Split Pea Soup

We used ham left from Christmas dinner to make our fifth recipe, Split Pea Soup. I added some carrots and left out the salt based on some of the reviews I read. I thought the amount of salt from the chicken broth and ham was enough, but I'm pretty sensitive to salt; Joshua added some to his soup. We both liked this soup, although it seemed to have way too much broth. If I make it again, I will leave out some of the water. It had good flavor though, I liked the blend of spices with the peas and ham.

Christmas 2013

 Our Christmas this year was a little more low key than usual since so many people were sick. I was thankful that almost everyone was well enough to get together on Christmas, even though Bethany had to wear a mask since she is still coughing from a suspected case of pertussis and didn't want to risk infecting Solace.

 We started the day with tea of good tidings and cinnamon rolls, bacon, eggs to order, and freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast. The rest of the family joined us to open gifts.

Laura and I drew each other for the gift exchange. Among other things, we both got the other Oreos and peanut butter, which was a favorite snack to eat together when we were roommates at Calvin Crest back in 2005, our first summer on staff.

Around lunch time, we headed down to Visalia and arrived at my parents' house mid-afternoon. I realized that I didn't take any pictures while we were there, so the following are ones that I took from Heather's blog. 

My family drew names this year also. I thought it was fitting for this Christmas that Michelle got Joshua Pandemic, a game about trying to prevent diseases from spreading all over the world. We had a delicious ham dinner and enjoyed being cozy in front of the fire to finish off the day.

Surprised by Orthodoxy

Pope Francis has been widely lauded recently, and for good reason. The way he is going about things is quite different than some of his predecessors, and people are well warranted in being pleased. Nevertheless, there is something surprising about people being surprised by him, so to speak.

Some examples of comments which have received a lot of coverage:

Atheism: "The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! 'Father, the atheists?' Even the atheists. Everyone! [...] We must meet one another doing good. 'But I don't believe, Father, I am an atheist!' But do good: We will meet one another there."

Environmentalism: "I would like to ask all those who have positions of responsibility in economic, political and social life, and all men and women of goodwill: Let us be protectors of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment.”

Homosexuality: "If a gay person is in eager search of God, who am I to judge them? The Catholic Church teaches that gay people should not be discriminated against; they should be made to feel welcome. Being gay is not the problem."

Abortion: "We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. [...] When we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time."

Capitalism: "Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting." "The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose. The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings."

But all of these comments represent traditional, orthodox Christianity. If we are surprised, we are surprised by the two thousand year old teachings of the dominant religion in the West.

On the other hand, in our contemporary context, plain old orthodoxy is a surprise -- and a refreshing one.

The Weekend Before Christmas

We had a festive weekend last weekend. Saturday we made our traditional Kerr family shortbread cookies. This is half of what we made.

 

Dad has been sick so Mom said we shouldn't get together for Sunday night dinner at their house. Instead, the three families in town decided to have a progressive dinner and see the houses all decorated for Christmas. We started at the Trevino's for the main course, since it was their week to make dinner.

Then we went to the Nickell's for dessert.

 Finally, we ended the evening at our house with hot drinks. It was fun to see all the decorations and enjoy a different sort of dinner together.

Prophecy and Probability

Probability and Biases

One of the simplest rules of probability states that a conjunction is less probable than any of its conjuncts alone. That is, the probability of A and B is lower than the probability of just A or just B. For example, the probability that [it will rain tomorrow and that a car problem will force you to walk to work] is lower than the probability that [it will rain tomorrow].

This is not how our brains tend to work, though. Even though adding more details to a proposition makes it less probable, we tend to assign probability in precisely the opposite way: the more details a story or prediction has, the more believable we find it. This is called the "conjunction fallacy," for obvious reasons.

One experiment, carried out in 1982, provided a number of professional political analysts with one of the following two scenarios and asked them to assign estimates of probability:

• A: "A complete suspension of diplomatic relations between the USA and the Soviet Union, sometime in 1983"
• B: "A Russian invasion of Poland, and a complete suspension of diplomatic relations between the USA and the Soviet Union, sometime in 1983"

Now, it is necessarily the case that B is less probable than A, since every circumstance in which B happens is already one in which A happens. Nevertheless, professional analysts ranked the conjunction (B) on average five times as likely as the single conjunct (A).

