TJ Hirst

I slept late after the alarm sounded. The sun didn’t stream through my windows at 6 or 7 a.m. like usual. A steady rain awakened me an hour later, and the weather outside seemed like a a perfect day to sideline any schedule at all. The kids agreed, and we determined we would take the ultimate relaxer—a sweat’s day.

Now this might look like a Saturday in December but the sun doesn’t shine at 6 a.m. or 6 p.m. at that time of year in Minnesota. We are mid-way through summer break, and we’ve become a bit exhausted by the constant activity.

The rain gave us a slice of something else to do. We lounged through breakfast and the newspaper, took hot baths, curled up on the couch with my daughter to finish reading The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett (a great book), and baked. While I strolled through my Google Reader a little slower than usual, my husband walked in the front door from his office and said to KH, “What’s up, ‘nut?”

“Mom and I are making raisin and cinnamon bread,” she said.

We sliced into the loaf for lunch before it even had a few minutes to sit. The steam rising from the thick chunks of bread seemed to be an anomaly on this summer day. Here’s my mother’s recipe:

Honey Wheat and Cinnamon Raisin Bread

3 cups whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons yeast
1/3 cup oil
1/3 cup honey
2 ¼ cup hot water
3 cups white flour

Mix first three ingredients in a large mixing bowl and set aside. Measure next three ingredients into a medium bowl and stir until honey is well mixed in. Pour liquid mixture all at once into flour mixture. Stir with a heavy spoon until flour is all wet.

Add white flour 1 cup at a time, mixing in well after each cup. Mix last cup in with hands, kneading as you mix. When it is mixed in well enough that the dough begins to stick to your hands, rub the bottom of the bowl with shortening. Continue kneading just until mixed well and ball of dough is greased. Turn over in bowl and let rise until double in bulk, about 30 to 60 minutes.

Turn dough out on a smooth surface and knead until a smooth ball forms. Cut into two equal pieces. To form each piece into a loaf, use a rolling pin to flatten and expel air bubbles. Fold each side in—more at one end than the other. Roll small end toward wide end. Pick up and place in a well-greased standard-sized loaf pan. Cover with a towel and let rise just until even with the top of the pan, about 20-30 minutes. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes. When it is finished it will be golden brown and sound hard when you tap it.

For Cinnamon Raisin Bread: When you leave the dough to rise the first time, put 1 cup of raisins in a 2 cup measuring cup. Cover with very hot or boiling water. Allow these to sit while the bread rises; it will plump the raisins. Drain the liquid when you are ready to roll out the dough. After the dough doubles, cut into two pieces. Roll each piece into a rectangle. Sprinkle with a cinnamon and sugar mixture. Scatter raisins on top. Fold edges over and roll each rectangle up into a loaf. Follow instructions above for baking.

I lost myself in The Host by Stephanie Meyer for my first real summer read, and I rejoice to have finally finished it. Contradictions? Yes, the whole book conflicted me.

Last summer I spent a few days camped in my hammock with the Twilight series (Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse). I’d heard a buzz that I had to read them. The youthful adventure and romance provided an easy escape from my serious nature and a possible bridge between my teenage daughter and me.

But you know there’s more to them than that, don’t you? Sure, author Stephanie Meyer writes a captivating story with a plot that carries a reader through its pages, wanting more. But her words are not shallow or hollow; behind the surface story lie powerful issues.

The complexities of love, marriage, and mortality are intertwined with the emotions of human sexuality in Bella’s and Edward’s relationship. Look for them. These characters are not only posing questions for each other but causing us to examine our current culture’s attitudes about sexual love and ask ourselves the same ones.

My daughter threw me into Meyer’s new adult novel, The Host, when she requested it from the library. Since she is only 14, I required that I read it first. Apparently the large-print edition didn’t have as many holds on it, so what we picked it up at the library last week was a 1144 page book that was bigger than a Bible. I didn’t have three days to devote to hammock reading, so I lugged this paperback with me to swim lessons, to exercise at the Y, from upstairs to downstairs and back, and into the late hours of light Minnesota summer nights. Since my vision adjusted to the 14-point type and I couldn’t read anything smaller, I had to set aside all my other reading until I finished.

