Emmanuel- God in our midst

Matthew 1:23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel” (which means, God with us).

In Helsinki, I visited an exhibit of nativity scenes, based on Italian nativity scenes from the 17 and 18 hundreds.  At first, I was struck by the oddity of the anachronisms- women selling sausages, men discussing business in the street- all dressed in styles from a more modern time, and somewhere, in the midst of it all, the Holy Family. 

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:14

But the more I looked, and the more I pondered, the more I came to love the symbolism of it.  He was there, in our midst.  He is here, in our midst.  Many of the people in the scenes went about their daily lives, oblivious to the greatest of all miracles: God among us.  The greatest moment in history was happening, and they were unaware.  Others though, stopped what they were doing.  They came to adore, bringing offerings of everyday life- bread, apples, fish

It made me wonder, what if we remade these scenes, changed the characters to people we see about us every day?  What if we added ourselves to the scene?  Do I go about my daily life, so busy with normality that I forget to ponder the miracle this season reminds me of?  Has the idea of a God who dwells with us become so familiar to me that it has lost its mystery?  Or do I still pause in what I'm doing, and stop in awe at the manger, to wonder at the God who became flesh and dwelt among us?

May you see Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, in your life this Christmas.  May you experience the wonder and the mystery of a God who humbled himself to become one of us. May you be like Mary, treasuring the miraculous in the midst of the ordinary, and pondering it in your heart.

"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." Philippians 2: 5-8

But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed." Isaiah 53:5

Happy Thanksgiving!

Back in September, I was already starting to think about Thanksgiving.  Not celebrating Thanksgiving just wasn't an option, but singlehandedly hosting Thanksgiving dinner when I've never made a turkey before was a daunting task.  So when Alistair was just as excited by Thanksgiving as I was, we had a team and a goal- introducing one of our favorite holidays to friends from around the world.

Hosting Thanksgiving dinner is a big deal.  It's even more of a big deal in a foreign country where it can be tricky to find the ingredients you need.  Add to that living in student apartments without the space to host a large dinner and no car for transporting groceries, and you have a logistical puzzle.  But, where there's a will, there's a way.

A scouting trip to the closet major grocery store near my house revealed that turkey, pumpkin pie, sweet potato casserole and cranberry sauce could remain on the menu, as long as we were willing to make them from scratch.  Watergate salad (or what we call "green stuff" in my family) was a no go however.

An early Happy Thanksgiving email to my family on Thursday morning prompted me to look at how long I'd need to defrost our bird in the fridge if we were celebrating on Sunday.  I suddenly realized that the answer was I should start defrosting it now.  So, after my first class of the day I biked to the store and bought a 17 pound turkey.  While I've gotten better at balancing my bike with packages hanging from the handlebars, I don't think I'm up to the disequilibrium that something that heavy would cause, so lucky for me, the turkey just fit into my backpack.

Next on the to-do list was finding a venue.  Fortunately for us, all the student apartment complexes have "common rooms" that you can reserve.  So Alistair reserved a room and I swung by the student housing office on Friday afternoon to pick up the key.  When I got home Friday evening, I decided to stop in and scope out the room.  Much to my dismay, the key I was given didn't open the door.  I tried again.  I've been known to be slightly key-challenged, so maybe I was just doing something wrong?  Nothing.  Suddenly our whole plan seemed to be crashing in around me.  We had 17 people scheduled to show up on Sunday and it looked like we might not have a room.  I was imagining us sitting on the floor of my apartment, eating out of paper plates.  Not really the best Thanksgiving dinner scenario.

Since I was biking (again) on Friday and had bought poster board downtown, I'd asked a friend who happens to be a neighbor if he'd take it back with him on the bus.  So, when I called him to get the poster board from him I asked if he'd see if he had any more luck with the key than I did.  He didn't.  I realized that maybe the lady at the housing office had given me the wrong key, so we went off to see if we could find the other common room in the complex.  The exterior door there was open, and the housing office key let us into the common room.  My immediate relief was followed by disappointment.  The room was ugly, windowless, with a broken down pool table on the floor and not enough chairs to seat everyone.  To make it worse, the kitchen was also locked, and, you guessed it, the key didn't work to open it.

As I was mentally trying to come up with plan C, some random inspiration made my friend try his key in the kitchen door.  It opened.  Thoroughly confused, but glad at least to have access to a kitchen on the premises, I figured the rest of the details would work themselves out.  Another random moment of inspiration led us back to the first room where my friend's key worked on the outside door and the key from the housing office worked on the inside door and voila, we finally had a (somewhat) better place.  At least there was enough seating and no broken pool table.