Adding more details or assumptions often makes the event seem more plausible, even though the event actually and necessarily becomes less probable.

Prophecy and Probability

One interesting (and seasonally appropriate!) area in which this has implications is the area of prophecies regarding Christ. One common apologetic talking point is the claim that Jesus fulfilled hundreds of prophecies in the Old Testament. I arbitrarily selected a web site that is representative of this opinion:

Unique among all books ever written, the Bible accurately foretells specific events-in detail-many years, sometimes centuries, before they occur. Approximately 2500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter—no errors.[...] Since the probability for any one of these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance averages less than one in ten (figured very conservatively) and since the prophecies are for the most part independent of one another, the odds for all these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance without error is less than one in 10^2000 (that is 1 with 2000 zeros written after it)!

The claim here is that, based on a certain type of probability calculation, the Old Testament picks out an tiny event in an enormous possibility space. This shows (a) Jesus, the fulfillment of these prophecies, is pretty special, and (b) those who gave the prophecies were pretty special. The authors of this web site are extremely confident in the results of this type of analysis:

Stating it simply, based on these thirteen prophecies alone, the Bible record may be said to be vastly more reliable than the second law of thermodynamics.

Such prophecies, then, are supposed to show the reliability of the Bible and the divinity of Christ.

If all this sounds pretty fishy to you, good. If the chances of one person coming along and fulfilling all these prophecies to the letter is vanishingly small, how can we be so confident that it happened? After all, the more details you add to the claim, the less probable it becomes. Let's look at two examples and then at their conjunction.

Example 1: the virgin birth. Isaiah prophecies that the Messiah will be born of a virgin, and Jesus was born of a virgin: fulfilled prophecy. How confident are we in this assessment? Playing the skeptic, there are a number of factors that might give us pause.

To begin with, it is not at all clear that Isaiah is giving a Messianic prophecy. The passage reads as follows: "Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, "[...] the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. [...] For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted." Isaiah certainly seems to be talking about the future, but it is the immediate future: the whole point of the prophecy seems to be that King Ahaz will find relief from the enemy kings who confront him. In the next chapter, a prophetess gives birth to a son, and Isaiah repeats that while the child is yet an infant, the King Ahaz's rivals will be defeated. There is considerable debate over whether this child was the one intended by the prophecy, but either way there is a clear time frame given for a prophecy that is not Messianic in scope. Furthermore, Matthew's gospel, pointing to the virgin birth as a fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy, misquotes the passage: where Isaiah had spoken of a "young woman," Matthew's text presumably read "virgin," and he sees Christ's birth as its fulfillment. In other words, the perfect match between an extraordinary event (a virgin birth) and the prophecy seems to be produced by a misreading of the prophecy.

Of course, there are plenty of other reasons to have reservations, but this is a good start. On the other hand, we might take Matthew's declaration of the link between Isaiah's prophecy and Christ's birth as positive evidence for the connection, thereby increasing our confidence in the proposition that Jesus fulfilled this particular prophecy. And so the process would go, trying to establish a specific level of confidence in the claim of a fulfilled prophecy.

Example 2: the birth in Bethlehem. In Micah, we are told that "you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days." In Matthew and Luke, Jesus is said to have been born in Bethlehem. Again playing the skeptic, how confident are we in this fulfilled prophecy?

