Let the Fun Begin!

With Baby on the way, my Mom and Sis-in-Law wanted to do a shower.  Then they realized that our family is spread all over the country as well as many of our friends.  Since purchasing plane tickets for a baby shower is kind of absurd, they decided to break the rules of geography and are hosting a Web-Baby Shower.  You still get to guess when the baby will be born, boy or girl, weight and lenghth.  There are still games, prizes and chances for conversation and gift opening.  The related links for the baby shower have been added on the right.  Consider this your invitation to join us in welcoming our new little one :). 

~sjt & emrys

P.S.  Our little family gathering to open gifts, measure The Tummy etc will be on Friday, November 28th - day after Thanksgiving.

Harmony

Note: the photos and text of this entry match only by coincidence in time. The photos show the process of painting the nursery; the text reflects the kind of thing I think about as I work on such home projects. I will not be offended if you choose only one as the focus of your attention here.

In the last few months, the Lord has made me especially sensitive to the problem of human reconciliation. This problem is, by definition, the quandary that arises when two parties once at peace with one another find themselves in conflict, and desire (or don't desire) to return to a place of peace. To "re-conciliate" is to return peace where presently conflict abides. And I have found, of late, the matter of returning to peace sticking in my side.

When I hear the word peacemaking, someone is usually associating it with some grand social or political problem such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or Muslim-Christian relations, or the negotiation of a massive strike in the automotive industry. To attempt reconciliation in these situations one must step into a wide quagmire or details and relationships while the bullets of rage and vengeance scream overhead. But I have discovered that the bullets fly no less speedily over the field of family or individual conflict.

Conflict pierces at the human soul. We were designed for what the Hebrew scriptures call "shalom," or peace in self and relationships. Offence, real or imagined, striking at us from within one of these relationships, threatens the peace in which we want to live. As physiologists have taught for decades, threats to self and self-interest produce a fight-or-flight response, born in the autonomous nervous system. We separate ourselves from places of conflict, or we attempt to defeat--directly or indirectly--that which threatens us. In the case of human conflict, we therefore cut ourselves off from other people, or make an effort to subjugate them with logic, influence, raw emotion, or gossip.

But even as we respond to conflict in that knee-jerk, animalistic way we know that doing so will not bring peace. Fight-or-flight brings a momentary safety, but it does not bring back the shalom in which we lived before. To remain in flight means forever having to avoid someone else--not so easy with a co-worker or family member. To remain in a fight means expending energy damaging another person at every encounter--an activity which while sating the blood-thirst of vengeance for a split second fills the mouth with bitterness that does not fade so quickly. Living life on the run along an endless track, or in the ring with no bell, presents a person with a horrid future. The Spirit, crying out in the depths of our souls, wants peace back. And this desire resonates with something deeper than our autonomous nervous system.

Humanity is fated to live within time; we cannot go back and change the past. Thus our actions have become set in stone. Re-conciliation cannot happen by erasing the past. The stained tapestry cannot be un-woven. We cannot make peace by pretending the offence never happened. Thus peace-making entails trudging back through the muddy wastes of the conflict, unearthing mines of impressions, thoughts, words, and grief placed by both sides of the war. To reconcile is to redeem; and land cannot be redeemed unless it is re-possessed; and land that no one's foot has touched is not possessed. So peacemaking means stepping into a minefield of anger and sorrow, stepping lightly but always wondering if the next footfall will unleash a world of hurt and fury.

I think it rare that in any conflict only one side bears all guilt. Wrongdoing seems to beget wrongdoing faster than possums populate New Zealand; with the haste of a spreading fire guilt consumes both sides of a conflict. Thus to enter the minefield means unearthing guilt and shame for things done and left undone by both sides. So pride whispers to those in conflict: "Do not enter there, for your sin will be exposed." And on the heels of pride comes fear, the most persuasive and ever-errant counselor of humanity, encouraging us to let bygones be bygones (as if any of us can separate from our pasts) and risk not the bald accusation of our own actions. Even as the peacemaker prepares with trepidation to bear the heat of conflict, the opposing parties look with dread upon the prospect of facing their own complicity in the war.

It seems to me that the first--and perhaps most difficult--task of the peacemaker is to instill trust in the conflicted parties. So she must hold out hope: hope that the conflict will not be perpetual; hope that each party will not be irreparably destroyed by the mines that have been laid; hope that the difficult work of reclaiming a war-torn field will actually produce peace. I have found this task to be daunting. Deep conflict engenders deep separation and anxiety, piled atop anger, vengeance and pride. Though I have a rich imagination and trust in the power of the Spirit, holding out hope--thinking it, speaking it, repeating it--taxes my reserves.

