Saint Gerard Bread

First, the recipe, and a picture, then story time!

Saint Gerard Bread
(White Sandwich Bread)

(using Kitchen-Aid mixer with dough hook)

2 cups warm milk
4 ½ tsp yeast (or 2 pkgs)
2 tbs sugar
8 cups flour
4 tsp salt
2 tbs butter at room temperature

1. Put the warm milk, yeast and sugar in a small bowl. Then get all the rest of your ingredients together while the milk mixture and yeast hang out together for a few minutes.

2. Put flour in mixing bowl and stir in salt. Make well in the flour and place butter at bottom of well.

3. Pour the yeast mixture into the center and wait 30 seconds, giving butter a chance to soften. Gently lower the dough hook. Begin to knead, first on stir then move it up. As it is mixing add a little warm water, one tbs at a time with at least 30 sec in between additions, or more flour to get this texture just right. For fluffy, soft bread with a tight crumb, the dough should just hold together in a ball but feel dry to the touch and should not stick to your fingers. Requires some trial and error. You may need to knead it some at the end, adding a little water to your palms. Total kneading time about ten minutes.

4. Put in covered bowl to rise for an hour.

[If you need a warm, no-draft location, leave oven off and put a bowl of hot water on the bottom while dough rises. The oven stays at perfect temperature for rising. Anytime you use the oven for rising you must remove the dough before you preheat the oven for baking!]

5. After an hour, punch down dough, degassing it, and remove the dough from the bowl. Divide in half and cover. Let rest for 10 minutes.

6. Shape each ball into a loaf. [I like to pat into a rectangle, then roll it up, pinching the seam and tucking in the ends.] Put into well-greased loaf pans, seam-side down. Cover and let rise another hour or so. Loaves should rise well over the top of the pan. If not, let rise a bit more.

7. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bake approximately 45 minutes. When it is golden brown and hollow-sounding it is done.

8. Remove loaves from pans immediately and cool on wire rack. The crust will soften after it cools.

Saint Gerard Bread

Are You Willing to Do the Miraculous?

Coming to this bread started as a search for Saint Gerard. And the search for Saint Gerard started as a search for a patron saint of motherhood and for those trying to conceive.

See SaintGerard.com, Saints.SQPN.com, Saints and Angels.

My husband and I have a son, Nico, who is 21 months as of this writing, and we would like more. We are committed to "trying" yet not stressing over it. The last thing we need is for our intimacy to become a source of further stress in our lives when it should be a source of strength.

But sometimes this is easier said than done, particularly for a woman, whose body cycles give her nudges and reminders that prevent her from completely ignoring it. So I decided to look toward the saints for some extra comfort and peace of mind. I wound up praying for a miracle.

Sometimes my conversations with God or the saints are like that. I begin with one intention, but through the back and forth conversation, the barriers break down, the truth comes out. This time I had to admit that I really am hoping to get pregnant. We both would like Nico to have a sibling. At least one, preferable two. I hate feeling like the clock is ticking. All life is a miracle. Is that what I was asking for? A miracle?

And Saint Gerard said, "You want a miracle. If I help you, are willing to do the miraculous? You know what needs to be done. You need to take care of yourself. Eat right and exercise. This is the miraculous. I will help you if you are willing."

I knew what he meant. The miraculous is not necessarily something shocking and unexpected. Sometimes it is the very ordinary. I knew that his help came with no promises. All of Life is always only in God's hands. But I know that I need to be ready for whatever Life God brings to me, and the way to be ready is to take care of myself. And I knew that St. Gerard would help me, because sometimes it takes a real dedication to treat yourself with the same care and love and respect that you would give your own child without hesitation.

In my reading about Saint Gerard, some mention was made of Saint Gerard Bread, eating it as a sign of solidarity with all of those whom Gerard helped in his lifetime. I could find no recipe. So I decided to make one. What kind of bread should I use? The answer was simple- the bread of everyday, ordinary life. The bread of Motherhood - of Parenthood, really. Because my first desire for seeking Saint Gerard was more about becoming a better and better parent. As a new stay-at-home mom, there is still a lot that I have to learn about my craft. It is a calling that I have followed with enthusiasm, but it is not without challenges.