I discovered three things when I was lost in this author’s latest novel:

First, The Host is definitely an adult novel. It is not overly sexual or violent or over the head for a youngish teenager. But the subject matter and ideas are more advanced than Twilight’s young adult audience. I told my daughter that she could read it, but that it will not be what she came to expect from the others.

Second, the depth of ideas is exactly what I was looking for, and she met those expectations. The Host is the story of a soul, Wanderer, from another planet who inhabits a human body. During her assimilation into her human host and Earth life, ethical challenges hit her hard when she realizes that Melanie, her host, still resides within the body. The plot moves along quickly when her choices pit her against her own. In an unexpected community Wanderer discovers love and hate and that both bring large variations and important choices.

Finally, here’s the conflict—I don’t like science fiction. The first few chapters of Twilight were not overtly weird. I genuinely liked the characters and the setting before I realized the book was about vampires and werewolves. In The Host, however, the first few chapters were clearly science fiction and quite confusing to me. I almost gave up reading it several times. I’m not a fan of this genre and was glad when the story moved closer to a form I could relate to.

Overall, it’s a worthy summer read that can be purely entertaining or just keep Meyer fans satisfied until Breaking Dawn is released on August 2, 2008. But honestly, like Meyer’s other novels, hidden behind the hype is a whole lot more.

My daughter and I just finished reading The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, which is the June Book Selection for the Bodacious Bloggity Book Club at Marathon Bird. Today EH and I each share our impressions for the discussion.

Every step in life opens into a future of uncertainty. Some of the experiences brighten us with pleasure, others hurl horrific happenings toward us and some seem to have no consequence beyond that day. The future of Corrie ten Boom’s world, like all of ours, was unknown. Yet, in her youth and early adulthood the daily faith of her family prepared her to meet the destructive forces of World War II when they reached her country and her own family with compassion and courage.

One of my favorite examples is of her wise father’s response to Corrie’s questions about sex. They were riding the train. He set his heavy bag in front of her and asked her to carry it off the train. When she said she couldn’t, he taught her this parallel truth. He said,

It would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.

Corrie’s father is not only giving an appropriate answer to his child but teaching her a pattern of faith. He is saying, “trust me with your unknown questions and fears,” just as she later applies that pattern to faith in God during her loneliest and most disheartening moments.

Now that my own daughter is “older and stronger” to bear some of the weight of these historical events, I invited her to share this book club discussion with me. She said:

The Hiding Place, the story of Corrie ten Boom, is a remarkable one. Through her many struggles of hiding Jews in her family home, she learns from her sister how to have faith in God. After being sent to Ravensbruck and being shown where they were to sleep, a smelly, straw-covered platform covered in fleas, occupied by seven other women, almost the first thing they did was pray. Not in sorrow, asking to get out of their situation, but thanks. Thanks for everything, including the fleas.

As Corrie remarked to her sister, “Betsie, there’s no way even God can make me grateful for a flea.”

Her reply was profound. “‘Give thanks in all circumstances,’” she quoted. “It doesn’t say, ‘in pleasant circumstances.’ Fleas are part of this place where God has put us.” When, during their daily Bible studies with the other women in the barracks, they realize that their area is rarely patrolled, Betsie finds out that it is because of all the fleas that the guards avoid the place.

Other miracles abound as Corrie’s faith grows. The vitamin oil that she snuck in for her sister continued to produce oil, even after Betsie had passed it around to so many others. When they received vitamins from a friend who worked in the hospital in the camp, the oil stopped coming out.

I read the story of Anne Frank in school, and even though I knew it had actually happened, it didn’t seem as real to me. Then I read this book, and it seemed real. It took me a little while to figure out why. Her faith, so similar to my own, allowed me to compare my life to Corrie’s.

I learned from Corrie’s story, like my daughter, by comparing it to my own life. Despite the crimes committed against her, her sister and many others, she continued to identify and strive to correct her personal weaknesses like selfishness. Ironically, her tragic circumstances of the concentration camp magnified her understanding of the biblical account of the apostle Paul’s own “thorn in the flesh.” Through that comparison she learned this truth:

The real sin I had been committing was not that of inching toward the center of the platoon because I was cold. The real sin lay in thinking that any power to help and transform came from me. Of course it was not my wholeness, but Christ’s that made the difference.