The passage from Micah is a much better candidate for a Messianic prophecy than the Isaiah passage, so that is in its favor. There is some confusion over what is meant by "Bethlehem of Ephrathah," since the label would fit both a person and a place, but it is certainly plausible that Micah was referring to the place, so our confidence need not be diminished much by that. The fact that Jesus was known to be from Nazareth, rather than Bethlehem, poses a much more serious problem. Matthew and Luke, who both believe Jesus to be the fulfillment of Micah's prophecy, seem to take two different approaches to the problem. In Matthew, Jesus is born in Bethlehem to Mary and Joseph. When he is about two years old, the wise men show up in Bethlehem to see Jesus. Herod goes on a murderous rampage, so the Holy Family flees to Egypt. On their way back home to Bethlehem, Joseph hears that Herod's son is ruling and is afraid, so they decide to stay away and eventually settle in Nazareth. In Luke, Mary and Joseph live in Nazareth to begin with, but a census requires them to travel to Bethlehem, where Jesus is born. After he is presented in the temple to fulfill the requirements of the law, the Holy Family returns home to Nazareth. The fact that we have two authors taking very different approaches to getting Jesus' birthplace to be consistent with the prophecy might make us suspicious that the match is post hoc. On the other hand, the duplicity of accounts does not inherently undermine the plausibility of Bethlehem being the birthplace. Furthermore, many people have even come up with ways to combine these two accounts into one; while such combinations are not very convincing, they are not strictly impossible, either, so that can mitigate some doubt.

Again, there are many other factors to consider, but that is a good start.

Conclusion:
The next step would be to actually assign levels of confidence to these claims. Such confidence would be further reduced by a number of factors. For example, how confident am I that I am interpreting the prophetic text correctly when I see it as a Christological prophecy? In the case of Isaiah, probably not too confident, but much more confident in the case of Micah. How confident am I in the integrity of the texts themselves -- how accurately do I think Luke's gospel, for example, survived the process of transcription and transmission? (Answer: highly accurately in the relevant respects.) And what are the chances that e.g. Matthew made some of these details up in order to make the story better fit the Old Testament? The chances are quite low, given the theological context with which I am approaching such matters, but to claim such chances to be absolutely zero would be untenable. Each of these possibilities -- the possibility that I am misreading the text, the possibility of transcription or translation errors, etc. -- may be tiny, but they add up quickly. On the other hand, there are also factors that boost my confidence in the claim that these are fulfilled prophecies. For example, the fact that the great Saints and Doctors of the Church have understood them in this way is a good mark in their favor.

Let's just pick some numbers (and don't quote me on these; I just picked these out of the air):

• I am 80% confident in the claim, "Isaiah 7:14 is a Messianic prophecy fulfilled by Christ."
• I am 97% confident in the claim, "Micah 5:2 is a Messianic prophecy fulfilled by Christ."

Then here is the critical point. How confident can I be in the claim, "Isaiah 7:14 and Micah 5:2 are Messianic prophecies fulfilled by Christ"? Whatever figure I assign, the law of conjunction stipulates that it cannot be greater than 80%.

There are various figures floating around that quantify the number of prophecies that Jesus is supposed to have fulfilled; one author says there are 425, although most people just say there are "several hundred." Let's imagine for the sake of argument that they are relatively independent prophecies (for two reasons: first, the calculation that claims "the odds are crazy against Jesus fulfilling all of these, so the Bible is super reliable" requires this relative independence; second, the calculation that comes next is way easier under the assumption). Let's further imagine for the sake of argument that we are highly confident in every claimed fulfillment of prophecy: after all of the doubts concerning the integrity of the texts, their proper interpretation, the motivations of the authors, the exactitude of the match between them, etc., the evidence is so good that we still assign a 99% level of confidence to every last one.

We can do a quick calculation of 99% confidence over 400 independent prophecies by multiplying 99 by itself 400 times. The level of confidence that we then have in the conjunction -- in the claim that these are all Messianic prophecies fulfilled by Jesus -- comes out to be about 2%.

...the more details you add, the less probable a claim becomes.

(And if you read that behemoth of a post, I am duly impressed.)

Roasted Garlic Pizza

We went to see the new Hobbit movie this afternoon. Since I know it would already be dinnertime when we got back, I thought I should plan an easy meal that we could quickly have ready. I decided to make pizza and planned to buy pizza dough from WinCo, throw on some sauce, cheese, and toppings, then have it in the fridge ready to bake when we returned. Simple. But then WinCo didn't have any pizza dough, so I made it from scratch instead and decided to roast garlic to put on the pizza, along with some sauteed mushrooms, bacon, and freshly picked spinach. Needless to say, it ended up being more of a project than I intended, but we ended up with a great pizza and two new recipes.