How I wish that clearing the minefield could be done by the third party, the peacemaker, the individual UN Task Force, while the opposing sides looked on! But alas, only those who have laid the mines--only those who have loaded the past with anger, guilt, and shame--can defuse these weapons of relational destruction. The peacemaker can say, "Look, isn't that a mine? Isn't that where anger bubbles up? Isn't it right there that a great grief lies?" But the technology of hatred and conflict is proprietary; knowledge of how the trigger works and which wire to cut rest solely with the one who made the mine. It is not work that another can do for them; it is work that the adversaries must do themselves--and perhaps together.

Overcoming fear with trust is the labour of the peacemaker. Only in doing so can people entrenched in conflict be brought to talk, learn, negotiate, and reconcile. "How can I ever forgive . . . ?" are words spoken by someone who does not hope. "I can't say I'm sorry," are words spoken by someone who does not trust. The peacemaker cannot command these words of sorrow or forgiveness, but the peacemaker can encourage trust and hope.

Trust and hope are intangibles, however. They do not have a concrete value like shares in the stock market; they cannot be proferred from a wallet in a moment of need. They come with time and words--lots of words. Like the rising trust that citizens acquire for a presidential candidate by hearing him speak again and again, trust in people and hope in their dreams come by much encouragement and many words. So the work of the peacemaker includes some grand tedium: think of how many times we've been told that international figures are having talks with Israelis and Palestinians--again. Why can't they all just get along--right now? Because trust takes time; hope requires ages to instill and even longer to bring action. The peacemaker must stand firm in hope through all that time.

People can be reconciled with each other. There is hope for all those in conflict. I shall not make the mistake of thinking that hope makes things simple. But hope engenders trust, and trust makes reconciliation possible. Thus hope makes things possible. The fracture of shalom, and the peace of our relationships, can be healed if we will have the courage to return to the Normandys of our conflicts and clear the beaches of barbed wire. We must meet on the Flanders Fields of our pride and put enmity to rest. We must unemploy the counselor of fear and bear the guilt in order that it might be released at last. And we must help each other to do so, for facing dark and painful pasts is not something to be done alone. Then again, how much richer the joy when we find ourselves at peace and have someone else with whom to celebrate it!

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God," from the gospel according to Matthew, 5:9.

Shalom,

emrys

Dinner With Dad

So I'm in NH spending time with a friend from college and my dad and kidnapping my mom to bring her home with me to work on projects and hang out.  

So it's Saturday night, mom's off at a conference and Emrys is home in NY working away.  Dad & I went to see Prince Caspian -which was really good!  Dad got mom a food processor for their anniversary.  Which means dad got a new kitchen toy and mom gets out of cooking.  So tonight we're making pita bread, tabouli, hummus and chicken.  So far we're munching on the hummus and it's fabulous!  Make sure that you read through the tips on the hummus - especially the ones about not draining the garbanzo beans all the way. . . 

I'm stuffed.  Dinner was great and it's going to be time to call it a night soon!

~sjt

Procrastination...

Procrastination takes on many forms for me.  Sometimes it takes the completely lazy approach: naps or TV instead of say, cleaning up my work room.  Some times it takes on shuffling non-important tasks, like weeding and re-arranging my pantry before the ones that really need to get done (like cleaning my work room).  Other days takes the form of kitchen productivity, like this afternoon I cranked out 6 dozen ready-to-bake cookies to the freezer and a gallon of fresh, homemade applesauce (with the coolest toy ever! another blog to follow), when I should have been... well you get the picture.  Now, here I sit, jotting this blog, when I should be cleaning up the kitchen. 

~sjt

Tyler Cabin Adventure VII

As I think I mentioned before, the Tyler family has a strong pack-ratting gene. Things that "may come in handy someday," things that are of unique interest (to the pack-rat, that is), and things whose origin we can't remember but we know there's a reason we kept it; all of these are potential items for the collection.

In cleaning out the log house, we discovered such a collection of napkins. One of the Tylers, somewhere, sometime, thought that for themselves or posterity these would be important to have. For this generation, they are story-seeds, leaving us to guess the story behind the fragile pieces of paper.

The napkin above is from the "Hotel du Lion d'Or," or Golden Lion Hotel. Is it from Paris, perhaps--a favourite city of the two past generations of Tylers? Could it be from my grandmother's first trip there as a college student, placed under her first glass of French wine?

