Monthly Review: January 2023

From 7:56 when I sit down at my computer until at least 9:45, my mornings are a dash from email to Teams message to announcement post to as many assignments as I can quickly grade before I start my class, teach for 45 minutes, stick around for another few minutes to see if any stragglers have questions, back to email, back to Teams, back to my course home page for more grading, planning, or mindlessly rearranging content. I scan my to-do list for unchecked items, more little things that will eat away the rest of my morning.

But around 10 AM, I step away from my computer, sneak downstairs, and open the cupboard beside my range hood. From the top shelf, I take down a basket filled with teas—a tin of lavender Earl Grey, a few stray bags of peppermint and lemon ginger, a box of chai, a few packets from David’s tea. I scoop out a tablespoon of loose-leaf Candy Cane Crush tea into a tea bag. I pour a half cup of water and a half cup of milk into a small saucepan. I bring it to a low heat, then drop the tea in to steep. As I wait, I drizzle a teaspoon of maple syrup and a drop of peppermint extract into a favorite mug. Once my timer goes off, I whisk the tea till it’s frothy, pour it into my mug, and retreat back upstairs.

I sit back in my chair, cup my hands around my mug, and gaze out my office window at the birds twittering in the tops of our arborvitae, and for a few moments, I rest in the calm that a small moment of beauty provides. It is enough.

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Here's what I read, cooked, and created in the month of January.

What I Read

• A Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan (★★★★★)

• Carved in Ebony, Jasmine L. Holmes (★★★★)

If you want to hear the rationale behind my rating, head to my Goodreads for full reviews.

What I Cooked

• Sausage and Potato Roast with Arugula

We could all use more good one-pan meals in our lives, and this is a good one-pan meal. Simple but flavorful, it requires less than 15 minutes of hands-on prep. A keeper for sure.

• Easy Curry Salmon

Once again, I was taken in by a flashy Instagram tutorial video. Perhaps I would feel happier about my experience with this recipe if I had not had to eat it leftover multiple days after making it (even despite the fact that I halved the recipe in the first place), but it just didn't wow me. It was decent, but definitely not my favorite way to eat salmon.

What I Created

• Unpublished blackout poem "Meditation on Matthew 5:3"

May your days be filled with beauty, and may your heart be filled with the willingness to see and give thanks for it.

Monthly Review: December 2022

Shortly after I obtained my first real job, I became thoroughly disenchanted with snow. Though as a child I had sneaked downstairs in the middle of the night to watch it swirl in the streetlamps' orange glow and hope it would be enough for a snow day, I now obsessed over the daily forecast on any winter day that required driving, cursing bitterly any predictions of snow.

It couldn't be avoided, so I would white-knuckle my steering wheel and pray desperately that my brakes would work and that the snowplow would make it to the highway before I had to. I would be lying if I said there have not been times I have been actively crying, or at least on the verge of tears, over my fear of driving in the snow.

After a particularly awful wintry drive last winter, I made a resolution: if it is snowing, I am not going. Unless I am absolutely required to make it to a specific event, I am staying home due to inclement weather.

Already this winter has been snowier than last, but I've noticed that each snowfall brings back some of the old magic from my childhood. I stand by the window and watch it fall like fairydust over the drab landscape. It transfigures the trees; it softens the sharp edges and harsh sounds outside. Later, I will lace on my snowboots and venture out with Dobby, and each step will lead me back to recess in elementary school or the backyard of my parents' old house. I am not going out; I am going back in time. Somehow, that makes winter beautiful again.

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Here's what I read, cooked, and created in the month of December.

What I Read

• Charlotte's Web, E.B. White (★★★★★)––reread

• Truth for Life: 365 Daily Devotions, Alistair Begg (★★★★★)

• My Lady Jane, Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows (★★★★★)

• 12 Rules for Life, Jordan B. Peterson (★★★★)

• On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, Andrew Peterson (★★★★)

• The Stranger in the Lifeboat, Mitch Albom (★★★★)

• Romanov, Nadine Brandes (★★★★)

• Tell Me Everything, Sarah Enni (★★★)

• The Lazy Genius Kitchen: Have What You Need, Use What You Have, and Enjoy It Like Never Before, Kendra Adachi (★★★)

• Not If I Save You First, Ally Carter (★★)

• The Marrow Thieves, Cherie Dimaline (★★)

If you want to hear the rationale behind my rating, head to my Goodreads for full reviews.