I used this recipe for the pizza dough, which was recipe number three. I was pretty happy with the short amount of time it needed to rise and the way it turned out. I had to add a ton of extra flour and it was still really soft and difficult to work with, but once I got it tossed the baking went well and it tasted like pizza crust. I also made roasted garlic for the first time, which was my fourth recipe. That was easy and turned out well and was a great addition to the pizza.

Advent Scripture: O Sapientia

Sarah and I are working through the seven names of Christ that are traditionally observed in the days leading up to Christmas, and yesterday was Wisdom. It reminded me of one of my all-time favorite prophecies of Christ's incarnation, which is perhaps also my favorite Christmas Scripture as such:

Who has found the place of Wisdom,
who has entered into her treasuries?
O Israel, how vast is the house of God,
how broad the scope of his dominion:
Vast and endless, high and immeasurable!
Who has gone up to the heavens and taken her,
or brought her down from the clouds?
Who has crossed the sea and found her,
bearing her away rather than choice gold?
None knows the way to her,
nor has any understood her paths.
Yet he who knows all things knows her;
he has probed her by his knowledge--
He who established the earth for all time,
and filled it with four-footed beasts;
He who dismisses the light, and it departs,
calls it, and it obeys him trembling;
Before whom the stars at their posts shine and rejoice;
When he calls them, they answer, "Here we are!"
shining with joy for their Maker.
Such is our God; no other is to be compared to him:
He has traced out all the way of understanding,
and has given her to Jacob, his servant, to Israel, his beloved son.
Since then she has appeared on earth, and moved among men.

Christ is depicted at length in all lofty and inscrutable divinity. The author seems to conclude, "Such is our God; no other is to be compared to him" -- but this is followed by a colon, indicated an explanation to come. We expect the praise of God's grandeur to continue, but instead we suddenly shift registers: God is incomparable is not by virtue of cosmic greatness and inscrutability, but because this God has traced out for us the way of divinity, giving God's very self to us. There are few sentences in Scripture that capture for me the profound act of incarnation better than the simple, beautiful statement, "she has appeared on earth, and moved among men."

Fudge Tasting

We tried two new fudge recipes this weekend, our first and second recipes of the final three months. The first (or second if you count the fudge from last weekend) was one I found in my chocolate cookbook.

Easy Chocolate Fudge

1 lb 2 oz dark chocolate

1/3 cup unsalted butter

14 oz can sweetened condensed milk

1/2 t vanilla extract

Lightly grease an 8 inch square cake pan. Break the chocolate into pieces and place in a large saucepan with the butter and condensed milk. Heat gently, stirring until the chocolate and butter melts and the mixture is smooth. Do not allow to boil. Remove from heat. Beat in the vanilla, then beat mixture for a few minutes until thickened. Pour it into the prepared pan and level the top. Chill the mixture in the refrigerator until firm. Tip the fudge out on to a chopping board and cut into squares to serve.

This was an easy recipe and the flavor was good and rich, certainly the most chocolaty of the batches. But it was almost more of a ganache than fudge. It was firm enough, but melted all over your fingers while you ate it.

The third recipe was one I found online for the Original Fantasy Fudge. This was more similar to the fudge recipe I made last weekend, but I didn't like that it only used part of a can of milk (what am I going to do with the rest of it?). This fudge was dry and crumbly. I'm not sure if I overcooked it, or if it is just a drier fudge, but I was not happy with the texture. The taste was good though.

We had a fudge tasting at my parent's house Sunday and the first two fudge recipes were rated the highest. We were pleased to discover that the Easy Chocolate fudge firmed up more overnight and was not so melty. I still thought the consistency of the first recipe was the best, but that one improved quite a bit. I think next I want to try the first recipe with more dark chocolate.

Visions of the Yet to Come

In A Christmas Carol, the ghost of Christmas yet to come gives to Scrooge unsettling information concerning the future. Scrooge has an excellent reply:

"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point," said Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be, only?"

