A light in dark times

The cold and grey of winter are upon us now. The parks are closing earlier and it gets dark by 4pm.

Our ancestors rose at the first light of day and slept after sunset. In centuries past people feared the growing darkness which came with the shortening days of autumn.  Festivals grew up to celebrate the hoped-for return of the sun after 21st December. 

In our century, the darkness can blaze like noon at the flick of a switch. To get frightened we turn off the lights and watch scary movies!

Yet the darkness can still frighten people today, even in our world of 500 watt bulbs.  We light our streets so brightly because of the fear of crime.  Death – the ultimate darkness – is the last great taboo topic of conversation in our times; people still fear what lies beyond this life. 

As the American short story writer, O. Henry, lay dying he called for a candle to be lit.  Asked why, he replied: “I don’t want to go home in the dark.”

All of us face times of darkness sometimes. Times when all the joy seems to have drained out of life.

The Bible says of Jesus: “In him was life and that life was the light of mankind. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.“

The season of Advent, which begins this weekend, brings the message that although we cannot always avoid dark times we are not left to face them alone. 

One of the names of Jesus is ‘God-with-us.’ Which does not mean that he wears a red cape and flies through the air faster than a speeding bullet to rescue us. He doesn’t leap tall buildings at one bound. He doesn’t usually take us out of dark situations. That isn’t the promise. 

The promise of the season is that God is with us. That he enters our world and our experiences to be there with us. Knowing this, through the centuries people have had new courage to face harrowing times because they no longer feel alone.

That promise holds true for us today.  God promises to be with you and me - today - as a light in our darkness.  

And sometimes that promise is fulfilled when you or me, joining-in with what God is doing unseen, phones or visits or listens or hugs someone and, in that moment, we glimpse the invisible God-with-us.

Leek and mushroom risotto

At the end of November, with colder, shorter days, it's good to have something hearty and warming to look forward to at dinner time.

This risotto, made in the microwave, has become a firm family favourite over the past year or so. It is simple to make, very filling and tastes wonderful.  The recipe below serves 4.

You will need

• 25g butter
• 1 tablespoon of oil
• 1 leek, cut into slices
• 1 crushed garlic clove
• 300g risotto / Arborio rice
• 850 ml hot vegetable stock
• 250g chestnut mushrooms
• 50g grated hard cheese (Parmesan or similar is best)

1.   Put the butter, oil, leek and garlic into a Microwave safe bowl, cover and cook on High for 5 minutes.

2.   Stir the rice into the leeks, add stock, season and stir

3.   Cook uncovered on high for 10 minutes

4.   Throw in the mushrooms, stir and cook uncovered on High for 6 minutes

5.   Mix in half the cheese and leave the risotto to stand for 5 minutes

6.   Serve and sprinkle the remaining cheese on top.

Enjoy.

Thoughts on Remembrance Sunday evening

Although we can run away from situations and places and slip them to the back of our minds, no matter how hard, fast or far we run we can never quite get away from ourselves. Sometimes we do or say things without really thinking why and we hurt others or ourselves. Then one day, weeks, months or years later, our thoughtless or casual words catch up with us.

The gospel-writer Luke uses a telling phrase that describes the turning point in the life of the wasteful boy in the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15): “And he came to himself.” In other words, he had to be reconciled to himself, to accept his own flaws and admit his mistakes before his life was turned around. 

Today is about remembering the millions of men, women and children who have died in human conflict. Some were soldiers, sailors or airmen; others were civilians. We also remember the victims of terrorist attacks and those who daily place themselves in danger, so that we might live in safety. It's right that we should, even as we ask searching questions about why so many died and still suffer.

On the cross next to Christ’s hung a thief. Close to death, he came to himself -  to his senses - and recognised in Jesus what some find so hard to see: that he was uniquely different. All that he asks of Jesus is to be remembered. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Christ’s reply was simple and clear: “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”

Jesus came to give us that which we could not buy, earn or merit by our own hand: forgiveness, a new start and the invitation to share with Him in offering to others that same reconciliation with God.

Today we acknowledge death and pain but we then look beyond to the God who, sacrificially, entered into death and pain for us.

That is a true remembrance, today and every day.

Remember, remember...

When I was a kid the Fifth of November was always called Guy Fawkes’ Night. It was named after one of the conspirators who stockpiled gunpowder in the crypt of the Houses of Parliament in November 399 years ago, in the hope that the explosion would kill the protestant King James, so creating a crisis that would usher in a new Roman Catholic king.

Guy (or Guido) Fawkes was a soldier left to watch secretly over the kegs of gunpowder.  However, someone disclosed the plot to the authorities and Fawkes and his friends were arrested, tortured and executed in a way designed to deter others from trying to overthrow the king.  For that reason, it was common to make a Guy each year and push ‘him’ around the streets seeking “Penny for the Guy.” The various pennies would be spent on fireworks and R. Whites’ pop and the Guy would be thrown onto the bonfire. Happy days.

