Debi Simons, Author at Respect Food Roles

Goal Meeting and Goal Setting

December 23, 2017December 31, 2015 by Debi Simons

Clear bridge curving down out of sight Isn’t this a great picture? There’s a clear path forward, but you can’t tell what’s ahead if you don’t move ahead.

The Apostle Paul had it right when he said in the New Testament book of Philippians: “But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (3:13b-14 KJV). He knew that it did no good to dwell on the past; what mattered was what he was doing in his present life. And so he kept pressing on in his life of service.

Are Celebrations Biblical?

December 29, 2017December 26, 2015 by Debi Simons

Stained glass window portraying Jesus Last of three posts on the role of celebrations in our lives. I mentioned earlier, and perhaps many reading this post already know, that Jesus’ first recorded miracle occurs at a wedding celebration: “On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples” (John 2:1-2 ESV). So, just to point out the obvious, Jesus and the disciples aren’t hermits; they aren’t cut off from society. They’re invited to this occasion. Jesus doesn’t rebuke anyone for spending all that money on a feast. He contributes to it, and in a high-quality way; the governor of the feast says, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now” (v. 10). I mentioned in this previous post that my favorite part of the story is the idea that although the guests at the feast have no idea where this good wine came from, “the servants who had drawn the water knew.” If you’re quietly at work behind the scenes, making sure that everything gets done and goes smoothly, you can get a blessing that isn’t available to the oblivious partygoers. (So I made sure that the image to go with this post included one of those servants.)

The Bible as a whole seems to be very pro-celebration and pro-hospitality. There’s the great story in the book of Genesis that has three angels coming to visit Abraham to tell him that he and Sarah are going to have a son, but Abraham doesn’t necessarily know who they are. The text is a little unclear on that point.

The Economy of Celebrations

December 29, 2017December 23, 2015 by Debi Simons

Table set with silver, crystal goblets, and linen

So, here’s the second of three posts this week on why people need celebrations and how to get the most out of them. I’m writing this as I sit at our dining room table with some of my favorite in-laws, my brother- and sister-in-law and my father- and mother-in-law. (We are eating a late lunch to feed the poor starving visitors who weren’t fed on the plane. Be sure to read the hospitality blog tomorrow to get the recipe for the wonderful chicken salad I fed them.) The siblings-in-law just got into town from Seattle for a wonderful eight days which will include some special get-togethers including Christmas dinner, a big birthday dinner for Carol (since her birthday is Dec. 30th), and a pizza party for Monday Night Football. Is all this really necessary? There’s expense and effort involved. Why bother?

As I said Monday, celebrations can have legitimate purposes: building memories and relationships. Making the occasion special can help cement its importance. It seems a bit sad not to mark a wedding, for instance, with some sort of party afterwards. It’s when the purpose of the celebration veers into the desire to impress, to do what’s always done, to fulfill

Why Do People Need Celebrations?

December 29, 2017December 21, 2015 by Debi Simons

I guess you could call me a kind of volunteer unofficial events planner. (I wonder when the term “events planner” entered the world’s vocabulary.) I wrote a previous post over on the hospitality blog about the upcoming holiday events I’m in charge of; those are all over now, but–magically!–new ones have appeared on the horizon: special family meals while my sister- and brother-in-law are here, including said s-i-l’s birthday party. So I’ll have plenty to write about over there. But the thought occurs to me sometimes that maybe all this effort is unnecessary. I told Jim once, back when we lived in D.C. and

A Sobering Book that May Make You Happier

January 1, 2018December 18, 2015 by Debi Simons

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss, Random House, 2013. Available through Amazon in several formats. See the author’s website for more information.

One of the ways we can live a happier life is to live a healthier one. Bad health can be a constant drain, a chronic darkener of mood. Good health doesn’t necessarily make us happier, but it removes the drain. Does that make sense? Having good health is like having enough money: You’re freed to think about something else.

Readers of this blog will be seeing regular posts from now on about healthy eating. (It really should be “healthful eating,” but I just can’t bring myself to use that term. It sounds so pretentious.) I have cut out sweets from my diet pretty much completely, as I talked about in this post about personality types.

“If equal affection cannot be . . .

April 23, 2018December 16, 2015 by Debi Simons

kids on a teeter totter . . . Let the more loving one be me.” W. H. Auden

So there I was, sitting in the dentist’s chair just about forever this afternoon, getting my once-every-five-years extensive x-rays, and this line popped into my mind.Another line from this poem: “How should we like it were stars to burn/With a passion for us, we could not return?” In other words, do we want to be loved, or to love?

