#Because culpepper assumes you have a garden.

[bonefall]

yo, puffballs can be used to dress wounds? how does that work?

It's the simplest use in the world. I wouldn't even be able to make a whole guide on puffballs as a wound-dressing it's so simple. You literally just cut and apply to a bleeding wound.

It's a hemostatic; its spores stop the bleeding. So when it comes to puffballs, you either harvest them young and eat them, or let them mature and harvest as a medicine.

This is a puffball when it's young enough to be edible. The flesh is pure white. When the spores have started to form, this will turn yellowish and become a poison if ingested.

You can just use a slice as a gauze, or powder it. It's that simple. No processing required. It makes the blood coagulate and stops bleeding.

[firstumcschenectady]

“Hope in God” based on Isaiah 2:1-5 and Luke 1:26-38

This Advent we are Waiting in Hope, and our guides for that waiting are going to be Isaiah and Luke. All too often we jump into Luke chapter 2 on Christmas, without examining Luke chapter 1 to prepare the way. This means we are going to spend Advent with Mary, with Elizabeth, and with Zechariah.  Which means that we need a content warning for Advent.

Luke 1, not unlike Genesis, spends a lot of time dealing with issues of fertility and infertility.  These are tender topics for many people, and I will be seeking to deal with them tenderly.  However, you are not obligated to stay present if these topics are simply too much for you right now, and I am available to talk if you want to.  (Or, I'm willing to find you someone else to talk to if you'd prefer.)

Luke starts by telling the story of Zechariah, an old priest, and his wife Elizabeth.  They had no children.  This is a VERY common story in the Bible, in fact it feels like a throw-back to the matriarchs and patriarchs who all had trouble conceiving until God intervened.  (And this is part of why these stories are so hard.  If infertility could be solved with prayer alone, there would be much less of it.)  This story rings of Abraham and Sarah, of Issac and Rebecca, of Jacob's wife Rachel, of Hannah and Elkanah. This is a familiar story.  An angel tells Zechariah, while he is serving in the temple, that his prayers have been heard and Elizabeth will become pregnant.  Zechariah expresses some disbelief because of their age, which is punished with being unable to speak until the baby is born.  The baby to be born will be, according to Luke, John the Baptist.

A few months later, with Elizabeth pregnant, the story is interrupted with our reading today.  This story is NOT familiar.  It doesn't sound like the Hebrew Bible at all – although it does sounds like its contemporary Greek stories.  As far as the Bible goes, though, this is a brand new account.  And it is breaking into an old, old story. In this new account a young woman, who has been legally married to her husband but is still in the one year waiting period in her father's house before she joins her husband in his house, is greeted by that same angel.  The angel says “‘Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you,” and the story says that Mary is perplexed.  

This make sense, I think.  By the standards of the world, Mary wasn't favored.  She was poor, she was young, she was female, she had very little power, and she lived in an unimportant little village that was outside of a city that had recently been ransacked by the Roman Empire.  She was, by no means, favored by anyone nor anything.  Nor was their any previous evidence that she was favored by God.  R. Alan Culpepper writes in the New Interpreter's Bible, “'Yet, Mary, God's favored one, was blessed with having a child out of wedlock who would later be executed as a criminal.  Acceptability, prosperity, and comfort have never been the essence of God's blessing.”1 Mary seems to still be processing this.

She is, however, wise enough to keep her objections to herself – unlike Zechariah.  So the angel continues to tell her about her upcoming pregnancy with the child who would be named Jesus, “the rescuer”, and would claim a unique connection to the Divine.  This time Mary expresses her confusion, indicating that she understands how conception works and thus that it shouldn't be happening to her. Perhaps because she doesn't ask for proof, she is given it, in the form of Elizabeth's pregnancy.

At this point, the story comes to one of the greatest acts of courage I know about.  This impoverished young woman, with everything to lose by taking this risk (including her own life), responds “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”  I know that this story is Luke's creation, Luke's intentional foreshadowing of the Jesus story.  I know this didn't HAPPEN.  And yet I can't help but be stuck by this line.  It feels like the sort of answer that the woman who raised Jesus and taught Jesus of God would give.  It feels true in a way that is deeper than the story itself.  Mary is a risk-taker for God.  She trusts in the Divine even when it makes no sense and by all reasonable standards should be done.

In this story, through this brief interaction, Mary moves from confused at the idea that she could be favored by God to an unquestioning willingness to do whatever it is God needs of her.  The foreshadowing of Jesus couldn't be much better.  This unique story about Mary has echoes all over it of Hannah and her faithfulness.  These are the stories of the women's faith, the women who raised men of great faith.  The men didn't come to their faith alone.

We will come back to Mary next week, and to her extraordinary courage and unique insight.  But for now we're going to transition to the vision of Isaiah, a vision that came when everything else looked like it was going downhill.  Most of the time first Isaiah (the first 40 chapters) has to warn the people of what will happen if they don't trust in God, but this vision is an after vision.  Of what will come SOMEDAY, one way or another.  The more I examine it, the more striking it is.