Scrooge recognizes that we speak of the future in two very different senses: there are the things that "may be," which are mere possibilities (e.g., it's possible that tomorrow I go to work as usual, that I get sick and stay home, or that I win the lottery), and there are are the things which "will be," which are bound to happen (e.g., whichever of those things is the one that will actually come about). Scrooge wonders to which ontological category these visions belong. But the ghost's purpose in giving this vision of the future is not to impart propositional knowledge regarding a future state of affairs, but to produce in Scrooge a certain existential change of course. What the ghost communicates does not concern the ontology of the future revealed; what the ghost communicates concerns the comportment of the present toward what is to come.

In this sense, the ghost cannot answer Scrooge's question in an authentic existential register. If the ghost says the future is fixed -- "Tiny Tim will die" -- then the knowledge of the future gives no impetus to change in the present. If, on the other hand, the vision is one of mere possibility -- "it is possible that Tiny Tim might die; anything can happen" -- then the knowledge of the future likewise gives no impetus to change in the present.

Thus, the ghost is simply silent.

The problem is that the existential relation to the future that is proper to the mode of discourse here at stake requires at the same time (a) an expectation of a determinate relation between present and future and (b) an expectation of an indeterminate relation between present and future. The "reforming vision of the future" thus has a peculiar sense: it is the future that will happen with respect to the current state of affairs, but it is the future that will not happen with respect to the state of affairs brought about by the vision (insofar as it is successful).

One could accuse such a reforming vision of being a lie: precisely by revealing the future as real, the prophet guarantees that the future will have no reality (again, insofar as it is successful). This, however, would be to miss the point. This type of discourse does not situate the reality of the future vision in its possibility of arrival (as we said, if the discourse is effective, such a future has no possibility of arrival). Rather, the reality of the future is to be found in the present: the vision depicts in eventuation what is in truth already present. Scrooge is already killing Tiny Tim and is already despised, if only in germinal form. The reforming vision of the future is not a prediction, but a mirror.

Through the prophet Jonah, God declared, "Yet forty days, and Ninive shall be destroyed." The city repented and did penance, and "God saw their works, that they were turned from their evil way: and God had mercy with regard to the evil which he had said that he would do to them, and he did it not."

We read this poorly if we read it under the mistaken assumption that the discourse of Nineveh's destruction operations as an ontological claim regarding the future. If God expresses a propositional truth about the future, and that proposition turns out to be false, then God must not be omniscient, or must have lied, or must have changed God's mind, etc. Some of the biblical authors, attempting to express what is happening, even resort to language that seems consistent with such conclusions (in certain places, for example, God is said to have "repented" of one course of action and taken another). But these exegetical problems stem from a category mistake. The declaration concerning what will come to pass is not uttered in the register of propositional truths concerning the ontological status of a state of affairs that is to come; rather, it is a "reforming vision of the future." That the destruction of Nineveh is coming expresses a truth about the present form of life of its citizenry and effects a transformation of their existential comportment. By disclosing the future entailed by the present, God makes that future impossible, because the very act of disclosure transforms the present, bringing about the state of affairs that was truly yet to come.

Don't Look Down

This is the current view from our door to the balcony. When we moved in over a year ago, they told us there was a hole in the balcony (there were also a few rotten boards that weren't quite holes), but they were planning to fix it within the next couples weeks. We are excited that last week they finally started the project. Right now, it's pretty scary to open the door though!

Third Three Months

We have finished the third quarter! Just one more set of three months to go. Here's a look back at all the great things we have tried lately.

Chocolate Rum Pots

Shrimp Fajitas

Microwave Potato Chips

Sage and Browned Butter Ravioli

Super Summer Salsa

Swiss Chard and Pecan Pesto

Blackberry Sage Spritzers

Honey Chicken

Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Cookies

Roasted Kielbasa and Vegetables

Chocolate Hazelnut Pots

New York Cheesecake

Rhubarb Pie

Supertonic

Fresh Mozzarella Pasta Salad

Pumpkin Apple Muffins

Mediterranean Mashed Potatoes

Mandarin Shrimp Stir Fry

Shredded Beef

Cranberry Coffee Cake

Cranapplesauce

Crispy Potato Puffs

Granola Bars

Mint Brownie Dessert

German Apple Cake

Beef Stew in a Pumpkin

Pate de Fruits

Gingerbread Cupcakes

Caramelized Pumpkin

Christmas Fudge

Once again, we have enjoyed trying a lot of new recipes and found a number that we liked quite a bit, and a few that we didn't like at all. I can't wait to see what our last quarter brings!

