Life As Prayer: Revive Spirituality Inspired by Ancient Piety
Learn about 16th century Brother Lawrence and how his understanding of God’s presence continues to affect lives today.
It’s a fact: the plants that produce wine grapes don’t come from seeds. You can’t “sow grapes”. More on that soon.
And later, Student of Jesus blogger and disciple-maker Ray Hollenbach and I talk about the fruit of the spirit (debunking the most common myth about it), and a little bit about the Vineyard church he is a part of, and what his “Deeper” seminars and workshops are all about.
Wine segment:
Wine grape plants don’t come from seeds, so how are vineyards created?
There are two main ways commercial growers get their fields ready for a grape harvest:
The first way is to plant seedlings taken from healthy and mature grape vines. This means that a harvest of good grapes for wine is 4-5 years away. Booo.
The second way is to use an older and mature vineyard and graft in (attach) new plants into the vine.
They prune down the top of the plant. They chop it nearly down to the ground, and expose some of the top to the vine stem. Then, they graft living plants into it. The grafting process means that whole new varieties of grapes in just one year, using the original root system to obtain all the necessary nutrients. Grafted in plants can also inoculate older vines against certain diseases with disease resistant pants (usually hybrid seedlings) that make the whole system healthier.
It can cost $150, per plant, to graft in new vines and it’s done in a precise sort of way with notching the root stem, adding in plants and sealing them together so they merge.
(how to graft plants and trees)
Grafting plants has been done for thousands of years. In the bible, the church is compared, by the apostle Paul, to a wild olive plant grafted into an olive tree. The first audience hearing Paul’s words would understand this word picture: the church is an introduction of something very new. Something able to impart a whole new vitality into the current understanding of religion and closeness with God.
22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!
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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! :)
Episode 5 – The god of Wine and re-thinking the nature of creative process
Today’s episode is about the Greek god of Wine and rethinking our ideas about the process of creation, and a better understanding the notion of “creative genius”:
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wine segment
What the Greeks thought about wine is reflected in the god of wine that they worshiped. (I don’t recommend worshiping the god of wine, or any god except the benevolent Creator.)
• Dionysus was the Greek god of wine and grape harvest
• The only god to have a mortal parent. Born from Zues’ thigh. That’s because his mother burnt to a crisp when Zues showed himself to her in his glory. Whoops.
Symposium means “drinking together”.
Additional note: These originally-small gatherings were for upper class men and with carefully imposed rules about consumption. They occured for leisure and thoughtful discussion.
• I will be offering a symposium-stlyle web-event where we will all have a glass of wine at the same time and discus a topic–possibly in July. Only patrons will get to come. This is your invitation. :)
If you want in, or you are curious about the rewards for being a sponsor of the show, go to Patreon.com/sparkmymuse
• Most of the great Greek plays were initially written to be performed at the Spring feast of Dionysus. . . .when the buds of grape leaves start to open. It was a most sacred festival.
• Dionysus was a patron of the arts!
For Greeks, Dionysus was credited with creating wine and spreading the art of viticulture (the horticulture of grapes).
• He had a dual nature; on one hand, he brought joy and divine ecstasy; or he would bring madness, brutal and blinding rage–a good depiction of the dual nature of wine.
• He was brought back to life…like grape vines that undergo brutal pruning and look dead, but then burst back to life.
• Blood and red wine are often linked for the ancients.
(Blood gives the body life, wine has powerful bodily effects.)
“All the products of a man’s genius may be temporal and corruptible, but the creative fire itself is eternal, and everything temporal ought to be consumed in it. It is the tragedy of creativeness that it was eternity and the eternal, but produces the temporal, and builds up the culture which is in time and a part of history. The creative act is an escape from the power of time and ascent to the divine…”
Today we’re thinking of the creative process as re-imagined and being “divinely co-operative”.
We (commonly) think of genius as applied to us in a personal way like a characteristic. A natural capacity, but the Greeks seem to have a much healthier view of what the process of creation is truly like…
• For the Greeks …divinity is always present.
• A genius = an unseen guardian, or custodial and protecting spirit…who gives a human inspiration: For the Greek, we each have one. (It’s not us; but it will help us.)
Three reasons why depersonalizing our part in the creative process is helpful:
1. Failure is not personal
2. Success shouldn’t cause arrogance
3. Patience and giving up control (not forcing it) will reinvorgate your creativity
What do you think?
Is the creative process a “divine cooperation”?
In the next episode we will cover “the proper rites of friendship” and skinny on “wine spritzers”.
Sparky My Muse Podcast-Episode 1
(Grape Juice is Unnatural)
Welcome to the Spark My Muse podcast!
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• I will add a new show about once a week.
• Once a month I want to feature Interviews with interesting and creative people.
• A segment about “wine for newbies” will be featured each time.
And each show will include, one way or another, something on how to improve yourself and live the good life: as a person, as a creator, and as a person on planet earth!
Grapes are considered a berry.
The skins have yeast and the fruit inside contains sugar, so that fermentation is the natural outcome.
Extraordinary means have to be taken to stop the process. Usually fermented wine was diluted with water in ancient times.
Martin Luther is attributed as saying:
“Beer is made by men. Wine by God.” He was very fond of both.
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I plan to take this series and broadcast it…as a podcast!
The Spark My Muse podcast is coming in May and a “wine for newbies” segment will be on every show.
Two shows are finished so far, and a few more will be completed before it launches officially.
Stay alert for updates!
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Be a patron!
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So, about those grapes!
Grapes are actually classified as a berry. They are berry cool.
(shout out to Strawberry Shortcake, yo!)
What’s so interesting about grapes is that only taste like grapes if they are eaten fresh or squeezed into (unfermented) grape juice at just the right time, with few exceptions.
• Fermented grapes seldom taste likes grapes (among those few exceptions are Muscat, Niagara, and Concord).
• Instead, once grapes are wine they taste like a whole variety of fruits and other things.
The chemical compounds in fermented grapes are even more complex than blood serum and taste far better (unless you’re a vampire).
Wine takes on characteristics of many different sorts of fruits, depending on the variety and where they have been cultivated. Additional taste notes happen during fermenting, refining, filtering, aging, and so on, done by the vintner (wine-maker).
Here’s a very short list of the many fruit notes (subtle tastes) that fermented grapes can offer in both sweet and dry (non sweet) types of wine.
Citrus Fruits:
lemon, lime, grapefruit, orange, etc…
Pome Fruits:
Apple, pear, quince, etc….
Stone Fruits:
Peach, plum, apricot, etc….
Tropical Fruits:
Mango, pineapple, star fruit, passion fuit, papaya, etc….