Prepping sweet potato casserole on Saturday 

So, Saturday back at my place, Alistair and I, with the help of our friend Paulina, made all the desserts and prepped some of the other food.  And Sunday morning, at the early hour of 7 am (made even earlier by the fact the sun doesn't even rise til 9:30 here right now) Alistair showed up and (using my friend's borrowed key) we let ourselves in to the common room and started cooking away.

Necessity is the mother of invention

The turkey came out perfect.  An olive oil bottle worked just fine for mashing potatoes since we didn't have a potato masher.  My cranberry sauce gelled.  In short, all the disasters that could have happened didn't.  Thanksgiving was an amazing success.  None of our guests had celebrated an American Thanksgiving before and almost none of them had eaten a whole turkey.  They all waited anxiously for it to come out of the oven.

The two American co-hosts and our perfect turkey

As we shared about our American traditions and history- pumpkin pie and breaking wishbones, the Macy's day parade and football, Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians- it was so fun to see people experiencing Thanksgiving for the first time.  We went around the table and all shared one thing we were thankful for.

Guests from around the world experiencing their first American dinner (in Finland).

For me, I was thankful for friends.  Thankful that despite being far from home and family, I was surrounded by people who I could share Thanksgiving with.  That's what I said.  I was also thankful for this plate of food and pulling off Thanksgiving without a single mishap.

Of course, Thanksgiving dinner isn't complete without dessert.  "Let me put this in perspective" I told our guests.  "This year at home, there were only 8 people at my family's Thanksgiving celebration, and I think they had 4 different desserts.  This is the one day a year when you can eat as much dessert as you want and not feel guilty.  Please, try everything.  We want you to."  Alistair and I weren't sure if our 2 apple pies, 2 pumpkin pies, 1 chocolate mousse pie, brownies, and ice cream was going a bit overboard.  But hey, there's no such thing as too much food at Thanksgiving.  

An apple pie and a chocolate mousse pie, made by me with some help from Paulina

Some of my favorite people in Finland.  :)

Now the leftovers are mostly eaten, other than some turkey soup that is saved in my freezer.  And I'm looking forward to next year's Thanksgiving, but not sure who I'll host it with since Alistair won't be here next year.  Any American friends want to come host Thanksgiving with me next year?

The American Dinner!

Rewind to September.  The International Students organization hosted a Finnish dinner.  Somehow my innocent offer to "help cook" at the next International student dinner transformed into "plan, shop, cook, and host" when another American also offered to help cook.

Which explains why one Saturday morning found us in a common kitchen, surrounded by towers of canned goods. I was chopping a mountain of onions while Alistair browned onions and Paulina scrubbed potatoes.  "What can I do?" Jonathan asked.  "You can open the crushed tomatoes" I said, searching for my pocket knife.  I knew I'd left it somewhere and none of us had brought a real can opener.  Fifteen cans later, plus 15 cans of kidney beans and pounds of green peppers, onions, and ground beef later, our chili for 50 was simmering on the stove.


As it simmered, we hung stars from the ceiling, rearranged furniture, and set the tables.  Five o'clock and the place was decorated and the food almost ready.  We were ahead of the game.  I slipped home to change and got back in time to help with the appetizers.




As guests came through the door I stuck a name on their back, giggling a bit at some of the mismatches.  "Oh, this one's perfect for you" as I stuck Princess Jasmine on a very decidedly not princess like man's back.  They were instructed to figure out who they were by asking questions, and then to find the person who had their match.  It was our cleverly designed ploy to require guests to mingle.  And it worked.  :)  The food helped too.  Chips and dip and pigs in a blanket seemed like perfect American party foods, but we had to supplement them with the most quintessential American ingredient we could think of: peanut butter.

The quintessential American ingredient in 2 very school child forms  

The room, ready for guests.

Mingling

Once everyone had found their partner, we lined them up for contra-dancing.  Alistair (my token American friend and partner in crime, or event planning, whichever the case might be) also happens to play the fiddle.  So, he explained the steps as we tried to maneuver around each other in a room most certainly not designed for 25 couples to dance in.  We had to restart from the beginning multiple times before we made it through the first set of steps, but when we managed it successfully, the whole group spontaneously burst into applause.

Some of the awesome people who helped

Ice thoroughly broken now, we sent people in to find a seat and served chili and baked potatoes.  I found an empty seat at a table of French speakers from France, Switzerland and Belgium to eat some chili, then got up to help get dessert ready.  While pancakes aren't traditionally a dessert, everyone loves them, and most of the rest of the world eats crepes, not our fat, puffy, wonderful pancakes.  To make things even better, we served them with maple syrup and whipped cream.  I joined a table with people from Azerbaijan, Chile, Romania and Albania for the dessert course.  And may or may not have finished off all the whipped cream in the bowl when the pancakes were gone. . .