Corrie’s faith prepared her. Her adversity transformed her. That purifying process took place not in an idyllic setting but one of the most cruel. Most of our lives are not idyllic nor horrid but the reality of them presses upon us the same opportunities to meet them with faith to live and love.

I’m a movie talker. I am also a movie writer—no, not a screenwriter, a movie viewer who writes the good lines in my little notebook. But when my family took me to see Prince Caspian in an actual theater for my birthday, I forgot my notebook and didn’t talk at all!

Now, as I write, I realize why I talk and write in the midst of an expereince—these verbal tools sear the impressions in my mind in the moment before they are lost. That’s the moment when my creative thought process reacts and processes the story and how it relates to life. Nonetheless, my total absorption in this movie was not lost after its end nor was the ensuing discussion diminished.

The second movie in the Narnia Chronicles stepped into an even deeper symbolic understanding of what it means to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. Aslan is the fictional lion that leads the land of Narnia as a Christ-figure.

In the conclusion of the first movie, the four kings and queens of Narnia return to England for a year, but time continues in Narnia, bringing forth a new generation of dangers and a new leader, Prince Caspian.

When Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are called back to help, they discover a changed land where Aslan does not seem to exist. This time they know who they are and their capacity to lead. However, even for leaders, change requires humility to reach their potential. While Edmund is the one humbled by sin in the last movie, this time, Peter is the one to learn this lesson.

Pride is a painful lesson. Since we cannot view ourselves from the outside, pride is difficult to distinguish and overcome. The young knight Peter develops his potential and then feels capable to serve. As king he moves forward according to his best plans. But in carrying out his plans, Peter still cannot lead on his own. The results show his need for Aslan.

When I face a situation when pride blinds my own eyes, I tend to depend upon what I’ve known from the past rather than looking beyond with faith. For me, I always ask for that help from Christ first, but then I begin a process of talking it out with myself and trusted friends to awaken in me the solutions I can internalize. However, like Peter, if I get scared that the solution from Christ might not come in time, my talking may turn into a worried effort to storm the castle on my own. Then, in the midst of rushing toward the desired outcome, I am surprised by the castle gates that block my way and try to fight at those barriers.

How much I must become like the little child Lucy who can still see Aslan and perseveres toward him rather than toward the enemy.

Discovery filled my twenties. The process of looking for and trying new recipes, new decor and design, new parenting advice, new clothing trends and new beauty tips filled me with new ideas and eagerness. Toward the end of that decade, the new needed to fade so I could concentrate on following through on all I had introduced.

Doing filled the first phase of my thirties. Not reading parenting books with baby number three left me time to parent. We actually built our “dream home” from my design file and threw away any goals for perfection in the process. I quit clipping recipes and started creating my own with what I had on hand. As the end of this decade draws closer, I wonder about the next.

Will I return to discovery? I love learning and applying it, but I am too old to just follow a trend for a trend’s sake. I inch toward this new season, eager to not just regress and redo, but to discover at a deeper level, adding carefully to what I’ve chosen. And I stand in my well-equipped kitchen considering how to combine experience and enthusiasm into the mixture that will follow.

Ham Salad Puff
Taste of Home Cookbook

1 cup water
½ cup butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1-1½ cups fully cooked ham
2 celery ribs, chopped
½ cup chopped green pepper
½ cup sliced green onions
½ cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon dill weed
lettuce leaves

1. In a large saucepan, bring water and butter to a boil. Add flour and salt all at once, stirring until a smooth ball forms. Remove from heat; let stand 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Continue beating until mixture is smooth and shiny.

2. Spread dough onto the bottom and up the sides of a greased 9-inch pie plate. Bake at 400° for 30-35 minutes or until puffed and golden brown. Prick the puff with a fork. Cool on a wire rack.

3. In a bowl, combine the ham, celery, green peppers, onions, mayonnaise, dill. Line puff with lettuce; fill with ham mixture. Yield: 4-6 servings.