everything about that or any situation. Mary chose the good part, and I believe that Martha’s attitude was wrong and that it was that which drew the gentle rebuke from the Savior.

Cookbooks!

I own two main cookbooks, a 1963 edition of Joy of Cooking, and Better Homes and Gardens' Complete Step-by-Step Cook Book. (I also like my Better Homes and Gardens Cooking for Today Pasta cook book. It has some good recipes for interesting sauces.)My mother also owns a Joy of Cooking and Complete Step-by-Step Cook Book. Her Joy of Cooking is from 1975, and is white. Mine is a minty green color. She was delighted when she found me my own Complete Step-by-Step Cook Book, since she had told me that if she didn't find one she felt that she should give me her copy someday when I got married. I was touched that she would consider parting with her treasured cook book for my sake.Joy of Cooking has just about everything. I made Shepherd's Pie the other day, and it was in there. (Mind you, it told me to make and use 'hash' for the filling, but the leftover soup turned into a very nice filling with some thickening and the addition of some veggies.)Last week I had a rash notion that I should try to make a souffle. As I look through it tonight, titles sound so good-- Pineapple Souffle, Chocolate, Lemon, Fresh Fruit, and Hazelnut Souffle's all seem to beckon my imagination. Of course, my imagination is hampered slightly by the fact that I can't remember what a souffle is supposed to look like, but my imagination has never been one to give up at small obstacles. On page 203, the authors begin the section labeled "About Souffles and Timbales".Some excerpts:'The souffle is considered the prima donna of the culinary world...usually based on a Bechamel or cream sauce...must always be kept away from drafts and be served at once in the ovenproof straight sided dish in which it was cooked...If your guests are assembled, prepare the souffle. If not it may be like the beauty Horace Walpole commented on: "She is pretty with the bloom of youth but has no features and her beauty cannot last." 'I quickly realized that I am nowhere near the level of cookery I'd need to be at to even think about trying a souffle. ;-)But that is the good thing about the Joy of Cooking-- due warning. The authors go through step by step (occasionally telling you, just in case, not to do something), and explain what you need to do. In this case, I realized that what they wanted from me was not realistic because of my cooking skill and the fact that assembling boys and making sure hands are clean, etc, might take more than the ten minutes that it said was the maximum time before serving that a souffle could possibly sit in a warming oven! Still, it was fun to read about.The Complete Step-by-Step Cook Book has it's own good things, too, though, most notably step by step photographs of each step on recipes they think are hard, or that if you master, you can make the others using those same skills. I had it out last week reading up about how much yeast they used in their bread recipes. My two loaf batches take 1 T, 1 tsp, and 1/2 tsp, and I think it may be too much.Family recipes, and recipes I have from other books and friends, are being written one by one into a spiral hard cover notebook that a friend gave me, which isn't very methodical, or alphabetized, but which is I think a useful place to write down recipes as I make them-- usually honey instead of sugar, and half whole wheat flour, and sometimes different baking times.