This next piece is a serviette from British Caledonian airways, founded in 1970 and ceasing operations in 1988. Did Grandma and Grampa fly to Britain to visit Betsy on this airline? In a strange little napkin-twist, one of British Caledonian's subsidiary companies from 1970-1982 was "Golden Lion Tours." Coincidence?
Ahhh . . . The Hog Penny Pub. Where everybody knows your name. One of Grandpa and Grandma's favoured travel destinations was Bermuda. (I remember visiting their home and seeing the map of Bermuda composed of seashells, hanging on their bathroom wall.) Founded in 1957, The Hog Penny still serves clientele who like good beef and good beer. And they claim to be "the inspiration for the "Cheers" pub in Boston.
Now, I don't think that badgers in general make good bunk-mates. But apparently there is (or was) a chain of hotels in England called Badger Inns. Maybe badgers are kinder in England.
Japanese food in Paris! An oddity, perhaps, when my grandparents were galavanting around there. Now, I'm sure, there is plenty of food from every nation there.
Here is a napkin from a tourist shopping district of Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France, just north of Marseille. From the fonts used in the lettering, I'd say it's late '60s to mid '70s vintage.
And last but not least: from the Grand Hotel de France ("France's Great Hotel"). It's right near the Lyons train station in central Paris, close to the river. At present, it's only rated at 2-stars; so whoever snagged this napkin must have been travelling budget-style. (Then again, that's also the Tyler way. Is there a connection between travelling on a budget and pack-ratting?)
That's the last of my photos from the Tyler cabin adventure . . . until next year, anyway.

~emrys

Back to School? and Other Updates

While all the kids around us are headed back to school, it seems that the pace of our life has doubled or tripled from a month ago and we don't even have kids headed for school yet! Unless Emrys counts.

Yup, that's right - Emrys is taking a Philosophy of Coaching Class. Upon volunteering to help with the local soccer team, he found out that due to NY State red tape, he has to work towards a NY Non-teachers Coaching certificate if he wants to continue working with the high school soccer program beyond this year. Which he does, and so he finds himself jumping through the necessary hoops. So as the weather turns cool his days are filled with work, soccer practices and games and class. I get to see him every once in a while... usually to eat! and I have mandated a one-night-a-week-at-home rule for this crazy fall. So far it's worked but we're only 2 weeks in.

I've managed to keep the house clean for 10 days now and have kept up with my cleaning maintenance lists- I'm proud of me! This week I spent two half days pouring candles and cranked out almost 30 lbs of candles to get ready for Greene Applefest at the end of the month and to get a couple of my retailers set up for fall.

I've also been managing the buckets of produce coming in from the garden. Right now its mostly zucchini and squash finishing up, basil & cilantro still growing like weeds and tomatos. I have LOTS of green tomatos that are slowly ripening up. From this week's pickin's the 4 lbs of tomatos are currently in the crock-pot to make this amazing looking tomato soup. There's heavy cream involved so Emrys was all about trying it! Since Hanna and Gustav have both sent rain our way for today it's wonderfully cool so I also made up a bunch of this yummy zucchini bread. I think since it is cool out and I'm more in the mood to bake today than to deal with the mess that is my candle work room I may also make this focaccia bread to go with the soup for dinner. We'll see how far my energy lasts!

Next weekend I'm headed for Manchester, NH to visit a friend from college, and YOU if you're in town, let me know! In addition to visiting friends and family, the ulterior motive for the trip is to raid this friend's closet for maternity clothes! While The Tummy isn't quite ready for the full on maternity stuff yet, it's getting there and some bigger tops will be nice!

Speaking of The Tummy and Baby Tyler, we had our 19 week ultrasound last week which means today I'm at 20 weeks and half way there!! Baby is perfectly healthy and, well, big! For 20 weeks anyway. Baby measured at about 6 inches long and 10 oz in size. I continue to fight The Kid for my appetite but manage to eat pretty healthily when it gives me the chance. I don't feel ill or morning sick or anything - just no appetite. In my world this means I have to remember to eat, which I'm not very good at. Especially if I'm home alone.

Great Cook, Bad Housekeeper

I enjoy cooking. I love chopping, combining, seeing the finished product and smelling the scents of success, tasting the bounty that comes forth from time spent. It is an art that I enjoy. I love taking a recipe and if baking, following it (almost) exactly to see how it comes out. If it is cooking, tweaking it to how I want it to be. It comes to me with little effort and is fun.

I do not enjoy housekeeping. I do not enjoy scrubbing, cleaning. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy seeing the house clean, I just don’t like the process of getting it clean. It is work for me. Laundry I don’t mind so much, especially in the summer when I can get outside to hang clothes.

So explains the neglect of the housekeeping chores in my house. I have meals prepared and stocked in the freezer while the spiders set up mansions in the corners of my house. I have vegetables picked and packed away for winter while the dust bunnies continue to grow along the baseboards and under furniture.

After vacation, I decided that I had until the end of the month to get the house clean from top to bottom. It was time to exterminate the dust bunnies and bring in tools of demolition to take out the spider-webs. Last week, I started the Top to Bottom Cleaning List. Today I finished it with a couple exceptions. (My candle workroom is still in progress and waiting for some cabinets as well as the office area where my desk is but I have until the end of the week to meet my deadline.)

Countertops are clear, floors are tidy, things are put away and the dog fur is no longer breeding in the corners. My house is clean and it feels great – now that it’s done. So to celebrate I gave into a craving that’s been hanging around for a few days – chocolate mousse :D.

