Here’s a picture of me “at the office” as I write this post. I love creating episodes and posts for you, and it’s especially nice to do it outdoors…but I’m going to need a hoodie…more on that later.
This short Sunday episode contains news and info.
I’m debuting my new microphone for you to hear. Tell me if you can hear the difference!
A few Episodes are already in the queue, but after those air, you will hear a much richer and higher quality sound demonstrated in this short episode! Many thanks for your kind response to my need for financial support. I still need to buy more monthly space at the audio hosting site, but it is a landmark accomplishment to upgrade my mic and I had to share my joy, gratitude, (and the new and improved sound) with you!
It’s getting chilly. Time for a cozy hoodie (ends SEPT 7th! These are on sale to finance the show and ordering ends soon: SEPTEMBER 14th.
BANANA CART?
(Your ears are not fooling you. In Columbus, Ohio at 9:30 pm a man rides a bike around and rings a bell as he sells frozen chocolate covered bananas. Too funny. And it sounds delicious, if not suspicious. That’s why I’m featuring chocolate in the wine segment today! Enjoy it. It’s bananas, after all.)
Want to try the practice of EXAMEN?
In this episode Ed and I chat about one of his favorite spiritual practices. It’s been very transforming for me too. It’s the practice of Examen (typically pronounced: EGGS-Aye-men).
This age old practice of reflection, mindfulness, and prayer to begin and end one’s day goes back ages in Christian History and is reflected in spirit throughout the bible. Like in David’s sentiments in the Psalms (like Psalm 119) and in Isaiah 26:9.
“My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you…”
So today I offer you my personal version of the Examen practice!
I call it “The Daily Sharpening Ritual”
–It’s the perfect way to supercharge and renew personal and spiritual awareness in your life.
It’s a simple but effective worksheet makes the practice easier to sustain. I hope you give it a try. The practice takes just 3-5 minutes each morning and just before bed. • You can see surprising changes in awareness in only 5 days.
(Simply print out 5 copies and follow-through for 5 days!)
Both EXAMEN-like worksheets below work like an Examen practice, but the 2nd one features prayer more fully in addition to reflection and mindfulness.
Check them out to see which one you like best. Print out both if you’d like:
(Enjoy these resources with my compliments…tipping what you can is optional.)
How we find spark:
We are in this together. As you listen and become part of what is happening here, it will be obvious that I spend a lot of time and a bit of money doing the show: website, paying for media hosting, producing it, editing, adding music, finding and speaking with guests, more editing, more research, and all the rest to bring you something of value in the Spark My Muse podcast.
Lots of heart, sweat and occasionally tears for your enjoyment and inspiration. You get to decide what that means and what it’s worth.
So, I invite you to just listen, read, and contribute what the episode is worth to you.
• If nothing, I apologize. Please, come back and listen again soon.
• If you think it’s worth one dollar, five dollars, twenty-five dollars, six hundred billion-gazillion dollars…you see where I’m going with this…, or offer something of equal value that is not monetary, simply contribute what it has been worth to you. HERE.
(or contact me here if it’s not monetary. Be creative!)
Thank you!
With Love,
~Lisa
WINE SEGMENT
MINUTE 2:30
Best tips for the tastiest pairing Party of chocolate and wine!
A how-to.
A chocolate and wine tasting party is so much fun.
• It’s ideal for groups of 3-12 people.
• Have each person bring some wine and provide samples of high quality chocolate and let the fun start!
It’s the acid:
One of the tasty things you can do is pair chocolate and wine. Both chocolate and wine have higher levels of acidity which makes them a naturally delicious match.
Well-paired wine and chocolate work together to make each one taste better. Delicious qualities come out in both the wine and the chocolate and even form a third taste. A careful selection is needed.
Here are some ideas of which wine to pair with which kinds of chocolate treats.
TIP 1
The most important tip to remember is to keep the wine sweeter than the treat it’s pair with.
(If you don’t it can make the wine seem less tasty and flavorful or heighten its bitterness. yucky.)
TIP 2
Make sure you have high-quality chocolate.
Many supermarketers have a premium chocolate section and you probably only need one bar of each kind or just a good quality box assortment. Baked good work as well and you can search online too.
TIP 3
Taste test the chocolate ahead of time: Pick out certain fruit flavors, determine the sweet and bitter components they have, check for nuttiness qualities and levels of acidity. If the chocolate has a creme center this will take on added complexity that might pair well with fruit-forward wines.
