Albert Borgmann is a philosopher/theologian from michigan. he speaks about how we have become detached from the culture of the stove, the culture that is focused around the hearth. we have forgotten what it truly means to be human - to be together, to be family, to be embraced.
in a remarkable book called "Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life", Borgmann argues that eating is one of the most truly human and theological acts that humanity can participate in:

"The great meal has its structure. it begins with a moment of reflection in which we place ourselves in the presence of the first and last things. It has a sequence of courses: it requires and sponsors memorable conversation; and all this enacted in the discipline called table manners. They are warranted when they constitute the respectful and skilled response to the great things that are coming to pass in the meal. We can see how order and discipline have collapsed when we eat a Big Mac...In a Big Mac the sequence of courses has been compacted into one object and the discipline of table manners has been reduced to grabbing and eating. The social context reaches no further than than the pleasant faces and the quick hands of the people who run the fast food outlet. In a festive meal however, the food is served, one of the most generous gestures human beings are capable of."

nipple cakes.
yum yum yum.

i heart the scottish psalter!

the scottish psalter is amazing. it is eloquent, honest, poetic and goes to the depth of human experience - to the orgasmic highs of joy in God.(hmmm) and to the abyss of the shitty mess that we constantly find ourselves in, individually and communally.
and it is always sung to a dirge, brilliant.

He changed parched land to flowing streams,
The hungry there he led.
He found a city safe and strong,
Which they inhabited. (Psalm 107)

"Of how many heroic characters have these old temple songs been the inspiration! Jewish saints and patriots chanted them in the synagogue and on the battlefield; apostles and evangelists sung them among perils of the wilderness, as they traversed the rugged paths of Syria and Galatia, and Macedonia; martyrs in Rome softly hummed them when the lions near at hand were crouching for their prey; in German forests, in Highland Glen, Lutherans and Covenanters breathed their lives out through their cadences; in every land penitent souls have found in them words to tell the story of their sorrow, and victorious souls the voices of their triumph; mothers watching their babes by night have cheered the vigil by singing them, mourners walking in lonely ways have been lighted by the great hopes that shine through them; and pilgrims going down into the valley of the shadow of death have, found in their firm assurances a strong staff to lean upon."
(from an excerpt of the The Psalms in Worship, 1907)

SOLI DEO GLORIA! woop.