mountain masala

time away

yvonne and i spent a wonderful 4 days on Kangaroo Island celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary. in my head, we're still in our mid-30's, but apparently that's not true. we stayed at a log cabin type place called Carabanks at American River, with this view. (That's the local marron and oysters that we bought and cooked. You don't want to see the video of me handling live marron...)

American River is a fantastic, sleepy village in a gorgeous inlet. I caught 4 fish, which is 4 more than usual. Found a couple of sensational art galleries in Kingscote. Visited the seals at Seal Bay. About 1500 inhabit the south coast there. They are declining at 4% per year, mainly due to pollution (plastic bags etc) in the ocean. So in 30 years time they'll be extinct.

Lest We Remember

Lest we remember
Lest we recall
Build ourselves a monument
Sanctify the war
Number our heroes
The dead we'll ignore
Nobody remembers
What the young ones died for

Lest we remember
Lest we recall
In case we remember
The pain of it all

And over and over
We'll tell it again
The story of bravery
Of dashing young men
The reasons we'll argue
The blame we will lay
Till truth as we tell it
Is history one day

Lest we remember
Lest we recall
In case we remember
The pain of it all

Lest we remember
Lest we recall
In case we find reason
For just one more war

Song by Andrew Dutney, circa 1981, from the album "I've Got Eyes".

Orange Mustard Chicken with Carrot & Apricot Pilaf and Suzme

I was on a roll with the new cookbook last night. This middle eastern chicken was super-easy and delicious, and the rice and suzme went with it superbly.

Orange and Mustard Marinated Chicken

Marinate 4 chicken breasts (we used thighs) in the following
- zest of 2 oranges
- 150 ml orange juice
- 1 tbsp mild mustard (I used Dijon)
- 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 1 tbsp brown sugar

Drain off marinade, brush chicken with olive oil. Brown in pan for 3 mins on each side. Season chicken and bake in oven for 25-30 mins.

I covered the chicken in the oven and it was a bit overcooked, probably because the thigh pieces were smaller than breasts. But it tasted great!

Carrot and Apricot Pilaf

I adapted this from a lamb & rice recipe in the Complete Book of Turkish Cooking.

Heat 30ml ghee (or oil & butter) in a pan and saute 2 chopped onions and 4 chopped garlic cloves for a few minutes.

Add 2 medium carrots, coarsley grated and stir for a minute, then sdd 1 3/4 cups long grain rice, 1 tsp ground cinnamon and 2 tsp ground allspice and stir for another minute.

Add 1 litre chicken stock, bring to the boil for 1-2 minutes, then reduce to a simmer for 10-12 mins. Half way through, add 3/4 cup chopped dried apricots.

When most of the water has been absorbed, take off the heat, cover with a clean tea towel and lid for 10-15 mins.

Stir in toasted slivered almonds before serving.

Suzme with Zataar

Again from "Purple Citurs & Sweet Perfume". Place 1 1/2 - 2 cups of yoghurt in muslin, in a strainer over a bowl overnight, so that the liquid drains off the yoghurt (this is the Suzme). I think I needed to leave it out of the fridge for a while at the start of the process to get rid of more of the liquid.

Suzme is like cream cheese (although mine was a bit soft). You then make little logs, like mini kofte, and roll them in spices - sumac or pistachios, or in our case, some home made zataar - 2 tbsp dried oregano or thyme, 1 tbsp dried marjoram, 2 tdsp sesame seeds (lightly toased), 1 tbsp sumac and 1/2 tsp salt.

I put two of these on each plate.

Unfortunately the photo doesnt do justice to the food. This was great!

 

 

Four scenarios for faith formation

In "Faith Formation 2020", John Roberto describes four possible scenarios for faith formation for the future. They come from considering two questions: Will people become more receptive or resistant to orgqanised religion? and Will people 's hunger for and openness to God and the spiritual life increase or decrease? Rather than give absolute yes/no answers, Roberto provides the alternatives as four quadrants.

The assumption is not that the future will only be one of the above four, but rather that in different place and times, the proportions of people in each quadrant may vary. What Roberto actually does here is outline four kinds of 'audiences' for faith formation, or whatever we call it.

The interesting thing for me is how it immediately makes us look beyond the traditional audiences for Christian education, namely those receptive to organised religion, and invites us to think about the "faith formation" dimensions of mission. The criticism of Christian education as catering to a diminishing 'captive' audience was justified. Whether engaging people in the lower two quadrants is education, formation, evangelism, discipleship or something else, is another (important) question (not considered by the author).

