FROGLEGS

We had a really good time serving some of our friends by sharing our culture with them. We spent about a day cooking, packing and driving out to their house in the sticks to have a Thanksgiving feast with them and some other friends. All the food turned out fantastically (I did stuffing, turkey and pumpkin pie.. I was pleased with how all 3 turned out) and our friends really liked the food. I was a bit sceptical about whether they would or not they would like the food as it is pretty different from typical Spanish food and a lot of Spaniards have a mental block towards trying new things, especially food. But these guys are pretty forward thinking and they all wolfed it down.

As we were serving up the turkey and stuffing, someone asked me to explain what it is exactly that we are celebrating on Thanksgiving Day. Ha! Good question! I wonder how many of us know exactly what it is that we are celebrating on the fourth Thursday of every November?

I would imagine that most of us know something about the “Pilgrims”, their landing in the New World at Plymouth Rock by way of the good ship Mayflower as the escaped religious persecution in evil ol’ emperious England, how they suffered through the first winter, half of them died, the following year they befriended the local natives who showed them how to cultivate the food that they would need to survive in this new frontier land, that fall they had a great harvest, invited the natives to a big bash that lasted three days to give thanks to their God that they had survived and were going to make it.

Or at least that is what they told us in grade school. Most historical documents show that it probably didn’t go down that way, but the lack of primary resources close to the time of the supposed “First Thanksgiving” leave it somewhat in doubt.

What is for sure is that the holiday is not one that has been passed down in America, generation upon generation, from the 1650’s to the present day. Thanksgiving as we know it started after the Civil War (around 1850). As the American Civil War wound down and it became obvious that the North would win out over the south, ol’ Abe Lincoln started thinking about some way to draw a radically divided country out of the gutter after it had lost HALF of the male population to one of the most bloody civil wars in world history. Thanksgiving was the idea that he came up with. Why not celebrate a holiday across the nation that would focus on giving thanks to God for what we do have? Unfortunately, he didn’t end up making it an official national holiday and it didn’t stick. Within 20 years, the holiday had pretty much been forgotten.

Then after WWII, Franklin D. Roosevelt was confronted with a similar situation. The world had just seen the most horrendous war of all time, experienced the horror of the holocaust and the atom bomb- twice over. As America scaled its way out of the Great Depression, it was not exactly a “great time to be alive”. It seemed like a good time to call upon the stories of the past again… FDR declared every 4th Thursday of November a national holiday (no working, no business to be done) on which we would remember that first Thanksgiving Feast. Hopefully, we’d remember to give thanks to God for all that we have, that we’ve made it through another year and we’re still somehow hanging onto life by the horns.

I kinda like the real story a little bit more than the one they told us about some fuddy duddy religious puritans from England wearing funny hats with buckles chasing turkeys around.

Anyway, we’re now on our way to Jesús and Rachel’s down on the coast to celebrate T-day pt. 2.

How the heck did I get roped into making TWO Thanksgiving turkeys? Oh dear. Pray for me! One on Thursday and one on Saturday. Dear Lord.

Yeah, I know most of you have already downloaded a pirated copy. I don’t condemn you if you did. Now that’ll ruffle some feathers! A lot of you do have serious objections to it, but I would recommend that you spend some time surfing Down Hill Battle. They’ll at least give you something to think about the next time you bug your friends about P2P music-sharing. Anyways… back to U2. Either your a pirate, or you went to U2’s website from the middle of last week and streamed the album song by song (as I did) desperate for a bit of your favourite band. That’s what I did. By Saturday afternoon I was climbing the walls, wanting to get my hands on that album.

So you know what I did? After prayer this morning (first things first after all), I went straight down to the nearest music shop and bought the most expensive copy I could find. I plunked down 30€ for the special edition book/DVD/CD version of “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb”. I know that most of you are shrieking and pulling your hair out. How could I spend 30€ on a CD!!! Well, when you see the little book that came with the album, you’ll understand. It reads like Bono and The Edge’s journal as the deal with issues having to do with divinity, social justice and the seeming lack of interest from believers in the poor and suffering. It isn’t easy to read (Bono has rubbish handwriting and the Edge doesn’t seem to like to write in a straight line), so I’ll probably be toting it around for a while. It begins with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi: “We must become the change we want to see in the world.” and ends with J. Robert Oppenheimer (one of the men that helped to invent the atomic bomb) quoting the Bhagavad Ghita: “I am death, the mighty destroyer of the world.”

In our little community, we’ve gotten into the practice of meeting daily for prayer. This sort of thing is especially helpful if you don’t have a boss standing over you telling you to get to work or he’ll bust your butt. It’s really funny, without some sort of external aid, it is really difficult to get the day moving. Those of you that have 9 to 5 jobs out there might not get this, but it is really true. Just knowing that others are going to get up and pray in the morning is enough of a push to set the alarm and be there every morning.

