A CHRISTMAS LETTER FROM A DEAR FRIEND

One of my oldest and dearest friends, a never failing Star Person in my life for over 40 years, has been a constant reminder to me that the Christian faith embodies far more than than what we see and hear from the extreme fundamentalists. As an ordained minister in the Methodist church he took a leave of absence to open and run The Yokefellow Center in Rising Sun, Maryland, patterned after the international Yokefellow movement started by the Quaker theologian, Elton Trueblood.

With his permission, I would like to share his Christmas letter.


The Yokefellow Center
36 N. Queen Street, POB 482
Rising Sun, Maryland 21911
410-658-2662
halowens@zoominternet.net


Dear Yokefellow Friends,

The season of Advent comes again! What a wondrous season this can be for each of us. I recently placed 34 candles in the windows at the Yokefellow Center. We’ve done this for the past 27 years! The light from these candles represent the light of the Christmas Star, guiding those Wise People of old on their journey in search of the Baby in Bethlehem. The candles also remind me of the Star Persons who have guided me through the years to what Douglas Steere called the “Bethlehem of the heart.” I am grateful for each of them, for without their guidance, encouragement and light, I may never have embarked on the journey.

This year as I placed a candle in each window I named it for one of my Star Persons. It was quite an experience. I discovered that there were not enough candles or windows to name all those who have given me light for my journey. In American society there is a prevalent attitude that “rugged individualism” gets us where we want to go. We do it on our own, according to some, pulling ourselves up by our own shoe strings. This is certainly not true in my experience. John Donne said it so well: “No [one] man is an Island, entire of itself, every [one] man is a piece of the Continent…” We need “one another.” These two little words “one another” form one of the most important phrases in the New Testament. This all-important phrase is the reason the Yokefellow symbol is a double-Yoke instead of a single one.

Most of the Star Persons in my life (past and present) do not have great titles or hold important positions. They are just ordinary folk. But each one in their unique way was able to “light up my life,” as a popular song put it a few years ago. Their light gave a burst of new insight at just the right moment. They were and they are my Bethlehem Stars.

The Christmas season has a way of “lighting up” the darkness for us. Each year when Christmas comes we have another opportunity to ponder its mystery. Last night, those 34 candles in the Yokefellow Center windows (each just a tiny little light) lit up the whole building and surrounding area proclaiming the abiding promise of Christmas: “The light continues to shine in the darkness and the darkness has never extinguished it” (John 1:15). These tiny little lights also describe Star Persons and how their little light makes a tremendous difference in a dark and broken world.

The “little light” Star Persons give to your life and mine comes from another realm—a Light from beyond. The Light that lights up the Yokefellow Center also comes, not from 34 candles, but a Light from beyond. These small “pieces of light” are a reflection of the Bethlehem Star, inviting everyone to revisit Bethlehem and to reconsider its miracle. This Bethlehem to which the light beckons is not far away in some Holy Land. It is rather the Bethlehem within our own human hearts (also holy ground). Here, in the Bethlehem of the heart, we will find the Child into whom God poured out His very being; all of His love—to demonstrate in human flesh his passionate care for each of us and the world in which we live. Here, in this Bethlehem of the heart, we will find the Light from beyond, the Child, who became the Son of Man—being and doing what man and woman is called to do—letting God’s passionate love shine though His life. It is here, in the Bethlehem of the heart, that Star Persons are born. It is here that we too can be re-born in some new way this Christmas. The words of Angelus Silesius of the 17th century still describe this possibility—the continuing miracle of Christmas: “If Christ were born a thousand times in Galilee it was all in vain until He is born in m
e, in thee.”

The Yokefellow Center is called to let God’s passionate love shine through its ministries and presence.

We wish you a Merry Christmas filled with love, hope, joy, and peace, but most of all, we pray for you a wondrous revisit to the Bethlehem within your heart and all that such an experience may mean for you and the world.
With gratitude and love,

Hal E. Owens

“Fling wide the portals of your heart; make it a temple set apart from earthly use for heaven’s employ, adorned with prayer and love and joy.

Redeemer, come, with us abide; our hearts to thee are open wide; let us thy inner presence feel; thy grace and love in us reveal.” (Georg Weissel, 1642)

12-9…A QUICK “FIX YOUR OWN” TONIGHT

Patience and I went our own ways tonight. She crashed, recovering from yesterdays 12+ hour day at work, fixing her own dinner, while I went to the opening reception at Gallery 1025. Returning home, it was my turn to eat, and after looking at a pretty empty refrigerator I turned to……pasta.

I cooked a handful of large shells, chopped up a few sun dried tomatoes, and grabbed the jar of basil pesto I keep on hand in the fridge. Tossed the cooked pasta with the two ingredients, grated some Parmigiano reggiano cheese on top and feasted to the sounds of a Tuscan CD.

BARNS

My fondness and fascination with barns began long before they became a favorite subject for my art. Like so many things in my life it had its origin in my childhood experiences on our family farm. It wasn’t the architecture and visual interest that appealed to me, I was too young to appreciate those qualities, besides our barn had none of that. It was the comfort and intimacy of the interior, the smell of fresh straw and hay, and the warmth of the animals during the cold winter days that I found so enticing. Granted, the appeal was much less in the hot, humid days of summer, but it’s the good things we tend to remember.