Knowledge of God

While I often hear people speak of aligning one's will with that of God, or bearing in one's body the sufferings of Christ, I rarely hear people speak of aligning one's intellect with God. When our ideas are true and robust, encompassing a thing with respect to its nature and causes, we obtain a kind of cognitive identity with God, insofar as our own intellect reproduces the order of ideas and their causes in God. To grow in knowledge, learning more about all things and scrutinizing ideas for veracity and precision, is thus an essential part of the process of salvation (theosis), and the desire to learn and know is the desire for communion with God.

Types of Prayer

Part 1: Synopsis of Types

The Christian tradition generally recognizes three types of prayer.

Verbal prayer is prayer that involves words (whether such words are pronounced aloud or not is irrelevant). This can be subdivided in two categories. In spontaneous verbal prayer, one speaks words that simply come to mind, as in most conversations between people. For this reason, spontaneous verbal prayer is inherently private: it is the prayer of one person (although others may find it edifying in various ways). Common verbal prayer, on the other hand, involves speaking words that one does not make up on the spot. For example, Christ commanded Christians to pray the "Our Father," which one reads or recites from memory. Likewise, the typical prayers offered before meals do not change from day to day unless one adds particular intentions to them. The Scriptures have always been a rich source of common verbal prayer. Since the earliest times, praying through the 150 Psalms has been a common practice (in a wonderfully beautiful and meaningful gesture, those who were illiterate and so could not pray the Psalms would often pray 150 repetitions of the "Our Father" instead).

Kataphatic prayer is prayer that does not consist in words. Also called "meditation," kataphatic prayer is prayer through the power of the imagination, intellect, and will. The Rosary is an excellent example of a kataphatic prayer practice. Although there is a verbal component, the central element of praying the Rosary involves meditating in turn upon a series of significant events in the life of Christ. In the "joyful mysteries," for example, which revolve around Christ's birth, one would consider Gabriel's annunciation of Christ's birth to Mary, Mary's visit to Elizabeth, the birth of Christ, his presentation in the temple, and his finding in the temple. One might, for instance, attempt to visualize these events, making them as concrete as possible so as to understand and undergo their significance. One might imagine one's own reactions, or contrast them with those of the Mother of God, etc. Through this process, one would communicate with the Lord by sharing one's thoughts and feelings and experience God's merciful and salvific love in a real way.

Finally, apophatic prayer moves beyond even the imagination and intellect. It is a form of prayer that dispenses with all thought and feeling, consisting only in the pure and direct apprehension of God. Apophatic prayer (also called "contemplation") provokes an experience of union with the Lord beyond conscious awareness, forgetting oneself and becoming totally absorbed in God's existence, as expressed in the phrase, "be still, and know that I am God." One rests in the joy of relationship with God, beyond even the categories of being. The great mystics of Christian history bear witness to the beatitude of this form of prayer.


Part 2: Assorted Reflections

• Growing up, spontaneous verbal prayer formed the vast majority of my experiences of prayer. If asked what prayer was, I probably would have responded in such a way as to more or less identify it with this type. It was not until I grew older that I began to realize that spontaneous verbal prayer is only a small part of prayer. In my personal life, I find that spontaneous verbal prayer has a role, but this role is a small one, since I have found there to be little that common verbal prayer cannot do more effectively.
• Common prayer is both a testament to and a source of great unity.
• Common prayer is an excellent exercise in humility. For a long time, I preferred spontaneous prayer for reasons of pride: I wanted to be different than everyone else, to think that my petitions and gratitude were too unique to be expressed in the words in which Christians have always expressed them, etc. Also, I wanted to feel like I was contributing something: prayer is something that comes from me. By praying the prayers that the Holy Spirit has seen fit to preserve through the ages and hand down to me as a member of the faithful, I am able to recognize that prayer, too, is solely a gift of God's grace.
• Kataphatic prayer is my preferred form of prayer. It will be of little surprise to anyone who knows me that I more frequently and fruitfully engage in intellectual, rather than sensorial, meditation. Frankly, sensorial forms of kataphatic prayer have hitherto been of little value to me, although I suspect that the reverse may be true for many people.
• Apophatic prayer, though I am inclined to view it as the highest type of prayer, is the one I most neglect to practice.