TIP 4
A rule of thumb is that darker wines tend to pair better which darker chocolate and should be served first: More full-bodied, (heavier feeling in the mouth) dark and drier (not a sweet style) red wine pair well with the more bitter chocolates that have a higher cocoa %.
White wines tend to pair well with milk chocolate blends and chocolates that have sweeter and fruitier flavor notes.
TIP 5 Remember TIP #1 one …keep the wine SWEETER than the chocolate!
MAKING A MATCH
Pick your wines according to the flavors you’ve tasted in the chocolate, and ask your guests to bring a specific variety of wine.
Here are some specific ideas for the kinds of wine you may want to serve, but you can feel free to experiment and see if your palate prefers something different.
Bittersweet chocolate (70% to 100%): This chocolate type enters the bitter range with deep intensity. Good choices include Bordeaux wines (merlot, cab franc, cab save), Beaujolais, Shiraz, Port, Malbec.
Dark chocolate (50% to 70%): Pair this with more robust wines, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel, Pinot Noir, off-dry chamborcin and Port. A Chianti can match well with chocolate around 65 percent cocoa content.
Milk chocolate: Try Merlot, Pinot Noir, Riesling, Muscat, and dessert wines. Champagne is also a natural match for milk chocolate. The crisp, dry flavour of the bubbly contrasts perfectly with the creaminess of a simple milk chocolate tablet. Be careful of the higher sugar levels in milk chocolate, as these may cancel out any fruitiness in dry red wines, leaving them tasting bitter.
White chocolate (which is really cocoa butter) : Match with Sherry, Muscato (a.k.a. Muscat) a fruity Chardonnay (un-oaked), These wines will pick up on the buttery, slightly oilier tones of the cocoa butter. Vidal Blanc, Niagra blends, catawba blends.
Champagne or sparkling wine goes well with all chocolate types. It is a variety that compliments many kinds of wines. Many fortified dessert wines work well across the chocolate spectrum as well because they tend to be sweeter.
PARTY TIP To keep every one sharp and feeling well, Offer your guests some bread or light fare before you begin and keep the wine samples to just an ounce.
HOW TO TASTE THE PAIR 1. Take take a small sip of wine and note the aromas and tastes. Some hosts offer guest a sheet to jot down their observations.
2. Then bite into the chocolate and note what it happening as you taste and eat it.
3. Then you sip the wine again and note the new flavor notes and changes that the chocolate brought to the wine. It’s amazing how much the taste of the wine will change according to what it is paired with.
4. Don’t rush through the pairing. 7-10 minutes per pairing is about right. Allow people to really luxuriate on the experience and talk about the flavors and taste combinations they are experiencing.
AMBIENCE TIP This is not a consumption event, it’s a sensory group experience where enhanced awareness is key. Relax and take your time. Chocolate and wine are luxury items.
THE TAKEAWAY It’s a great lesson for life too. The point isn’t to bulldoze through life and get it out of the way, but to really notice what is happening and take it all in deeply. Downshift to a better appreciation of encounters with others, with our surroundings, and ultimately with ourselves and to God who makes a home within us.
• Enjoy yourself and let me know of the pairings you came up with (in the comments section) and how your pairing experimenting went, or what your plans are. I’d love to know. You can post pictures at the Spark My Muse Facebook page too.
Do you have questions? Leave them here, use the voice mail feature, or use the contact page and I’ll try to answer them in future episodes.
Never a moment wasted because of technology…but at what cost?
21:00
(Ed) on not having times for his brain to slip into neutral..
21:30
Ed says walks helped clear his mind, and he had to detox and ween from media.
22:30
We have a loss of self and fear of quietness.
22:45
40 Day Ignatian retreat bringing a terrifying and alone sense after 2-weeks until she found God in the quiet.
24:00
Ed’s method for unplugging and creating space:
Relent technique-going offline after 5pm and weekends.
25:30
Leaving my phone in my car when I go for walk to eating out. (Lisa)
• I’ve experienced less anxiety (to my surprise).
27:00
(Ed’s sarcasm) College students in the 1990s would die all the time, every week, because they didn’t have cell phones. Funerals every week for the mobile phone-less.
27:30
In the 1980s my dad got collect calls from “pick me up”. (Lisa)
29:10
UK study showing that teens are more anxious because of tech and over-connectedness.
