Tom and I have had a house full of people staying with us this week for the Inhabit Conference. We have had to leave the house early so I wanted to make sure that I has something nutritious for all of us to eat before we got on the road. Here is the recipe I came up with. It is adapted from this recipe. I plan to make another batch to keep in the freezer so that when we travel I can pull a couple out. By the time we get on the plane they are defrosted. Quinoa has the highest protein content of any grain and I found that these muffins kept me satisfied far longer than my previous standby zucchini granola muffins.
I also plan to try making these with the Namaste gluten free flour mix I bought recently as well so that I have a version to offer my gluten free friends. Will let you know how they turn out too and hope that you enjoy them as much as I have.
Quinoa muffins
Ingredients
1 cup dry quinoa, use 2/3 cup yellow and 1/3 cup red quinoa if possible
2 cups water
2 cups whole grain or wheat flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup dried apricots,Chopped
1/2 cup dried apples, chopped
1 cup whole milk
1/4 cup crystallized ginger, chopped finely
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup golden syrup or molasses
1/4 cup butter or canola oil
1/2 cup pecans or walnuts, finely chopped
Method
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a large saucepan, bring the water to a boil. Add the quinoa and bring the mixture back to a boil; reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and cook for 10 minutes. Do not remove the lid but let stand for 20-30 minute until the liquid is absorbed and the quinoa is tender (you will see the rings separate from the grains). Remove from heat and set aside to cool. You will have approximately 2 cups cooked quinoa.
NOTE: Be careful not to overcook the quinoa or to use more than the required amount of water. The grains of quinoa should be tender but separate, rather than mushy and clumped together. I cook up several cups at one time, divide into 2 cup portions, and freeze until ready to make muffins.
3. In a large bowl, combine 2 cups cooled quinoa, flour, baking powder, and sugar. Add the butter, pecans, ginger, milk, golden syrup or molasses, and dried fruit. Stir to combine.
4. Fill the prepared muffin cups to their tops and bake approximately 30 or 40 minutes, until muffing tops are golden brown and just firm and until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.
Muffin liners do not work well with this recipe.
This is the last of the series I am posting on Everyday Spirituality. The previous posts are Being Attentive… to Ourselves, Being Attentive… to Others; and Being Attentive to God’s World.
Becoming fully attentive to ourselves, to others and to God’s world transforms us and our ways of looking at God and God’s world. And transformation means change, not just to ourselves but to the practices that shape our faith and our lives. As I learned to listen and became more attentive to myself and to others I realized that the spiritual practices I engaged in needed to change. I found myself craving for new expressions of faith that rooted my in my faith and the community of which I am a part.
Some of this creativity has impacted my individual practices like the Advent garden I described at the beginning of Advent last year. But it has also transformed my way of interacting with others. For Tom and I hospitality is a central value of the kingdom of God, not just a way to sit down and share meals with friends and strangers, but literally a doorway into the eternal world of God.
One of my favourite stories in the Bible is of Jesus’ encounter with his disciples beside the sea of Galilee after his resurrection. It is hard to imagine that in the few days Jesus has to let the world know about his resurrection that he could possible take time not just to eat with his friends but to actually make breakfast for them. It is a beautiful story that reminds me of the centrality of hospitality and of table fellowship, a powerful spiritual practice that few of us recognize as such.
There are other Biblical stories that can be transformed into spiritual practices for our society today too. When I was on the mercy ship Anastasis, we regularly held Highways and Byways banquets where crew members went out and invited whoever they met to come to the ship for dinner. It was a little scary because you never knew who would come – prostitutes, transvestites, homeless people, shipyard workers, business men and women all rubbed shoulders together at these celebrations. It was an intense spiritual practices that had a huge impact on me and on many others.
Creative spiritual practices can root us in our neighbourhoods in wonderful ways. Buying coffee at the same cafe each day is a wonderful example. It can support local businesses and help them to flourish, introduce us to other people in our neighbourhoods and possibly establish new friendships that can root us even more deeply into the community.
If we reimagine our spiritual practices as practices that make us more attentive to ourselves, to others and to God’s world what differences would it make to how we practice our faith? A couple of years ago one of our summer interns walked the seven miles into Seattle from our house looking for and photographing emerging glimpses of God’s kingdom. It is a spiritual practice I would love to carry out too and then follow it up with some brainstorming on how to grow those sprouting kingdom plants.