So I played around with this recipe until it was what I was looking for: simple, everyday bread that is yet delicious. The miraculous of the everyday. The way it is to be a parent.

The Proper Time To Wake Up

It is dark.

No streetlights. New Moon. Cloudy.

Luckily I have Radar. Which, for the record, is entirely different than Gaydar, which I also have. But I digress.

I wend my way around through the house noiselessly, crawl into bed. I sleep.

Eventually I get up.

And I mean "eventually" in its best latinate sense - in response to an event.

Sometimes that event is enough light coming into to my room that my body becomes aware that I can now see to do everything around the house and outside that I need to do without the use of radar, x-ray vision, candles, torches, kitchen fires, oil lamps, or even those new-fangled electrical candle-things.

[I remember reading a british book once one of the characters went to the dentist and described the torch being put in his mouth. The image of a TORCH being shoved in someone's mouth at a dentist's office was so hilarious I nearly fell out of my chair. Now when I hear the word torch I still get tickled. And how about carrying a torch around in your boot? HAHAHAHA. (FYI In British English, Torch = Flashlight and Boot = Trunk of car)]

Anyhoo, sometimes the event that awakens me is "nature's call." Or else just being done with sleeping. Most often lately the event is Nico waking up. I now ignore his desire to get up if it is before 6:30, and most often it is right around seven, on great occasion it is as late as eight. Of course, once we are moved to Springfield, and Bill gets up around 6:30 or 7 to leave for work by 7:30 or so, who knows what our regular schedule will morph into. And don't we all sleep just a little more in the darker days of the year and a little less on the lighter days? And since we live at LL 39.79,-89.67, I can already tell that the days are getting a little shorter as the summer draws to an end.

[You can easily find Latitude and Longitude with Google Maps. right-click on any spot and choose "What's Here." Google places the LL coordinates into the search box!]

So these are the proper times to wake up. For me.

When I have an earlier job to get to, I go to bed in plenty of time to feel well rested, and on GREAT occaision might set a gentle radio alarm to assist me.

Over all, if you NEED an alarm, coffee, energy drink, cold shower, etc. to wake up for your day on a regular basis, you have poor sleep/eating/exercise habits and are probably grouchy, though no one will tell you.

Anyone who thinks that that they can do with only 4-5 hours of sleep without naps on a regular basis either spends a lot of time in the evenings secretly snoozing with a book or in front of the TV or they are so grouchy and ill-tempered that most people simply avoid them.

Call me if you need someone to tell you whether or not you are grouchy. I provide this service free of charge.

And let me review: Yes, I am more naturally a night owl, but I also believe firmly in getting enough sleep to be of sound mind and body as both a medical and moral necessity. So if I can get up a little later, I do, because I stay up later. Since I became pregnant, now two years ago, I am almost always awake and up around 7 am.

Why am I writing about this?

I have noticed that nearly EVERY time I call someone before 10 my time (US Central), that person says to me, "MY, you're up early."

Somewhere hidden in that comment is a little bit of condescension.

I am pretty sure that my Grandmother, God Bless Her, thought that 6 am was the only morally acceptable time to get up. Anything later perhaps showed a profound disrespect to the Creator.

But she isn't the only one. The Well-Meaning and Well-To-Do alike have their moral framework firmly ensconced in the notion that 6 am to rise and 6 pm to sup (or even 5) makes for a properly ordered universe. 3rd shift workers, would be out of luck, doomed to mediocrity for all time.

But I say, thank GOD for Sister Wendy Beckett. She is a contemplative nun who gets up very early, by 4 am I think. And she lives in England. So, basically, given the time difference, she is already up praying when I go to bed and she has been working and praying all day by the time I get up. I hope she prays for me while I sleep, and I pray for her while she sleeps and I am still up. Besides I figure that God might be a Night Owl and not get up until even 9 or ten, and if you pray too early then they are capably handed by whoever got stuck with morning duty, the saints taking it in turns.

