Father's Day Indian Feast

I got a book for my birthday called "Classic Indian Cooking". It was recommended by my cousin--at least, I hope it was. She couldn't remember the title, but this book seemed to fit her description. I'm excited about it...I've dabbled a little in making curry with recipes from allrecipes.com, but wanted to learn how to do it really well.

<--Step One: Mixing spices, roasting them in the oven, and grinding them to make the spice mix garam masala. This is a close-up of the spices before roasting.

Since I got the cookbook, my dad and I have been planning to cook together. The project would take two days...we planned to go all out...making as many ingredients from scratch as possible. And, it turned out that the two of us (with help from Becc and Mom as they were willing and needed) cooked all through Father's Day...we started around 2:30 and got dinner on the table by 8:30. (much earlier than our mid-cooking estimates of 11pm ;-)

The day before, my dad and I boiled milk to make homemade Indian cheese (paneer). -->
It was fascinating. You boil the milk and then dump in some lemon juice and the curds form almost immediately. You rinse all the lemon out of the cheese curds, squeeze them in cheese cloth, hang them to dry for a couple hours, squish them under a pot of water for a couple more hours, and then cut them into chunks, as in the picture.

This was the main curry I made
<--(matar paneer) and Becc graciously joined me when things got tricky. It's a tomato based sauce with cheese and peas...and lots of spices, of course!

In the end, we realized we wanted lassis! -->
(sweet yogurt drinks) My sister is the queen of smoothies, and quickly took over the project. Even though we had no mango,
these were maybe the best lassis I've ever had.

My dad is an amazing cook. I keep telling him that his next job should be owning his own restaurant...I can imagine him having a blast talking to all kinds of neighborhood people and unveiling his new masterpieces every day. He's the kind of guy who will make an eight course Indian meal--never having made any of the eight courses before--and invites 24 people to our house to eat it. He started cooking Indian at my urging sometime around when I graduated from college. I think he's come to really love it too. He keeps telling me he doesn't want to be this crazy everyday, though...I guess he likes being a pastor. ;-)

These are my dad's four dishes he made. (over achiever!!!) He made a dal (lentil dish), an egg curry, a rice pilaf, and plain basmati rice. Oh...and also chai for after dinner. Yum!

Once, in Tokyo, I sat in a Denny's with my stateside program director and my Japanese program director. They asked me, among other things, about the inter-denominational work I was doing. This led to a discussion about the difference between a "theology of the cross" and a "theology of glory". I found myself arguing that the theologies were two sides of the same coin...one a mark of our complete dependence on God and the other the glory of God that flows through us as a result of the cross and the giving of the Holy Spirit. My Japanese program director exclaimed, "That's very Lutheran!"

Sometime around then, I was worshiping in "the church next door to my church." An Assemblies of God church called GAP (Gospel Assembly of Praise). There is a time for sharing and prayer requests, and one girl told us a fairly heavy burden. The pastor invited her up, and invited all of us to pray for her. We got up and gathered around her...it was one of those times when I felt a particularly strong need to pray, and so I didn't even think...I leaped up and laid hands on her along with some others. It wasn't until we were done praying that I realized that the people who had laid hands on her and who had prayed aloud were: the pastor, two girls from the worship team, another girl strongly involved in church leadership, and me. Thankfully, it seemed that was fine. One of those church leaders said to me afterward, "You fit in really well here."

I've tried to describe my need for both churches to various people. In one discussion it came down to: I worship with my mind with the Lutherans, and I worship with my heart at GAP. To another person I confessed: I feel a lack of freedom in the Lutheran church when I'm happy, and I feel a lack of freedom in the Assemblies church when I'm sad. Lutherans look at you with funny eyebrows if you throw your hands up in the air or suggest that dancing is one of the best ways to worship. Pentecostals look at you with a "deer in the headlights" expression if you tell them that you're very frustrated with something you're doing for God...God is going to come through, after all, isn't he? (these are all stereotypes, of course...and I'll be the first to let you know that there are people throughout both churches that shatter the stereotypes)

My hometown has 27 churches for 7000 people. Compare this with Tokyo which has a little more than half a church per 7000 people. But even with all those options, I haven't found a church where I can get that "GAP" style worship and still attend my home Lutheran congregation in the same week. Starving for "hands in the air", "spirit-led" worship, I finally gave in and attended a local foursquare church yesterday morning as a break from my regular home church.

The worship was what I was longing for, and it filled me somewhere very deep. I had to be very amused as well, because the pastor got up for his message and started talking about change and transition. His whole sermon centered around the idea of God forcing us into times of change we wouldn't have chosen for ourselves with the purpose of giving us a broader picture of who He is. A few things he said really struck me. One was that, in times of change, in his experience, God won't give enough answers to satisfy our attempts to cling to a feeling of security. God wants us to trust Him, not to feel like everything is secure and worked through. He also said that, in any time of change, we would have a choice. And the choice is this: 1) grumble or 2) allow the life of Jesus to flow through you in the midst of the uncertainty or pain.

I like being told I have a choice. I feel like God has been dead silent about whatever my future holds...even as some choices have had to be made and discussions and searching begin...I sometimes feel like all my future thoughts are conducted with God just silently watching, an unreadable expression on His face. That kind of eerie silence that eventually drives me back to him with some kind of exasperation...saying something like, "What?! Be happy for me! Be mad at me! Be sad about what I'm doing! Be...anything other than silent!"

And, truthfully, he hasn't been silent. If I could summarize my interactions with God over the past few weeks into a short conversation, it might go like this:

Pamela: God, where am I going? Am I messing up? Am I overstepping in any way? Am I hoping for something I shouldn't be hoping in?
God: Put me first. I'm the only one you can trust.
Pamela: Right. Got that. Now...since I'm trying to put you first, how about letting me know if these future talks are getting in the way of anything you're planning for me?
God: Have you noticed the special place you're in right now? You really don't want to miss it.
Pamela: I don't think we're talking about the same thing here...
God: You're right. I'm talking about where you are. I'm setting life and death before you in your present circumstances...choose life!

Choices...to grumble, or to be life-giving? There's something about being told: "you're choosing between grumbling and allowing Jesus to work through you" that fills me with determination. I want so badly to learn how to serve him and be faithful to him in this day to day stuff...in the indefinite with no goals, agendas, or plans.

June 19th, 2009

I would like to ask you a favor. Would you please get on your knees, right now while you're reading this and not some later undefined time, and spend at least 5-10 minutes praying for Japan? Please. I think the timing is crucial.

Please cry out for God to be glorified, for his purposes to be accomplished, for the devil's plots to be disarmed, for God to anoint those speaking and that his words would be heard, for the kind of sweep through of the Holy Spirit that brings clarity of sin and therefore true repentance and transformation, and also ask the Holy Spirit to pray through you as he promises when you don't know how to pray.

Thank you, friend.