Each of us has unique ways of expressing our spirituality. As Paul Sparks said in his presentation at the Inhabit Conference this morning, we need to learn to see with new eyes and recognize the gifts God has planted in the most unexpected places. We need to stir our imaginations and create new possibilities that anchor us in the foundations of our faith and yet give freedom to the unique expressions God has placed within us. What could they look like for you?
I wrote this prayer this week specifically for the start of the Inhabit Conference. Enjoy
God bless what is beautiful
May it be to us translucent with divine glory.
God bless what is not whole
May it reveal to us images of the triune presence.
God bless what is not complete
May we see in it glimmers of the promise yet to come.
God bless all that is created
Infuse it with the light of your spirit.
The blessing of God be on you.
The blessing of the One who died,
The blessing of the One who cares.
The blessing of the One who rose again,
The blessing of the One who is always there.
The blessing of God, creator, redeemer, sustainer,
Be on you this day and evermore.
Amen
This third post in the series Reimagining Everyday Spirituality looks at our interaction with God’s world. When I first started doing spiritual workshops and retreats I would always ask the question What makes you feel close to God. The thing that fascinated me was how many people shared things that were not in any way connected to church or our usual idea of spiritual practices. And many of the ideas people shared related to their interactions with God’s world – walking in nature, playing with kids, running through the neighbourhood, gardening with friends. I hosted a series What is a Spiritual Practice, on this several years ago which I still like to revisit as there are so many rich suggestions of how to encounter God in our everyday activities.
Much of what makes us feel close to God is our interactions with God’s world. Celtic Christians who thrived in the 3rd to 5th century believed that every encounter and every experience entered into where opportunities to either represent God or to learn about God. I wonder how it would change our way of looking at the world if we had that perspective.
Dwight Friesen, one of the founders of Parish Collective which organizes the Inhabit Conference once told me that he loves to work from the bus stop to the Seattle School where he walks. At one point he stops to pray. He looks back the way he has come and prays for his family. He looks forward to his glimpse of the school and prays for the day ahead and then he looks out over the Puget Sound towards Asia and prays for the world. I love that way of viewing the world so that his spiritual observances are engaging every aspect of who he is and what God has created.
There are many ways in which we can allow our interactions with God’s world to shape our spiritual practices. Brandon Rhodes, who is part of the Springwater community in Portland Oregon did something intriguing during Holy week a few years ago. He planned daily activities that focused on the liturgical season but took it out into the neighbourhood looking for God-sightings and kingdom sightings.
Tailoring our gospel imagination around our neighborhood will include “Sunday morning” activities which focus our hopes and laments on our own blocks. That’s where we at Springwater have found vitality in practicing an open time of “God-sighting’s” and “kingdom-sightings,” where we can point out where we saw Jesus Christ at work in one another and our neighborhood. Sometimes that’s as tiny as gratitude for a housemate doing more chores than usual, as staggering as a neighbor turning from addiction, as mystical as springtime birdsongs chirping God’s praise, and as concrete as a new crosswalk making it safer for kids to get to school. (read the entire article here).
I think that all of us need to explore our neighbourhoods and in fact our whole world looking for God sightings and kingdom sightings. Stopping to talk to homeless people, shop assistants, shoppers and passersby will give us very different viewpoints on our neighbourhoods and on our faith. Looking for God and for the places in which the kingdom is already being revealed is an exciting way to express and explore our spirituality. It is one of the most enriching and refreshing spiritual practices I know. As I have mentioned in previous posts it helps us to ask the right questions. Not Why does God let this happen? but Where is God in the midst of this?
This type of attentiveness to God needs to be at the heart of our faith. God is not just in our churches
Learning to listen
In this second post on Reimagining Everyday Spirituality I want to talk about our need to be attentive to others. Pretty logical you might think, after all the scriptures remind us to:
get beyond yourself and protecting your own interests; be sincere and secure your neighbour’s interests first. (Phil 2:4 The Voice).
But how easy is that? Most of us don’t converse with people we talk to them, more interested in getting our own point across than in hearing what they have to say. We are easily distracted by text messages, phone calls and social media. Even when the person we are conversing with starts to speak our minds are focused on what we want to say next. Consciously or even unconsciously we seek to control others by telling them what to do and how to do it.
I became aware of that at the beginning of Lent. I had a very clear agenda for how our MSA team should practice Lent and I wanted everyone else to buy into it. Fortunately our use of the Quaker discernment process in our team meetings has taught me to listen. And that listening resulted in a whole different approach to Lent – from a season of denial to one of transformation.
Our involvement in our communities is often done with little listening too. We think we know what the community needs.How often do we miss what God is saying and wanting to do in our lives and in those of others because we do not listen carefully? or because we fail to ask the right questions.