29:40
Maybe because the media (they are using) is socially consequential and not neutral: like watching tv or listening to radio. (Lisa)
Trying to encourage others to be redemptive and holding back if he can’t do it in a redemptive way. Waiting is important.
43:30
How we change. Example: Women in Ministry and how Ed’s mind changed.
44:20
“God is all about the long game.”
(It’s not helpful to create animosity)
44:50
(Lisa) “The power of heightening Empathy (to solve problems). Sharing stories helps.
The job of a person who is called to communicate for something bigger than themselves is to ask…
‘Am I able to show people something that they haven’t seen, but then once they see they know it’s true. And they can’t unseen it’.”
“And to feel it too…what that (other) person is feeling.” -Ed
(If you’d like to have Ed back to discuss how writing can be “soul-killing” and what to do about it, please let us know and leave a comment! Was the show too long? Too short? Ed and I decided we are curious about this, so let us know.)
:)
Friends, readers, listeners…I need a little help with this anonymous survey.
It’s takes under one minute. It’s 100% anonymous. The survival of Spark My Muse just may depend on it.
Thanks for your kindness and coming back each Wednesday for a new show. (You can subscribe here and get an alert sent to you. No fuss: no worries…and you can unsubscribe any time).
BREAKING NEWS:
Shane Claiborne is joining Spark My Muse as a guest this summer! WHOOP whoop !!!
Hey! Thanks for coming to the website. I’m thrilled at how well the show has been doing. Thanks for listening to Spark My Muse. I had to share this cool photo (below) with you. Yep, it’s from iTunes! I’m officially “popular” and YOU made that happen. Thank you!
One thing that is still pretty shabby is the iTunes reviews for the show. Can you help?
Just a few words of “I love the show” or “whoot whoot” (or what-have-you) would really help!
Click HERE to write a review.
It’s time to see who the audience is, officially. This quick survey takes about 30 seconds. Thank you for helping. I have some great things coming up in the show that you will enjoy.
Show notes –
Spark My Muse podcast: Episode 6 – The Skinny on Wine Spritzers and Friendship as Creative Fuel
Photo by Brett Bastello – Personal Creations (click for link)
Today’s episode covers the skinny on wine spritzers and also how friendship fuels our creative muse.
This episode is brought to you by the book Dog in the Gap 10 essays inspired by the life lessons learned while befriending with the family canine. Heart warming, full of wonderful photography and good humor. Click the links to learn more to get a copy.
The Bonus Edition is just a $1 more and it contains lots of extras and goodies.
——
What is a wine spritzer exactly and why now is a good time to make one?
First, what’s up with the word “spritzer”?
The word “spritzer” comes from the German spritzen “spatter, squirt, spray, sprinkle”.
(additional note: just saying it involves some spritzing, right?)
The wine sprizter is just a simple drink combination of chilled wine and something that sparkles, such as sparkling mineral water, club soda, or seltzer water.
It’s consumed more for refreshment than anything else!
(It’s easy on the liver.)
• Drinking wine in warm weather or in the hot sun is always a bad idea. The spritzer is a good choice for summer because of its lower alcohol content, less calories, and being less inexpensive than straight wine consumption. Serving them is a great a way for you or your guests to not drink too much before the hambergers are ready at your cookout.
Too much wine (or any alcohol) during the summer will dehydrate you and you can quickly feel tired or ill.
Spritzers are mixed in various ratios and sometimes fruit juice is added. The two most common are 50/50 or, 1/2 cup club soda to 1 cup of wine.
• The Spanish use red wine, fruit, and lemon soda. That sounds delicious!
I think wine or juice Spritzers are the go-to outdoor party beverage that provides a less expensive refreshing treat for outdoor entertaining and outdoor fun, sunny get-togethers, and bonding with friends. (They can be made without alcohol for teetotalers or children too–just skip the wine and add more fruit juice.)
• For parties, you can fill a punch bowl with the right ratios.
Some of my favorite wine spritzer recipes!
The Super Simple Spritzer
Just two ingredients:
6 ounces of a reasonably priced of white wine – or a blush wine–
plus 6 ounces of 7-Up (or try sprite or ginger ale).
Sublime Citrus Spritzer
2 lemon slices, 2 lime slices, 5 ice cubes.
4 ounces of your your favorite white wine and 2 ounces of lemon-lime seltzer.
Peach Dream Party Bowl Spritzer
6 quartered peaches and 2 tablespoons of honey.
Mix into a blender and puree. Place in a pitcher and chill for about two hours, then mix in a bottle of white wine, and stir well.