Christmas Fudge

I love fudge. One of my goals is to find a perfect fudge recipe that is consistent, soft and creamy, richly chocolate, and all around delicious. Having said that, it might be surprising that I haven't actually made fudge more than a handful of times, all of which were a number of years ago. So, I thought I'd try one that was in my recent edition of Taste of Home. This was recipe number thirty.

My Christmas Fudge

4 1/2 cups sugar

1 can (12oz) evaporated milk

1/2 cup butter, cubed

2 pkg (11 1/2 oz each) milk chocolate chips

4 1/2 cups miniature marshmallows

2 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped

3 cups chopped walnuts, toasted

2 tsp vanilla extract

4 oz white baking chocolate, melted

Line a 13x9-in pan with foil; coat with cooking spray. In a heavy Dutch oven, combine sugar, milk, and butter. Bring to a rapid boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Cook and stir 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in chocolate chips, marshmallows, and chopped chocolate until melted. Fold in walnuts and vanilla. Immediately spread into prepared pan. Drizzle with melted white baking chocolate; cool completely. Using foil, lift fudge out of pan. Remove foil; cut fudge into 96 squares. Store between layers of waxed paper in airtight containers.

There were two things I changed when I made this, I didn't add walnuts or drizzle the fudge with white chocolate. This was easy to make, although it took awhile to bring the milk mixture to a boil. It started to set almost as soon as I poured it into the 9x13 pan so I couldn't get the top very smooth. I don't know if that is typical or not; it seemed like it took a long time to melt the chocolate chips, so I don't know if that was part of the problem. That doesn't really matter though because it tastes great and is super creamy. The texture is so soft and smooth and it tastes like a classic fudge should taste. I think it could be a little more chocolately, maybe next time I will try using one bag of milk chocolate and one bag of semisweet chocolate chips, but it was still delicious. I am quite pleased with how this recipe turned out, but I'm still planning to try more! Do any of you have a favorite fudge recipe you would like to share?

Caramelized Pumpkin

 We had Caramelized Pumpkin, recipe twenty-nine, with dinner tonight. The original recipe is actually for butternut squash, but I had a fresh pumpkin that needed to be cut up, so I used that. I also didn't really follow the recipe since I was scaling it back and instead of figuring out the new amounts I needed I just melted some butter, added brown sugar, pepper, and salt, and called it good. I think I overcooked it a bit since the pumpkin was pretty soft, but other than that I thought it turned out well. It wasn't anything particularly exciting though.

Gingerbread Cupcakes

Apparently, I should ask Joshua to take my food pictures more often.

 Recipe twenty-eight was Gingerbread Cupcakes with Eggnog Frosting. I substituted oil for the butter and they were plenty fluffy, but had a weird spongy texture. It wasn't too bad, but it wasn't what I was hoping for. I was making these because I thought they might be good for the specialty baked item of the month at 210 and wanted to try them out. I was happy with the taste, and the eggnog frosting was great. I ended up going ahead and making them at work, but using the butter called for in the recipe and that improved the texture.

Tree Hunt

Friday morning we headed out for the annual Christmas tree hunt. Of course, the first thing to do when you are surrounded by Christmas trees is to smell them, mmmmmmm.

We found four trees and Dad delivered them with the trailer to all the houses.

 On Sunday, it was time to decorate. We started with our tree and apartment.

Then we headed out to Dad and Mom's house to help finish putting up lights and decorate the tree there.

 Tree decorating wouldn't be complete without Isaac's homemade eggnog. It was especially good this year.

Here's our tree again, all decorated and lit up.

"O Come, O Come"

"O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" is one of my favorite hymns at this time of the year. The beauty of the music and the profundity with which it captures the traditional Christian invocation of the O Antiphons constitute an almost irresistible invitation to worship deeply.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.

O come, Thou Dayspring from on high,
and cheer us by thy drawing nigh;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night
and death's dark shadow put to flight. 