I learned this lesson from a Yale Masters in Public Health class that went door to door in their neighbourhood asking: What is the best thing we could do to improve your health? The answer from the community was something that was not even on their screens – Teach us to vote. If we can vote, we can elect officials that have our interests at heart, then we will get the health clinics and the garbage collections that we need.
A friend of mine who does ministry into Mexico learnt the same lesson when they asked their target community What would you like us to build first? The unexpected answer was a basketball court. The community felt that this would provide a neutral gathering place and environment that would bring together warring factions within the community. And it worked. A community centre, school and health clinic then grew up around the playing field.
What does this have to do with spiritual practice you may ask? Well in my mind learning to listen is one of the most important spiritual practices we can develop. Giving others our full attention as they speak means that we value them as persons who are fully human. Being receptive to what they have to teach us opens us to new perspectives that enrich our lives and our faith.
And through our listening we often meet Jesus who does come to us in the homeless, the marginalized and the disadvantaged. Such listening makes us aware of injustices we never thought about before – lack of a living wage, abuse in families, atrocities of sex trafficking, ongoing racism and discrimination are still hidden in our communities. We can turn a blind eye and pretend they don;t exist or we can break out of our comfortable Sunday go to church approach to spirituality and listen with the willingness to respond.
Seeing with new eyes
I am busily getting ready for the Inhabit Conference. We have sent in our contributions to the welcome packets, cleaned rooms for our guests Shane Claiborne, Al Tizon and Andy Wade, and now its time to get my presentations ready. Then all I need is to get ready to party.
My workshop is entitled: Reimagining Everyday Spirituality – Rooted locally, linked globally. The word that keeps coming to me is one that my husband Tom focused on during the season of Lent “Be Attentive”. So I thought i would do some quick posts over the next few days that summarize what I will speak about. It is my growing conviction that in order to become mature followers of Christ we need to learn to be attentive – to ourselves, to others, to God and to God’s world. And out of that attentiveness we need to become creative and reimagine the spiritual practices that both nurture our spirits and keep us fully engaged in God’s world.
So what does it mean to be attentive to ourselves?
- First we need to be attentive to our bodies – getting regular exercise, a healthy diet and plenty of sleep are, believe it or not some of the most fundamental spiritual practices we can acquire. Listening to the rhythm of our bodies is also helpful. As the days lengthen into spring and then summer our bodies speed up and become more productive. As the days shorten in autumn and winter our bodies slow down. Being attentive to these rhythms, gearing our activities to flow to these rhythms makes us both more productive and more in synch with God’s ways.
- Second we need to be attentive to our minds. We live in a world in which it is very hard to shut off the clatter and clutter of our minds. Developing reflective practices like lectio divina, the prayer of examen, breathing prayers that enable us to do that is essential. One weekly practice I have found really helps me with this is my Sunday practice of journalling and then asking the questions: What am I grateful for? What am I struggling with? What bears the fingerprints of God? These questions have not only made me more attentive to myself but also to others and to God.
- Third we need to be attentive to our spirits. When we feel spiritually drained, depressed or distant from God we need to pause and take time to ask why. Spiritual retreats, not to listen to motivational speakers but to refresh our spirits are essential. Not allowing ourselves the time to refuel slowly erodes our spirits and destroys our faith.
- Start with a spiritual audit. This is a suggestion that I have made in the past to honestly evaluate our spiritual health and maturity so that we know what we need to focus our energy on.
So maybe you can’t attend the Inhabit conference, but you can work on being attentive to the ways God speaks to you and to the changes you need to make in order to be most effective as a follower of Christ.
It Earth Day and I wanted to celebrate first by sharing a new free resource we have produced Creating a Faith Based Community Garden. You can download it here.
Second, as our gardens here in Seattle are in full swing earth day seems like a great time to get out and pray over them. This prayer comes from the resource To Garden with God
God bless this garden
Through which your glory shines
May we see in its beauty the wonder of your love
God bless the soil
Rich and teeming with life
May we see in its fertility the promise of new creation
God bless our toil
As we dig deep to turn the soil
May we see in our labour your call to be good stewards
God bless each seed
That takes root and grows
May we see in their flourishing the hope of transformation
God bless the rains
That water our efforts to bring forth life
May we see in their constancy God’s faithful care
God bless the harvest
Abundant and bountiful in season
May we see in God’s generosity our need to share
God bless this garden
As you bless all creation with your love
May we see in its glory your awesome majesty
Amen
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