Finally, add a liter of cold sparkling water or seltzer.
Garnish with mint and extra slices of peach.
Citrus Ice Cube Party Pitcher Spritzer
2 lemons, zested
2 small oranges, zested (or 1 large orange, zested)
1 bottle white or blush wine
3 cups sparkling water
Directions:
Place the zest as a mixture into an empty ice cube tray, add water and freeze for 3 to 5 hours.
In a large pitcher, combine the wine and the sparkling water and then the citrus zest ice cubes.
Stir and serve.
White Wine and Fruity Sweet Party Spritzer
1 bottle of sweet white wine
3/4 cup white grape juice or apple juice
1 liter bottle desired-flavor low-calorie sparkling water, chilled.
(optional and delicious Assorted fresh fruits (such as raspberries, blackberries, pineapple, sliced kiwifruit, blueberries, lemon slices, lime slices, halved strawberries, or red grapes)
Directions
1 In a large punch bowl combine wine and grape juice.
Just before serving, slowly pour in sparkling water.
If desired, garnish individual servings with fruit. Makes 10 (6-ounce) servings
——
Friendship is a mirror to presence and a testament to forgiveness. Friendship not only helps us see ourselves through another’s eyes, but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses as we must find it in ourselves to forgive them in turn. A friend knows our difficulties and shadows and remains in sight, a companion to our vulnerabilities more than our triumphs, when we are under the strange illusion we do not need them. An undercurrent of real friendship is a blessing exactly because its elemental form is rediscovered again and again through understanding and mercy. All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness. Without tolerance and mercy all friendships die.
Friendship, unlike cooperation, is unnecessary to human survival.
Friendship, like philosophy and art is one of the things that gives value to survival.
how friendship differs from the other three types of love by focusing on its central question: “Do you see the same truth.”
Anne Lamott
In the course of the years a close friendship will always reveal the shadow in the other as much as ourselves, to remain friends we must know the other and their difficulties and even their sins and encourage the best in them, not through critique but through addressing the better part of them, the leading creative edge of their incarnation, thus subtly discouraging what makes them smaller, less generous, less of themselves.
My essay:
Pertaining to sparking one’s muse. Good friends, that offer selflessly the balance of honesty and gentleness, toughness and acceptance, encouragement and motivation breath life into our lives and our art. Being social creatures, as humans, we crave social bonds even though they inevitably cause us pain at times. Isolated, for too long, we shrink into ourselves with self-delusion, self-absorption, unwarranted loathing and aggrandizement.
Aloneness is a dread for many or a craving for those misfit. And even those misfit hope, sometimes, to find someone else in the dark that might recognize him and name him and finally tell him he is well enough and valuable. Only in the mirror of friendship can we have solid footing and might be drawn out into our best selves. Erotic love has too much fire and entanglement for that. Agape love too much work and abdication. Brotherly love too much responsibility and duty. Only a soul friend can birth you into your actualization most purely.
Friends and confidants help us be continually born into the next stage of development. We risk with them and they with us and the synergy makes us stronger. At its best it is a fountain of grace sourced in Originator of Love and Goodness.
Do you have a question or do you have an idea for the show? Please let me know! :)
Chances are if you are reading this, and if you tend to read a good deal, you are firstly a person of words. Nothing wrong with that. But, your blind spot might be hurting you unawares….more on that soon.
Me? well….
I’m a weird mix.
I’m am– rather evenly–a person of words AND and person of pictures.
However, I am rarely, if ever, both at the same time. I have to switch gears. My dream life even changes when that happens and I go through phases that seemed to be tied to the weather… Sort of strange, I know.
Here, at the website, as you might figure, I’m mainly a person of words….if I wasn’t I would have abandon blogging ages ago. I’ve posted about 2,000 times here and in previous blog efforts.
This “being a person of words” came not so much natively as much as a way to create things.
(I’m an ENTP and I love conceptualizing, innovating, and making things come to life. That’s my sweet spot.)
Sidetone: There are all sort of free Myers’-Briggs personality/temperament sorts of tests online, but they always seem to be short and less than definitive. (They’re “meh”)
I recommend this book for its apt testing process. A 70 question test is inside (and it’s much less expensive than the official Myers-Briggs test with about 100 questions). Plus, there are loads of helpful descriptions to flesh your results out and understand it all better. Learning you spouse’s, friends’, co-workers’ or family’s temperament style is invaluable too.