It is a song of longing, of waiting for the appearance of Christ. It captures the lamentation of God's people who yearned for his appearance, and of us, who still yearn for his second coming and for the daily appearance of his grace in our lives.

O come, o come, Thou Lord of might,
who to thy tribes on Sinai's height
in ancient times did give the law,
in cloud, and majesty, and awe.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse's stem,
from ev'ry foe deliver them
that trust Thy mighty power to save,
and give them vict'ry o'er the grave. 

The song expresses a longing that is not mere wishful thinking, for it observes the power with which God has been near to us in times past. It is the call of those who have been God's people, who have known God's real presence, and who long for that presence to return.

O come, Thou Wisdom, from on high,
and order all things far and nigh;
to us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.

O come, Thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heav'nly home,
make safe the way that leads on high,
that we no more have cause to sigh. 

It is a song that recognizes the sins of the present. It does not ignore the sufferings and injustices we inflict upon others and suffer ourselves, but faces them. The longing for God's presence is not abstract, but based on a concrete need for Christ to put in order our maladjusted lives and lead in the paths of knowledge.

O come, Desire of the nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind;
bid every strife and quarrel cease
and fill the world with heaven's peace.

It is a song that finds fault and inadequacy not just in the lives of us who sing it but in all people, and conversely hopes for the coming of God not only to ourselves but to the whole world. It recognizes the power of God's nativity as the solution to injustice and strife, seeing in the reality of evil a hope for God's peace.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, o Israel!

I love that a hymn in a minor key revolves around the word "rejoice." The Christian hope is confidence and surety: Christ will come. Thus, even in the period of longing, it is possible to rejoice. Joy is not reserved merely for those times when one can exult in a major key ("Joy to the world! The Lord is come!"); rather, there is also a rejoicing proper to times of lamentation.


Far, far too many of us do not sing this song -- or, rather, we sing it, but we do not live it. When Thanksgiving has passed (or even before), we turn straight to Christmas, skipping Advent completely. The Christian faith certainly observes a time of celebration at the coming of our Lord: we feast for the octave of Christmas itself and continue the Christmas season until the commemoration of Christ's baptism. But the Christian faith also observes a time of preparation for the coming of Christmas. Like the Israelites, who wandered in the desert for forty days, we wait in four weeks of expectation for the arrival of our God.

Advent is a time of somber spiritual preparation. It is a penitential time, during which we come face to face with the reality of our need for God's presence, remember God's past goodness, and cry out for God to come again.

It is difficult, when secular life is whirling about with the frenzy of commercial Christmas, to restrain ourselves. The temptation to pretend as though Christmas has arrived -- to put out the Christmas trappings about the home, to decorate and light a tree, to play "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" on the radio, to eat Christmas goodies -- is strong. I find it tremendously difficult to observe Advent. For the most part, actually, I fail.

But it is precisely when we find it most difficult to observe Advent that we most desperately need this season. The coming of Christ requires preparation, and this preparation can be unpleasant work. It requires vigilance and self-assessment. In Matthew 25, Christ tells an Advent parable. Ten young women are waiting for a bridegroom to come and begin a wedding feast. Five of these take the time to prepare for his coming, while five do not. When he arrives, the five who are prepared join the feast, while the five who are unprepared are left out. The parable would work equally well if we were to imagine that the five unprepared women, like so many in our society, not only dispense with preparation but pretend as though the bridegroom had already come, throwing their own feast. There is a sad contrast between the common contemporary practice, in which many celebrate Christmas out of season, then scramble to reform their lives afterward with resolutions, and the Christian practice of careful preparation leading up to the season of Christmas celebration. May we not be caught feasting our way through December, rather than soberly preparing for the coming of our Lord.

We must pray to God for the grace to observe Advent, for strength to resist the temptation of leaping straight into Christmas. When midnight comes, as we gather to keep watch for Christ's humble entrance into history, we shall burst into the exalted proclamation of "Joy to the world! The Lord has come!" Until then, we assess our lives, call out for God, prepare ourselves for this coming, and rejoice in the hope that it will be so.

O come, o come, Emmanuel!