For several years we had a family cow that provided our milk (and butter), as well as a calf destined to reach our table as veal. That is something I prefer not to think about. One of my chores was to milk the cow after school, a task I did under duress during the deep days of summer. The barn was hot, the air thick and heavy, and seated by her udder with my head on her flank I would be smacked in the face repeatedly by her tail which was flipping from side to side to remove the flies that invariably settled on her. But in the cold days of winter it was an entirely different experience. I recall reading once that a cow generates enough body heat to warm a small cottage. I don’t know if that is true or not, but I can say with certainty that the animal gives off heat. Sitting on that stool with my head pressed into her flank was like sitting in front of a heat vent… and there was not tail to worry about…and her teats warmed my hands better than any gloves could. Warm and cozy...something I could appreciate even at that age.

The description of this experience would not be complete if I did not mention the kittens, which seem to be found in every barn everywhere. Somehow they knew it was milking time, and I loved to watch them scramble over one another after I would squirt them with a stream of milk.

I think milking a cow one more time will go my bucket list.

Forty years later another barn, in another place, with horses and not cows and sheep, came into my life. But that’s another story.

The barn as I remember it. The livestock entered by a door on the left side. The second and third floor housed chickens.

My mother's painting...done after the barn sat unused for years...oil...14x20

12-8…Macaroni and cheese…sort of

I left the Affordable Art Show about 7:20 and 10 minutes later Patience called to say she was on her way home from work. What to do…she would be hungry and I had spent the last 2 hours at the show and snacking.

Quick and simple to the rescue. I put a pot of water on the stove to boil, threw some cream cheese, butter, parmigiano reggiano cheese, and gorgonzola in a bowl. When the pasta was done I added it to the bowl along with some pasta water, mixed it all up, and we sat down to a feast!’’ It reminded me of the way my mother used to serve her “macaroni with butter”.

Blue cheese works just as well as the gorgonzola.

For simplicity, flavor, and ease of preparation, this is on par with Aglio Olio Crudo.

I expect my productivity in the studio, which has been rather meager lately, to become even more so over the remaining days of 2011. At least this has been the pattern for the past several years, and I see no reason for it to change.

I've kept busy cataloging old slides of my early work and sending them off to be commercially scanned into digital files. The first batch has been returned and I'm quite pleased with the results. The cost is reasonable, the result excellent, and the time saved priceless.

And then there are the drawings...the small sketches in wc, ink, pastel, and markers.
They continue to fascinate me and provide considerable enjoyment.




One of these days I will get around to growing them into finished paintings.

THE WINE

Salvatore Renzulli...1939...the year I was born

Until prohibition in 1920 my grandfather produced, bottled, and sold his Father & Son brand wine to the nearby cities of Philadelphia, Camden, and Wilmington. As a young boy I can remember a few of the remnants of that enterprise still on the farm. One was a large wooden barrel with straight sides and an open top that stood about 10-12 feet tall with a diameter of about 5-6 feet.. A small open door on the bottom was just large enough to allow me to crawl inside to hide from the wild Indians I was fighting.

Another was a large (remember the sizes I recall were that of a young child) press that today I would estimate was 4 or 5 feet high. The photo below is a much smaller version that has survived the many years; my father used it to press the hams dry when he made prosciutto and salami.

Every year my father and grandfather would make 4 or 5 barrels of wine, which were kept in a small alcove with a dirt floor in our cellar. It remained in the barrels, coming upstairs in a plain gallon bottle to be consumed with every meal. I would occasionally help myself to a taste using a Mason jar lid. I thought it was cool, but the truth is, I didn’t like it. Unfortunately one year, I was a teenager at the time, my father messed up and all the wine ended up as vinegar. In a fit of anger he opened all the taps and let the 3 or 4 barrels of wine drain onto the floor. The basement never smelled the same after that, and he did not make wine again until some 15-20 years later. I still have the wooden taps they were used in the barrels.


My father resumed his wine making in his late 60s, and continued until just a few years before he died at age 82. He always made the maximum amount allowed by law…up to 200 gallons a year, giving a lot of it away to family and friends. Like so many Italians and Italian-Americans, wine was in his DNA…it was simply a given in his life. He is gone now, beyond my reach, but not my memory, and I drink a small glass of red wine with my lunch every day to pay homage to him.

About a year ago someone brought us a bottle of wine, a label I did not recognize, and as soon as I opened it the aroma of the Niagara grapes immediately brought me back to our farm, the grapes, and the wine. It was the first time in years that I experienced that fragrance.

Commundardo and Spartico in the wine cellar, circa early 1970s

12-6…Capellini and stuff

OK…it is 5:30 and I haven’t given any thought to dinner. A quick look in the fridge reveals some asparagus, grape tomatoes, and green onions that need to be used…soon, also one slice of prosciutto and the rear end of a loaf of ciabatta bread. All the makings of a meal.



INGREDIENTS:

Capellini (angel hair pasta)
Olive oil
Garlic, Green onion
Red pepper flakes
Toasted ciabatta bread crumbs
Lemon
Asparagus
Grape tomatoes, halved
Sweet vermouth
Tomato paste
Basil and oregano, dried
Diced tomatoes
Prosciutto

PROCESS:

Grate the bread, toast the crumbs, and set aside.

Saute the garlic and onion in olive oil with a small amount of tomato pastes. Then add the asparagus and lemon juice and cook. After 10 -15 minutes add the diced tomatoes, prosciutto, and herbs, cook for a few minutes and add the wine and lemon juice. (I really don’t think any of these times are critical…just do it by intuition.)

When the pasta is ready add it to the pan and mix well, sprinkle with the bread crumbs and serve with parmigiano reggiano cheese.

COMMENTS:

This dish was as fun to cook as it was to eat. I literally made it up as I went along. Do your own variation of it and enjoy!