I’m going to work harder to keep my house clean little by little so I don’t have to spend a whole week cleaning next time!

~sjt

Tomato Tragedy

Experiments are done in order to test hypotheses. That is to say, we want to see if something is true--for instance, "Tomatoes can grow upside-down from hanging buckets and be productive." We might then conduct an experiment. If the tomatoes grew productively, then we would say the experiment was a success. The hypothesis was proven true. If the tomatoes did not grow productively, we would also say the experiment was a success. But we would have discovered that the hypothesis was proven false. (Or at least under these conditions; it's hard to truly prove something false.)

Our upside-down tomato experiment is, in many ways, a true experiment. I was therefore prepared for the tomato plants to grow bushy and grand, but produce no tomatoes. If you've been reading this blog, you know that we have had tomatoes already turning orange. However, I was not prepared for a failure in another realm of the experiment: structural integrity.

This afternoon I walked out into the garden and found this:

The handle on one of the buckets had failed: pulled out of the plastic that attached it to the side of the bucket. That bucket fell, which loosed the counter-balancing weight from the opposite bucket. The effect of the second bucket pulling on the unbalanced spar tore the wooden arm apart. Since it was the lower arm, the arm running across it was also dislodged from the post, and down came the remaining two buckets.

Sad day.

What have we learned from this, class? Do not use cheap buckets to hang your tomatoes. Use the free ones that your friend gives you after she's used all the laundry detergent out of them. (Thanks, Margery. You rock.)

Until next year, when I can work out a more sound structure for hanging tomatoes all summer, the four we could salvage (one fell from another post earlier) have been set up thusly:


Now they're Sawhorse Tomatoes. We'll see how they recover from the shock of bungee-jumping without a rope.

It's all about constant improvement. Create, adjust, improve.

~ emrys

The Strawberries' New Home

Our strawberry plants currently inhabit a circular bed ringed by a shallow layer of rocks. And over the past two summers we have noticed that birds and rabbits wreak havoc on our strawberries before we have a chance to pick them. So I decided to extend one of our garden beds to include a section for strawberries, that can be covered with chicken wire when the time comes.

To complete this project, I conscripted a few young men from our congregation, who braved the summer heat to help me out.

The posts have to be straight, and the correct height, else it will be harder to construct the sides and hinged top that I have planned. Here's Jordan checking the lines on our last post.

Here's Jordan and Matt attaching the sidewall for the raised bed.
And here's Matt and Jordan working assiduously to place the last sidewall of the future bed, while Sean does . . . something . . . is that "Peace out"?
When we get our topsoil and fertilizer, we'll be all ready to transplant those strawberries.
Thanks, guys!
~ emrys

Floyd, VA

There is a place where mountain men and musicians mingle on a picturesque city street. There is a place where hippies and hillbillies inhabit the same space in a cultural melange that defies stereotypes. There is a place where both your incense and your overalls are welcome.

That place is Floyd, Virginia.

While on our four-day rest last week in the Blue Ridge mountains of western Virginia, we accepted the advice of the guidebook in our cottage and drove half an hour to the wee village of Floyd. There, we were told, is where the nearest coffee shop that also hosted wireless internet service. (When your days of rest include the composition of blog entries, you can't abstain totally from the internet!) Floyd is a gorgeous hamlet of pioneer-style storefronts surrounded by rural hills and forest. And every Friday night in this nestled corner of Appalachia, the main street hosts a jamboree. Everybody brings his or her banjo, guitar, dulcimer, and voice to share with the neighbours in a street-long bluegrass jam.

So we decided to check out the Friday night scene. After the requisite web work and a satisfying supper of Mexican food (real Mexican, served by people speaking Spanish, as it was meant to be), we walked through the renovated 19th-century building at the end of downtown Floyd and onto the street. Passing the storefront next to the Mexican restaurant, we got a good dose of patchouli in the nose. Inside the store hung the bright colours of flowery skirts, beads, and tie-dyed tops.

We walked down the sidewalk and took a seat on a newly-fashioned concrete bench--part of the effort to renovate and gentrify the whole of Floyd. Just after we sat down, a gentleman pulled up his beat-up red pickup truck to park in front of us. The bed had a couple of garbage bags and a muddy house fan reclining in it. The driver got out of the truck and revealed himself to be a large, rotund man wearing grungy overalls, long yellowish hair and a long white beard.

Now, I'm not a really seasoned veteran of Appalachia, but I know a hillbilly when I see one. And he walked past us to the storefront from which we had just emerged. Perhaps he went to buy a lava-lamp or those stones that tell you what your mood is?

A glorious place, Floyd: If the hillbillies and the hippies can live together, perhaps there is hope for the human race. You too can find it, tucked back in the woods of western Virginia.

~ emrys