This initial chapter, then, sets up the framework for the rest of the book - in what ways might the church engage people in each of these quadrants in exploring Christian faith. What strategies, approaches, settings, resources, personnel, might be required? There's no discussion of educational theory, mission, spirituality or ecclesiology. He leaves it up to you to decide how to 'be church' in each setting. What the book does, though, is report on what others are doing in these sectors, drawing on both religious and wider wisdom, and then foocusing on transformational leadership as the critical factor.

I'm not full convinced about the scenario approach, including assumptions about 'hunger' that the church might meet. That aside, as you work through the book, there are plenty of connections with recent mission thinking and practice, even if these aren't explicit. More to come on that. I think that as a way of auditing and planning a church's educational or formational ministries, the diagram has merit.

Part of Roberto's genius with the Comprehensive Approach (back in the mid 90's) was the encouragement to see ministry as both 'gathered' and 'non-gathered', and taking places in different places and different times. In a sense, what he does here is add the factor of disposition into the mix. While it's not new for those with a mission bent, it is an overdue prompt to church-centric education.

Download chapter 1 of the book here. (500kb PDF. Provided by the publisher).

vulnerability

this is really interesting and worthwhile. i need to 'de-Americanise' it in my mind. I like it so much that I'm trying to work out why I shouldnt. I need to watch it again and then check out the actual research. there's some schtick in this, but I hope that what the research says is more layered. thanks to linda and beatrice for this.

lamb and pistachio kofte

this fantastic cookbook arrived in the mail the other day. "Purple Citrus and Sweet Perfume" by Silvena Rowe. I am completely enamoured with the food of the Mediterrannean - north African, Spanish, Turkish, etc. Most people in the world, having lacked supermarkets until recently, do remarkable things with a limited range of local ingredients. Not only do you come to understand something of other cultures through their cooking (and the narrative of the writer), you also discover simple and not so simple ways to cook different kinds of foods with readily available ingredients. While some foods which are cheap elsewhere are expensive here, it is surprising how much 'street food' from other parts of the world is simple, healthy and tasty. Yes, there's dinner party food, but a lot of these kinds of books have everyday, inexpensive food too.

This fabulous book has all kinds of eastern Mediterranean recipes. Lost of grains, nuts, fruit, spices, lamb, yoghurt. And you should see the desserts!

Tonight it's Lamb and Pistachio Kofte. The half-price lamb mince made up for the cost of the pistachios... (I've just decided to buy a pistachio tree...)

Kofte

Mix together the following:

400g lamb mince
1 grated onion
3 crushed garlic cloves
50g currants
50g chopped pistachios
1/2 tsp sweet paprika
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
handful of chopped fresh mint
handful of chopped fresh parsley

Mix together and make into 'golf-szed meatballs'. in the book they look like small rissoles, so that's what i did.

Sauce

Toast 200g unsalted pistaschios (that's a LOT) in a dry frypan. i did half and they were salted. Cool and grind in a food processor, retaining some nuts for garnish.

Mix together 150g tahini, 3 cruched garlic cloves, juice of 2 lemons, 3-4 tbsp water. Then mix in the ground nuts. The book said to put it into the fridge but it went weird, so leave it at room temp!

That's it. Fry the kofte. and serve with sauce on top.

We're having it with beetroot baked with balsamic vinegar and garlic, sweet potato mashed with ginger and honey, and some sauted zucchini.

You haven't heard the last of this book! Looking forward to the salads that will have nasturtiums, zucchini flowers and rose petals from our garden.

After 3 days of leftovers, the family are hanging out for a fresh meal!

PS. The verdict was that the Kofte needed more pistachios (I made double the amount but only 50g nuts) and more mint and parsley (the recipe said 1/2 a bunch of each???) The tahine sauce went all stiff in the fridge and is still stiff a couple of hours later.) Beetroot was probably a bit strong for this dish. Next time I'd make 1/2 the sauce and put more nuts in the mince.

 

Interactive Easter 2011

Our pre-Easter event at Rosefield Uniting yesterday went great overall. We had 12 different activity areas, running 5-7pm. We probably had 60-70 people overall, enough for the place to feel full of activity, and hopefully more next time. In many ways the event was designed to show the congregation a different way for worship and learning to take place, and to pave the way for our monthly alternative family community gathering.

The idea was to provide a 'hands on' experience of the Easter story for families with primary and pre-school children. Given that Easter falls in the middle of our school holidays, we decided that we'd 'do' Easter early, in a different kind of setting from our normal church worship.

