the Spirit's path

Perhaps it is the word that most often creates a feeling of spontaneity.  The very description of it gives the imagery of translucency with an impermanent essence.  It can't be touched, contained or seen.  It can leave as quickly as is comes and its power is immeasurable.  It appears that it can't be predicted and when you follow it you are left to wait.  However there is something misunderstood about the Spirit's movement, it is a fallacy to attribute it's work to a last minute decision.  It is our culture that defines how and what we think about  the Spirit, we read books and see shows about what a thing like that can do.  Perhaps because it has no body, we assume it must only be a feeling.  We can't tell exactly what it does or will do  in the future, therefor we believe we can only sense it through the patterns of our hearts.  These feelings we get we attribute it to the Spirit, and when the feeling is absent so to does our assumption of its presence.  Waiting then becomes a game, a game of a feeling where we wait for the signal that we felt during the previous encounter.  How else can we take commands from an invisible force except with our invisible selves, our emotions and feelings?  It is here that we find the problem, assuming that this is the only part of us that is unseen.

image by Laurel Barickman

There remains the other invisible half of us that the Spirit can use.  Our mind, our will our decisions that guide us. Even when we don't feel like we want to make decisions, deciding not to make it is a decision in itself. We can't escape that there are things that we do that are contrary to our feelings or mood of the day.  This is the part of the Spirit that is missed, we can take commands from it that are separated from our emotions.  We can know what it wants through the revelations it has given us and it is through these devices of scripture and Jesus he most often gives direction.  We can meet with the Spirit at times of great solace but we must not forget it is still there in the silence.  Taking the Spirit's path might not seem clear or set in stone but when you look back it was perfectly and precisely constructed.  More often then not, when faced with obscurity, to stop and go nowhere prevents the Spirit from taking you to a place that is somewhere.  Sometimes the point of the path being unclear is to test if you trust enough to travel only with one step in front of you.

This is where my story begins, now that I have described my method of how and the reason why I must now begin to place some details in writing. The Spirit lead me from a place of security, where my comfort was easy and my calling was complacent.  A thought crept into my mind that maybe through venturing to the unknown and placing myself on a path of uncertainty that I would come to a place where I would be refined by fire.  A feeling of unrest was the first of the Spirit's calling to align with him on a new path for my life.  I began to look around me and observe the place I was in and the main problem I saw was that I had nothing to compare my experience to.  The Spirit's unrest was one of a need for greater understanding.   With this thought my family began a new journey that would require us to leave our location and vocation in order to move by faith to a place of growth.

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the novelty section

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Recipe of the day: The Pizzatilla

This is an ancient family recipe created in our childhood and is still used even to this day.  I believe we have my step-dad to thank or maybe one of the sisters I am not certain. Either way, I can live off of this staple diet.

Ingredients: Two large tortillas, pizza sauce (or a tomato based spaghetti sauce), Colby-Jack cheese (or any cheese you like on pizza) and pepperoni slices.

Step 1: spread the pizza sauce across the tortilla as if it were pizza dough.
Step 2: spread the cheese to cover the pizza sauce
Step 3: spread pepperoni slices over the cheese
Step 4: place your second tortilla over the top of the ingredients

Cooking Instructions:

Place a large enough pan for the size of your tortilla on your stove top and place the heat on medium.  After it has preheated for 5 minutes, carefully place the pizzatilla in the pan as to not loose any of the ingredients in the middle.  After 5 minutes, check the bottom for that magical golden brown coating, if complete, turn the pizzatilla over with a spatula in one quick motion (If the ingredients have not had time to start melting, they might fly out during the flipping action).  Once it has been turned over, cover the stove with a lid as to finalize the melting process of the oooey gooey cheese.  After another 5 minutes, check to see if the second size has become golden brown.  Remove from stove, let cool for a couple minutes and use a pizza slicer to cut the pizzatilla into 8 perfect slices (Feeds 1 person, or 1/2 person, if said person is hungry for more).

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image credits: Laurel Barickman (Click name for link)