Many of us are familiar with the closing lines,

“they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,    and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation,    neither shall they learn war any more.”

but it really struck me this week that these lines are about much more than peace and a lack of a need for war. These lines are about not needing defenses anymore, about not needing borders anymore, about being unafraid for safety, and a sense of deep security.  

The only way that people could be so secure is if they AND EVERYONE ELSE already had enough, and resources were already fairly shared, and there was no injustice or inequality that needed to be rectified. I'm told that the threat of violence is what allows for income inequality.  Thus the opposite must be true, where there is equality there is no need for violence.  Furthermore, this has to be widespread equality and equity, because there is no fear that outsiders will break in wanting to share in the prosperity – because they have it too.

Now this makes perfect sense as a correlation to the earlier parts of the passage.  It has already said that YHWH-God has become acknowledged as THE Sacred one, and EVERYONE is worshipping YHWH-God. Furthermore, they're all learning God's ways.  Well, God's ways is a way of speaking of the Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible, which contain a vision of a just and equitable society.  In that society land is distributed to all so all can provide for themselves, those who struggle are helped by their family and community, anyone in need is cared for by the excess of those who have enough, and justice itself is blind to power and influence.  This is the society that God dreams of, and this is what people would be studying as “walking in God's ways.”  

In Isaiah's vision, this message is shared far and wide AND God's self is the judge arbitrating between people – so justice is definitely just. So, yes, this is a reasonable set up for what otherwise feels like an overly idealistic vision of peace.

In this context, it is the reasonable extension.  If everyone buys into God's vision and enacts it, of course there would be equity, equality, justice, and peace.  Of course weapons of destruction could become tools of creation and means of food production.  That's what God is capable of doing.

And this got me to thinking.  Do we dream this dream deeply enough?  Do we consider what it would be like to be fearless?  To feel safe?  To live in peace?

I haven't spent nearly enough time living into this dream.  What would it be like to assume that all people, as they age, will have enough resources to be cared for with tenderness and love in ways that respect their humanity and maintain their freedom?  What would it be like to know that all children, whether or not they have living and able parents, will be nurtured, played with, fed well, have safe places to sleep, clothing appropriate for the season, and access to great education to help them thrive in body and spirit?  What would it be like to remove locks from all doors, knowing that no one aims to do us harm, and no one would have a need to take anything we have? What would it be like to know that all people, regardless of their employment status, or marital status, or socio-economic status, could receive great healthcare when they need it?  What would it be like to know that people all around the world shared all these gifts, and no one in any other nation wished us harm because of harms we'd caused taking resources we needed?  What would it be like to know that there were no guns left in the world, and no one had motivation to make any more?  What would it be like to live without the threat of nuclear war, nor biological warfare, nor even internet viruses????

What if we weren't afraid, and didn't need to be?  What if we could all care for each other, and support each other, and grow together?

Friends, that's the sort of hope we're preparing ourselves for in this season of Advent.  Not because we necessarily expect to see it in our lifetimes, but because that's what we're working for and we have to keep God's vision in front of us so we can be a part of enacting it. May we, indeed, beat swords into plowshares, nuclear warheads into flower gardens, and study war no more – because it isn't needed! Amen

1Alan Culpepper, “Luke,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. 9 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994) 52-3.

Rev. Sara E. Baron First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 Pronouns: she/her/hers http://fumcschenectady.org/ 
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

December 1, 2019

[bonefall]

Hope I'm not too late for clanmew day! If I am, feel free to wait till next time. I was wondering if you were planning to add more herb names? I looked through the herb list and as far as I'm aware you don't have a word for Chervil (which I think exists in europe, of not feel free to ignore this and punt me into the sun) love what you do, and I hope you have a great day/night/whatever! Sincerely, someone so attached to their character's name they can't bring themself to change it (Chervilfrost my beloved)

YOU are remaining firmly un-punted because Chervil is 100% absolutely biome appropriate, but I AM going to bellyache/nitpick/it's my blog and you can't stop me/babble about the wiki/research that the writers do for a moment. And you're gonna sit there and listen.

They have "Anthriscus cerefolium" listed as the scientific name on the wiki, which I'm assuming is the same name of the plant that's being referenced from Culpepper (even though their source is... the herb federation of new zealand?????? WHY???? Where does New Zealand come into this?) but... there's no way that Clan cats are collecting A. Cerefolium

Girl that is a garden plant

That is very specifically a plant that doesn't grow wild. you'd need to go to gardens to find that

Clan cats are going to have an easier time collecting the WILD cousin of that plant, Anthriscus Sylvestris, also called "Cow Parsley..." OR, REAL Chervil, also called ROUGH chervil, Chaerophyllum temulum

But the Cats ALSO have a word for Parsley, so I have to wonder, are they using Parsley to refer to Cow Parsley (Anthriscus Sylvestris), or Garden Parsley (Petroselinum Crispum)?

And also when will I stop overthinking the cat books? The answer. is never.

Anyway this is my kitchen and in my kitchen, the word for Chervil is the word for Rough Chervil, Chaerophyllum temulum.

Chervil (Chaerophyllum temulum) = Sefirr This plant is used to treat swelling, but not much else. Some clerics use it for joint pain, but ShadowClan laughs in leeches.