What I Cooked

• Peppermint Hot Chocolate Brownies

My favorite way to celebrate Christmas is to find some obscenely finicky recipe to try, and when these showed up in my Instagram feed, I knew I had to try them. Because I have made the brownies from Sarah Kieffer's lovely 100 Cookies cookbook, I also knew they would be about 5 steps too complicated. While I acknowledge that her base brownie recipe is excellent, it is just way more work than it should be. But, because I believe that recipes deserve to be made as directed the first time through, I gritted my teeth and made the brownies.

And credit to where credit is due: they were great brownies. The peppermint ganache was perfectly minty, the marshmallow swirl was positively inspired, and the crushed candy canes gave it a festive feel. Next time I need a good Christmas dessert, I will try these again (and maybe experiment with using my preferred brownie recipe instead).

• Ang's Creamy Tortellini Soup

This recipe came highly recommended by my sister-in-law and my 8-month-old nephew, and since soup is my favorite food group, I had to give it a try. I did make a couple of changes to the recipe as written: I substituted half chicken stock and half white wine vinegar for the white wine because I don't want a partial bottle of wine languishing in my fridge for weeks on end, and I substituted kale for the spinach because wilted spinach is just not good. Overall, I was pleased with the end result. My husband, who is less enthused about soup, thought it was okay.

What I Created

• Original sonnet "Christmas in Minor Key"

• Unpublished original poem "Sad Girl New Year's"

May your days be filled with beauty, and may your heart be filled with the willingness to see and give thanks for it.

Christmas in Minor Key [Original Sonnet and Reflection]

Our Christmastimes are nothing like the songs,

Much less, the best, most wondrous of the year.

The silver bells peal like a clanging gong.

For chestnuts, ashes; gall for cups of cheer.

To evil, death, and ruin we are lost.

The lanes aglow lead nowhere through the dark.

Like one who steals a garment in the frost

is he who carols to a heavy heart.

But do you hear—a new song in the night.

It echoes back, a strain so glorious:

the dawn of grace, that we might walk in light.

God condescends that He might dwell with us.

An anthem for the weak and breaking voice:

the Christ is born to kill despair. Rejoice.

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Surely, we have reached maximum capacity on the contemporary Christmas canon. Surely, we have no need for another rendition or "Sleigh Ride" or "White Christmas." Surely, we have enough songs about kissing in the snow and waiting up for Santa Claus. Surely, we do not need a seventh Pentatonix Christmas album. With each Christmas that passes, I find our repertoire of holiday jingles growing more and more stale. In my best moods, I find it amusing, if absurd that we sing about dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh in the year of our Lord 2022; in my most cynical moods, I find the bellowing of trite sentiments such as "Have a holly, jolly Christmas" and "Tis the season to be jolly" almost insulting.

For many, the holidays are not the most wonderful time of the year, but the hardest, ice water in the polar vortex of relational dysfunction, financial difficulty, societal instability, isolation, suffering, and grief. There is no rocking around the Christmas tree in a hospital lobby or a funeral home. We cannot send our troubles out of sight; they know exactly where we live. Christmas is not merry, and the new year is unlikely to be happy, either.

Yet, as I sang the second stanza of "O Holy Night" at church this Christmas season, I marveled anew at the true sense of wonder and joy in the lyrics:

"The King of kings lay thus in lowly manger

In all our trials born to be our friend

He knows our need, to our weakness is no stranger

Behold your King; before Him lowly bend

Behold your King; before Him lowly bend."

We cannot all sing about being home for Christmas or walking in a winter wonderland, but here is truth we all need: that we are weak and needy, and that our God, rather than abandoning us to our own frailty, chose humble solidarity with humankind through His Incarnation. The immortal, invisible God took on a form we could see and touch; He poured Himself into a body that could die (and, ultimately, did).

Without this reality, our Christmases are only as beautiful as our nostalgia, only as whole as our families, only as bright as our futures. Their only joys are temporal. This kind of merriment may last us through a few seasons, but when suffering comes, it proves itself empty. The gifts and the traditions and the treats are sweet symbols of joy, but poor sources of it.

Herein lies our joy: that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. He died for our sins, was buried, and rose again, and He is alive forevermore. And so, we who have made Him our King may with one voice proclaim that Christ our Savior is born indeed. This is a song worth listening to, crying to, singing along to whether the season is happy or horrible. With angelic hosts, proclaim: God came here to be with us. Joy to the world, indeed.