Earlier this week when I was looking for something to make, I remembered this really easy recipe from an old Arch UMC cookbook, but I couldn’t find it. After a frantic search of my recipe box, I finally located it and promptly made it! So, just in case I ever lose the recipe again, I’m putting it here for your enjoyment and posterity’s sake.

Ingredients:
1 box chocolate cake mix
4 eggs
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 cup sugar
16 ounces cream cheese
1 1/2 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Process:
Separate 1 cup of the cake mix and set aside. To the remaining mix, add 1 egg and oil. Mix well and press into the bottom of a greased 9×13 pan. In a mixing bowl (an electric mixer really does best for this one), cream sugar and cream cheese. Mix in 3 eggs, then add milk and the 1 cup of cake mix. Pour over mixture in pan and bake in a 300 degree oven for 55 to 60 minutes. Let cool at room temperature, then refrigerate to serve cold with Cool Whip (real whipped cream would be a waste for this one).

I set out to make a whole bunch of baby paraphernalia several months ago, knowing that I wouldn’t find what I wanted for a price I was willing to pay in a store. So, I picked out dollar-a-yard fabric from Walmart, made my list of projects, and got started. As usual with a project, I jumped in full steam ahead only to be sidetracked by one small glitch after another, slowing me down and causing me to lose any motivation I had to just finish and clean everything up. The biggest problem I had was that the sewing machine my mom gave me for my 18th birthday froze and was not worth repairing. The extra machine my grandma gave me a few years ago because she didn’t like it has been broken (totally my fault for trying to fix a small problem myself on that one) and sitting in our basement for over a year, so it wasn’t an option unless I decided to invest more than either machine is really worth in repairs. Anyway, I ended up ordering a new Brother machine from Costco, at the suggestion of one of my coworkers. Aside from being impatient about waiting for it to be delivered, it was a great deal for a machine that has a few more bells and whistles than my previous machine. Since we’re also using cloth diapers, I decided to try my hand at making some reusable wipes as an additional project after I finished everything else, mostly to have a reason to try out some of the stitches the new machine offers. Andy was kind enough (dorky enough, really) to play around with the camera to get some shots of the various stitches and I’m quite happy with the wipes…even though I know they’ll be pretty gross and will be thrown away eventually, I got to play with my new toy!!

So, typically at church on Sunday mornings, the scripture lesson will precede the sermon. Today, the lesson was:

⁴ The word of the LORD came to me, saying, ⁵ “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you  were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

Now, reading through that lesson, one would have to ask themselves, “hmmm…how’s Pastor Scott going to discuss abortion?”

He didn’t talk about it at all.  Didn’t come up once.

In fact, Scott talked about having purpose in your life (the sermon title was “Motivation for Life”).  He specifically discussed how the prophet Jeremiah was around 16 years old when God talked to him, and even at that young age, he had meaning in his life and was motivated to continue along the path put forth in front of him.  The verse talked about how Jeremiah, specifically, was called to preach God’s Word to the masses.

So, I sat there thinking: “how could two so drastically different messages come from the same verse?”  What Scott talked about was a motivation, a purpose, for all our lives and how we can do good with them.  Instead, there are other voices that stop after the word “apart” midway through the 5th verse.  These voices disregard the context in which the words were written, inserting their own meaning.

I realize we live in a world of soundbytes now, when a politician’s words can be cut and cropped to make it sound like they said something when they really didn’t.  Largely, I think this occurs because people are generally lazy and don’t care to listen to the full series of phrases, let alone the entirety of a single Bible verse.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that all of the world’s religions are guilty of the same mistakes…

…but I’d like to think we were smart enough now to know better than to accept the easy answer.

This time of year, there usually isn’t much coming out in theaters, but Denzel Washington’s new movie, “The Book of Eli,” looked interesting.

The movie centers around a “wanderer,” of sorts, crossing the U.S. by foot ~30 years after a nuclear holocaust. He’s a survivor, doing what he must to get his book across the country for initially unknown reasons. The world is a wasteland, with people fighting over things that we take for granted now (alcohol wipes, shampoo, water, etc.). The film makers also do a good job of making the color palate somewhat “bland,” where parts of the movie seem almost “black and white,” even though it’s in color. The muted colors really give it that “western movie” feel, with the lone fighter crossing the frontier, reluctantly helping those that need it.

The story itself is rather interesting, and while it seems to move slowly at parts, it’s still an fascinating and “different” concept for a film. As you may guess, the book that Washington is carrying across the country is the Bible, presumably the last one in existence as all of them were destroyed following the nuclear holocaust (which, we find out, was at least partially caused by the religious differences between cultures on Earth). The primary bad guy, played by Gary Oldman, wants to get a copy of the Bible so he can use it’s “power” in order to coax people into following him, in the process explaining that the same thing had been done many time before (i.e. bad people doing things “in the name of God,” and those people convincing others that they hold “The Truth” of existence). Washington’s character, Eli, was told in a vision to take the book west, where it would be safe, and on this trail, it certainly appears that he is protected from On High, especially against Oldman’s forces. The movie basically centers around this conflict, although the mythology they lay out helps to “fill in the gaps” of the reasons for the nuclear war, and what has transpired in its aftermath.

Usually, I try not to explain such details of a movie like this, but it was very unexpected and I think it really heightened my enjoyment of the film. It is one of those rare cases where the movie I expect to be completely sci-fi oriented was actually not very “sci-fi” at all, but instead somewhat thought-provoking in the ideas it’s putting forth. It provides an interesting take on some of the forces at work today, when there are those out there that use the Bible and its teachings for their own ends.

(as a brief aside, Mila Kunis‘ character asks Eli what he has gotten out of reading the Bible every day, and he responds: “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” If I were asked the same question, I’d have the same answer. Many would say “the point” is more along the lines of John 3:16, but I’d go with the Golden Rule, personally.)

“The Book of Eli” probably won’t go down as one of 2010’s greatest movies, but I think it was a surprising gem that is well worth renting, if not checking out in theaters.