Before I was a person of words (online, in print, for graduate school, in business, at work)….first, I was a visual artist–a person who thinks and understands more powerfully when images are readily available and utilized. I still am.
Words have only really been powerful when they conjure mental images for me. Maybe it’s the same for you.
How to increase your imagination–because IMAGINATION is power:
(Imagination = literally, bringing up images)
If you are a “word person”, I encourage you check for a blind spot on the visual side. That is, if thinking in visual terms isn’t native to you (and you will already know if it is), then consult with someone who thinks from a visual paradigm. Then, with them– look for ways to richly add that aspect to your message.
If you are a Picture person? Reading more will help.
Some ideas for enhancing the picture side are…
(click examples to see the visual)
• using / creating Infographics: (a graphic way to convey written content).
As I’ve studied transformation and purpose I’ve noticed there seems to be something slippery about it. Sometimes we can feel derailed or question our purpose. It’s rather ordinary, in fact.
The famous people in the Bible went though times of doubt and I’m glad those ancient accounts are included because it helps to know that the human condition is rife with slumps, bumps, murky waters, aimless wilderness periods, and questions about what we should be doing on this “Big Blue Marble”.
We tend to see these periods of purposelessness or doubt as problems instead of as part of the journey.
The WISP technique is something I came up with to keep me on track.
I find that keeping a notebook of the process makes it much simpler.
Did you do your homework?
Make sure you do it before you encounter the next step, okay?
STEP 2
“I”
Inquiry
General inquiry is not what the “I” in WISP is about.
This step of the process helps to loosen our firm grip on seeing and directing our lives as usual.
This type of inquiry:
is one of faith
leaves some open-end questions up in the air, for now
digs down deeper into underlying blocks and fears
taps into a greater understanding of human purpose and how to get there
For this step, you get your handy-dandy notebook out and start by making a list of all the questions you have on your mind right now. What’s bothering you?
Write. It. Down.
There may be many questions. Just get started. Write as much as you can for about 10 minutes.
As you write them out you will find that categories or patterns emerge. If you don’t, let the questions sit and add more in a day or so. Then, look again. If you still don’t see patterns, ask for help from someone you trust.
Examples of possible inquiry/question patterns:
What can I do that I love that will provide enough money right now?
What have I enjoyed doing the most and what happened during those times?
What will it take to get prepared for the next leg and how will I pay for it?
What caused my last failure and how could I have prepared better?
What is bothering me about Mr [So & so]’s success?
Do you see the pattern that started to emerge here?
It’s Money.
Fear of failure andjealousy are cropping up too. All good to see.
When we put down our burning questions our fears will be revealed.
Our fears cloud the way to finding our purpose, but…
“The remarkable thing is that our fears themselves are not the obstacles but the vehicles that lead to finding and fulfilling our purpose.” -LD
Example:
Josie finds it hard to find her purpose. She’s been unhappy at her job and wants to make a bigger difference in the world.
Through inquiry she locates the root of her fears, and realizes that her compassion for the intellectually disabled is because of her own story.
She always felt stupid in school. A learning disability made it hard for her to read in first grade. Eventually, she did well in school, but the fear of not being smart enough still distracts her and clouds the pursuits of her greater purpose.
Josie’s purpose lies in working closely with this population.
Upon realizing this, Josie sets out with new verve to get experience and the additional skills needed to find other more meaningful work and accomplish her greater purpose. She creates goals to get there.
Goals are measurable. Wishes are not.
During a period of inquiry we may inquire of God and others we trust, too, but we have to do our hard work ourselves, and not cop out.
If we ask questions of them, we have to be prepared to both listen without judgment and superimposing our wishes and agenda (for the time being), but also we need remove the weeds from all that we are hearing get to the best and most useful parts for the next step. No ACTION is required, just honest inquiry, awareness, and digging around.
In this stage, answering all the questions isn’t as important as having the guts to ask them honestly.
The next step is “S”.
(scroll down)
Sometimes just doing the first two steps will create a breakthrough. You may have found your purpose already. If that happened, I encourage you to see the whole method through regardless. If you find yourself closer to understanding your purpose right now, that’s great, but you’ll be surprised by the next two Steps, and you shouldn’t miss out on them.
HOMEWORK:
Make your inquiry list.
You don’t have to answers the questions yet, just put them out there.
Let them percolate for a few days and then return to them.
Do you think in Words or Pictures?