“And It Came to Pass”

January 1, 2018December 14, 2015 by Debi Simons

Woman enjoying a seasonal salad

Nice little seasonal reference here to the book of Luke in the Christian New Testament, chapter 2, from the lovely old King James Version: “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.” Mary and Joseph set out for Bethlehem because of this decree.

But my main point in this post has to do with the passage of time itself, and how, as I’ve said before, life moves along without your having to make it do so, whether you want events to be over or you want time to stand still. (Someone asked an old preacher once what his favorite verse in the Bible was, and he said, “And it came to pass.” Huh? He explained, “It never says, ‘And it came to stay.’”)

If You’re Going to Stress Out . . .

January 1, 2018December 11, 2015 by Debi Simons

Checklist on bulletin board with Now and Later marked . . . do it ahead of time.

Oh the joys of doing things beforehand! This is concert week for the Cherry Creek Chorale (and it’s not too late to check and see if there are still tickets available). This is my fourth year as a member, and I’ve been in charge of our traditional Friday-night receptions since my second concert back in December 2012. It was one of those things—I felt compelled to step up and volunteer as the coordinator. Some people are food people, and some aren’t, and the person in charge at the time was not.

The Knee as Metaphor

January 1, 2018December 9, 2015 by Debi Simons

Doctor examining a knee Sometimes life imitates art to a great extent. So I had been dipping into a book titled Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling wth D. H. Lawrence by Geoff Dyer, which not so much about D. H. Lawrence as it is about depression, despair and procrastination. And it’s absolutely screamingly funny in places. (In other places just kind of weird, or vulgar, or boring, so I’m not recommending it as a book of the week.) Doesn’t sound possible, does it? But comics are usually very unhappy people. Dyer’s description of the time he was flown all the way to Denmark to give a talk about Lawrence, and he came down with the flu, and he hadn’t prepared his speech at all, and his nose started bleeding in the middle of the lecture, had me snorting with laughter. But the passage that struck me most was this:

I have waited three years to get my knees repaired . . . and I am not doing the exercises, the simple, strength-building exercises which are necessary to prevent my knee causing me untold and probably intolerable pain in the future . . . In a fraction of the time spent sitting here thinking about my knee and how much it hurts I could get on with the exercises which would eliminate the pain in my knee, . . . but instead of doing the exercises I sit here thinking about how I should be doing them . . . My knee is not the problem, that’s for sure: it’s a symptom of this larger disease, this inability to carry on with anything, this rheumatism of the will, this chronic inability to see anything through.
(p. 196, 1997 hardback edition).

Now, depending on what type of person you are, you may read the above and say to yourself, ‘Hey, Buddy, get a grip!’ But I have to say that I completely understand what he’s saying. To sit and look at something that needs to be done and to feel totally paralyzed–that’s the way I can be, like, totally. But I would also say that with the greater self-knowledge that has come over the past several years as I’ve dove (dived?) into this whole subject of happiness, I now know that I can overcome that paralysis. It’s a surprisingly small step to just go ahead and get started. Just go ahead and lie on the floor, for instance, if that’s the position for the exercises. You’re not going to lie there and then just get back up again without doing anything, are you? Probably not.

In the knee-themed spirit of this post, I will mention that my husband Jim had knee surgery yesterday. It was interesting–he’d been told by one guy that he didn’t really need the surgery all that much, and maybe it wasn’t worth the recovery time. I thought myself that maybe he shouldn’t bother with it. But he forged ahead, got a second opinion, and, it turned out, made the right decision. The second-opinion surgeon (SOS) said that the ACL, which was what needed repair, was “incompetent.” (Kind of sounds like an insult, doesn’t it?) The knee was loose. It really needed to be fixed. So now Jim’s hobbling around on crutches, and the Christmas lights are only half up, and this wasn’t a great week for him to have this done, but hey! He went ahead and did it. He still has physical therapy ahead of him, and followup doctor’s visits, and pain meds. But he took the initiative and did the right thing. Maybe he and good ol’ Geoff Dyer could have coffee sometime.

Football as Metaphor, Part II

January 1, 2018December 4, 2015 by Debi Simons

Football player leaping forward and catching the ball More wisdom from the gridiron! And this from someone who has a great deal of trouble keeping straight the difference between a “safety” and a “touchback.” (Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know!)

I promise there won’t be any more football posts until the Super Bowl. With that, here goes:1. You have to shake off your failures and keep going, or you’ll just repeat them. You just threw an interception? Well, there’s another play coming up. Don’t botch that one. I’ve read or heard somewhere of a general in World War II who was known for this very quality; he kept moving forward, never referred to mistakes in the past, and led his men to success. I think he fought in North Africa, and I’d love to know who he was and read more about him. I have a terrible tendency to dwell on the “might have beens.” What a total waste of time. Learn from your mistakes and move on.