So every morning at 9am we gather to pray for a half hour or so. We’ve been using an irish jesuits’ website to help guide us in the morning. Liturgy might seem a bit stale, but then so can trying to “freestyle” it when everyone is half asleep. We’re looking for some other forms of liturgy, but in Spanish. Too bad the Northumbria doesn’t offer anything for non-english speakers… Any suggestions?

We also gather to pray in the afternoons two nights a week. Our prayers at that time are a bit more outwardly focused. Want us to pray for you? Send me an email or leave a comment here.

Starbucks opened one of their trademark cafés in downtown Sevilla earlier this year. I have to confess, I wasn’t particularly excited. The new café took the place of a restaurant that had some sentimental value for me. This restaurant had been on that corner in the centre of town for at least 50 years. It was the restaurant where a friend and I spent New Year’s Eve about 6 years ago because we couldn’t find anywhere else that would serve us (explaining New Years in Spain is a whole different blog entry… maybe a series of entries). We paid about 30 euros for a pretty awful meal, but it felt great because it was the first warm food we had for at least 8 hours. It was, as I remember, a cold, rainy night. Hot food felt fantastic going down, even though I could feel it attempting to come back up when they brought us the bill!

But never-mind about massive corporations systematically shutting down local businesses. I’ll have to be honest with you and tell you that if that massive corportation can make a good cup’a joe and give me a lovely place to meet/chill out/read the paper, I might be willing to sear my conscience for a bit and patronise them.

I’ve never disliked Starbucks coffee. I’ve never particularly liked it either. In the US or the UK, I’ll always opt for a local chain or small coffee house to get my caffeine fix. But in their absence, Starbucks has always been a decent alternative.

Starbucks has always been characterised (in my mind) by a few things:

comfy chairs and sofas

strong, hot coffee served the way you want it in the cup you want

quick and effecient customer service

no matter what you order, anywhere in the world, you will always get the same thing. (i.e.- if i order a caramel macchiato in Berlin, it will be the exact same one that I would get in Sevilla or London or Los Angeles… there is consistency)

Well, I’ve been to two different Starbucks in two different countries… and the consistency is totally gone. I had a pretty decent macchiato in Berlin a couple weeks ago and then a terrible one in Sevilla upon arriving home. I noticed at that point that the Starbucks in Sevilla doesn’t even have proper espresso machines! They just have push button little dispensers from which the “baristas” (as a former barista, I can say that it is a title you EARN by making coffee properly, not by pushing buttons) get the espressos for your drinks. Furthermore, I had to get a double shot of espresso just to be able to taste a hint of coffee in my drink! And the drink was lukewarm! What happened to my strong, hot coffee??? The sofas are still comfy, but they are absolutely filthy! Had anyone in there heard of a vacuum cleaner? And the one I sat in on Sunday had been doused in bleach or something, there was major discoloration all over it. I assure it was not some arty attempt at “stonewashing” a comfy chair! Don’t even get me started on the customer service… They charged me twice for a drink I clearly ordered once and then refunded me the money and then brought me two drinks anyways! ARGH! But wait, it get’s better. I asked to have my drink “in” (as in, not take away). To me (and I am sure to all of you too) that means that I want to have my drink in a nice porcelain mug, not a paper cup. Apparently, that is no longer the case in Starbucks. You have to ask specifically for a mug, even if you are going to dine in. Good grief. My drink came in the filthiest, dingiest, most disgusting mug I have ever seen in my life. Just click on the picture above and you can see how dirty it was. And on top of that, they brought the brownie I ordered (which was far from fresh) on a PAPER PLATE! I did not just pay 3 euros to have my brownie on a paper plate. DOUBLE ARGH!

Sorry to all your Starbucks fans. I don’t care if they are selling fairtrade coffee in the UK. Starbucks, if they ever had it, have officially (in my books) lost it.

I’ve been a little busy since Heather and I got back from our nice “mini-retreat”. After a long day, the strength to blog just hasn’t been there… What have I been up to? Here is a small list:

• have started daily morning prayer with our tribe
• have gotten Heather’s new computer set up and done LOADS of computer maintenance on all our comps.
• Moved Heather’s office into the bedroom
• am heading up a group that is organising a week of 24-7prayer in February that will involve at least 4 churches and 7 different ministries from across the city.
• am working on a comprehensive report of all 24-7 base and offices across the globe
• am working together with Jim to start an Alpha Course next March

I am sure there are a few other things… but that is enough! Just so you all know that I’m not slackin’ off, I just genuinely haven’t had the energy to blog…