So, Yes, I'm Up. And I'll go to bed eventually. May God Bless our Days and Nights!

Patron Saint of Packing and Moving

Saints are my thing.

So when I quipped that I was praying to the patron saint of packing, several people asked me who it was. My cousin wrote, "See, this is information a military spouse could use - I should build a shrine! Who, exactly, is the patron saint of packing?" And I had to respond, "Unfortch, I have yet to find a person specifically named - Joseph is patron saint of (among many others) houses, immigrants, laborers, travellers, and, well, dying people. That pretty much sums up packing, right?"

But it got me to thinking [ruh-roh!!].

Who could this saint be? Over all the centuries of moves and upheavals, no one has claimed a saint specifically for packing and moving? Don't get me wrong, Saint Josesph has been most attentive to our need for comfort and help while selling/buying our house. I daresay he is still busy watching over us because the dreaded process of working out all the details with the two closings on the same day and whatnot has not yet ended and there are only two weeks left! So, Fair Dues to Saint Joseph for his kindly and divine intervention!

And for the record, I DID buy a little statue of him, and I DID pray for his intercession, as did my husband (and Nico by his presence!). I also compiled a novena from various sources. However I did not bury him, though I have no specific objection to the burying of statues or medals as ritual process. And I certainly did NOT, in my prayer, bury him or hang him upside down and threaten to leave him that way until he had done my bidding. Please! I object strongly to such treatment of people and saints and their statues are no exception. That portion of the standard suggested prayer is an example of manipulative behaviour and I will not condone it. Yesh, you really have to be careful about the content of some of the prayers out there. Even some of the traditional ones, dare I say it, can promote ideas about God and humans that are best abandoned. Hmmm, seems like I should say more, so I'll come back to it in the future, y'all!

Anyhoo, I have been thinking about who the patron saint of moving a packing should/could be. And then I ran across this description of patron saints in the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"The beliefs of a Catholic in an age of Faith prompted him to place not only his churches under the protection of some illustrious servant of God, but the ordinary interests of life, his health, and family, trade, maladies, and perils, his death, his city and country....These patrons with very many others were chosen on account of some real correspondence between the patron and the object of patronage, or by reason of some play on words, or as a matter of individual piety. Thus, while the great special patrons had their clients all over Christendom, other patrons in regard of the same class of objects might vary with different times and places."

So I said to myself, We need a Patron Saint of Moving and Packing, y'all.

So might I propose Saint Frances Cabrini, first US citizen (naturalized) to be canonized (1946) ?

Excerpt from Find a Grave: "Finally the Bishop gave her permission to start an institute of missionary sisters. She took the name Frances Xavier Cabrini and was soon labeled "Mother" by her seven recruits. They took over an abandoned Franciscan friary. Here she drew up constitutions for the community. Their principal work was to be a Christian education of girls. The new order was called The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. She was asked by the Bishop if her community would go to America and help with the education of Italian immigrants who had migrated to America by the thousands. With six sisters she landed in New York on March 31, 1889. She founded a school at West Park, on the Hudson River. This was followed by many. The order was expanding rapidly. By 1907 the order had increased to over a thousand sisters in eight countries. In her lifetime she was to see sixty seven convents: free-schools, high schools, hospitals and other establishments."

See also http://saints.sqpn.com/saint-frances-xavier-cabrini/

Mother Cabrini certainly moved alot, and under trying circumstances and often ill health. Born July 15, 1850 in Italy, she died on Dec. 22, 1917 in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. For her, packing and moving were never just chores but instead were simply part and parcel of the call of God to go and serve.

Our Moves can be like that, too. The job of moving not only serves the family or community in a direct way, but it is also the process of getting to the place we are next to called to serve, getting to the people who await us, following the will of God.

Mother Cabrini, pray for us. Pray for our packing and moving. Help us to see this work as Service, and while we prepare, help us to meditate and prepare ourselves for the tasks that God calls us to, for the people God calls us to love and serve. Amen.