Let’s be clear that King James was no saint (despite burdening the church with the Bible named after him, with its idolatrous and sycophantic preface) but he didn’t deserve to be blown to bits. By the same token, the Gunpowder Plot conspirators – acting as they did out of misguided conscience – did not deserve to be tortured, mutilated and then subjected to a prolonged death.  A comparison of Fawke’s two signatures above, after and before 9 days’ torture in the Tower of London, hints at what such torture can do.

Well ‘autre temps, autre moeurs’, as we so often say in Essex. We must not judge the actions of people 4 centuries ago by modern moral standards.  Yet, in spite of all the advances we have made as a human race, such barbarity continues.  Just yesterday, an enraged mob tortured a young Pakistani Christian couple and incinerated their bodies in a brick kiln in eastern Pakistan. The young wife was pregnant.

And the suspicion continues to prevail that our government (yes, the government of the United Kingdom in the 21st century) has colluded in the illegal kidnapping, transportation and torture of people within the past 10 years.  Human rights law bans the use of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This requires not only that countries do not engage in torture or subject people to ill-treatment, but that they don’t become complicit in torture or ill-treatment. Yet, over the past few years, increasing evidence has come to light of UK knowledge of, and involvement in, the CIA’s post 9/11 programme of ‘extraordinary rendition’ (that is, kidnapping people and secretly transporting them to places where they can be ‘questioned’ out of the public gaze) and in attempts to use information obtained through the use of torture as evidence in UK courts.

The UK High Court has found in relation to Mr Binyam Mohamed, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, that UK security services helped US authorities interrogate Mr Mohamed although they knew that he was being detained unlawfully and in cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions. As recently as last month, the Court of Appeal ruled that a husband and wife who were ‘rendered’ to then President Gaddafi’s prisons, allegedly in a secret deal by Tony Blair, are to be allowed their day in court.

The trouble is that most of any documentary proof rests in the hands of people who, if they are guilty, will not disclose it. So both the Americans and the UK government are refusing to disclose the facts, citing ‘national security reasons’, though political embarrassment and fear of prosecution may be equally powerful motives.

399 years after the Gunpowder Plot, we no longer believe, whatever our consciences tell us, that it’s OK to blow up the sovereign or parliament. We no longer castrate, mutilate, torture, disembowel, partially hang then slice ‘baddies’ into four parts, even for the crime of treason. In fact we don’t even go collecting Penny for the Guy anymore.

And no country that wants to look any other in the eye should just choose to look the other way when it knows that people are being kidnapped and tortured by a superpower. We should prosecute those we suspect, whoever they are. It is time the torturers - and their political masters - start to feel afraid.  

Autumn - a time to sloe down

I love this time of year. 

OK, so the clocks go back on Sunday but we have some clear, crisp days and Guy Fawke’s Night to look forward to. It is also the season for picking sloes for sloe-gin. We were out at the weekend and collected 4½ lbs (slightly over 2kgs). Don't expect me say where - people guard their sources!

We first started making this warming and delicious drink when we moved out of London 5 years ago.  The first year we tried a small batch made in a large glass coffee jar but, as demand from family and friends has grown, production has increased.

This year the ‘foodies’ have tried their hand at sloe-gin, both online and in the media, and are already complicating what is a very simple recipe. So how do you make it?

First pick your sloes. These are the fruit of the blackthorn: the last of the English fruiting trees to produce in the year and the one with the bitterest fruit.  Sloes should be plump, marble-size, black-blue in colour, often with a white bloom on the surface. Avoid other black berries which are shiny and which cluster together as they may be poisonous. 

Traditionally you wait to pick sloes until the first frost, which breaks open the skin ready to release the juice. But if they are plump with ripeness, pick then rinse and stick them in the freezer overnight. When you defrost them they are mostly already split and ready to infuse the gin.

You will need an air-tight jar or demijohn. Kilner jars (with the rubber seals and metal clips) work well, but you can use any glass jar that seals.  Sterilise the jar by washing it and then leaving in the oven for 20 minutes on 130C/Gas Mark 1.

Pour the sloes, sugar and gin in the jar.  To 500g sloes, add 230-250g sugar (some like their drink less sweet) and 1 litre of gin. Use really ordinary, basic gin – Sainsbury / Tesco / Asda own brand.  Although Jamie Oliver and others will argue for using more expensive gin, we have found the cheaper the gin the more the end flavour is truly sloe. (TV chefs may be able to afford lots of expensive gin but who else can?). Seal the jar and give it a jolly good shake. Shake it daily for a week, then every other day for a further week, then weekly for two months. Then put it away in the dark somewhere and leave it there for a year.  

Yes, a year.

If you’ve picked the fruit in October, some very impatient people will be drinking the product at Christmas but it really does pay to wait at least a year before drinking. Strain the mixture (try using a coffee filter paper) and then enjoy. We are currently drinking 2012 sloe-gin but know of friends who allow theirs to mature far longer, apparently with excellent results.

Remember that it has a very high alcohol content.

If alcohol is not helpful to you, another autumn favourite is an excellent Ginger cake, for which the recipe is here in a blog from September last year.  

Enjoy!