Quite a few of the ideas came from some "stations of hope" that cheryl had originally written some years ago, which we'd used in Mt Barker in 2002, so they've been adapted a couple of times. Cheryl gets all credit for her orginial stuff and no blame for my adaptation.

Here's what we did, followed by a link to download the materials if you wish. Stations had a symbol (also on the handout), Bible text, brief reflection and activity. (Symbol font was the excellent Speed Bump Pi by Brian wilson from Three Islands Press - it has dozens of neat little icons.)

Songs for Lent

NoiseTrade.com is a website that offers albums for free or a 'tip'. There's seems to be a reasonable amount of Christian stuff on there, but also a bunch of other great stuff. I've just downloaded "Songs for Lent" by New York Hyms. Not all of it is my cup of tea, but it's a bunch of interesting, mournful, 'stations of the cross' music. Definitely some good, useful material for Holy Week.

I have to add that I've clicked on some other albums and am still waiting hours later for the download link to arrive! There's one of Butterfly Boucher live that I'm keen to get.

Faith formation in a changing society

In "Faith Formation 2020", identifies 8 "driving forces" influencing faith formation in the US, based on recent research. He gathered a group of leading US educators to work out possible futures for "faith formation".

1. Declining number of Christians and growing number of people with no religious affiliation

2. Increasing number of people beconing more "spiritual" and less "religious"

3. Declining participation in Christian churches

4. Increasing diversity and pluralism in American society

5. Increasing influence on individualism on Christian identity and community life

6. Changing patterns of marriage and family life (notably fewer kids, later in life, see below)

7. Declining family religious socialisation

8. Increasing impact of digital media and web-technologies

It's pretty easy to think of Australia, check the research, even, and tick all of the same boxes. Globalisation, westernisation and Americanisation seem to make us more and more similar, don't they? Or perhaps we are being schooled to view our lives through an American lens.

If these trends are also true in Australia, how are we different?

- Less religious and less Christian to begin with
- Less multi-cultural

Could we also say:

- increasing discussion about faith and religion in the public sphere
- increasing participation of churches in community services sector
- increasing participation in church schooling
- strong presence of churches in debate about social issues

Roberto's trends seem in many ways to focus on what has been lost, which is often the case here also when the church looks at how society is changing. I'm wondering what a more positive spin on the opportunity might look like.

eg. growing conversations around spirituality in relation to arts, health, education

It's also the kind of list where the last item is, "oh, and by the way, there's the Internet..."  The list isnt in any particular order, yet I'd want to point out that electronic and mass communication has driven or accelerated many of the changes in the list.

Where he heads next (tomorrow's post) is to look at four scenarios for the future, which reallty define four audiences for faith formation.The book is interesting, and rich with things to think about, resources to check out, and I appraciate the generosity of putting so much of it on the WWW at www.faithformation2020.net and www.faithformationlearningexchange.net. Roberto is seeking to practice what he preaches in the book about information and resource-sharing.

I'm aiming to read some of the newer stuff from Philip Hughes and co. ("Spirit Matters" and "Shaping Australia's Spirituality" - http://www.cra.org.au/products-page/) to try to get a better sense of where and how things might be different here.

What would you say is distinctive/different about social trends in Australia?

 

Launch of UnitingLeaders website

This week sees the launch of Uniting Leaders, a portal for learning and community among UCA leaders. Hosted by Uniting Church SA, this site is offered as a resource to the church nationally.The aim is to enable all kinds of leaders to connect -  from Ministers and lay preachers to chaplains, youth workers, ministry leaders and others.

There are two sections to the Uniting Leaders site: Courses and Community. Information in the Courses section is for students undertaking accredited courses through the Adelaide College of Divinity. Occasionally information about non-accredited courses will also be available. The aim is to enhance distance learning; students can learn at their own pace with the benefit of interactivity and multimedia.

The Community section is where anyone can be involved. It’s a bit like Facebook – you register and create a profile for yourself. As well as providing a space for discussion and encouragement, the groups enable users to upload resources that can be shared with the wider community, such as prayers, songs they’ve written, service orders, photos, sermon material and helpful links.

Initial group topics include preaching from the lectionary, fresh expressions, youth ministry, Christian education and discipleship. Often lay leaders, ministers, chaplains or youth workers will find themselves trawling the internet for ideas and advice.  However it’s easy to get lost or find material that’s
unhelpful or doesn’t quite suit our Australian Uniting Church context.

If you’re involved in ministry and leadership in the Uniting Church, log on to unitingleaders.org.au today to create your profile and see what the buzz is about.

(part of the above adapted from New Times, April 2010. Download it here (7.7 mb PDF).