Everything is Deliberate

 If you've ever been on the receiving end of a phoned in meal, assignment, gift or chore you understand the flatness inattentiveness to detail.  You recognzie and can feel the absence of salt in the giving.  We want everyone to think and put energy into what they do. It's why we love a beautiful light dispaly, well decorated cookies and a handwrapped gift.  It's why we love the unexpected pleasure of thoughtfullness that flavors most of our experience of this season even more than peppermint, chocolate or pumpkin spice.   

The reality of living a faith life well, is that flavoring, that deliberate infusion of love into everything.  It includes added enthusiasm, detail, generosity, humility, and a dollop of good cheer.  Living life in good faith means giving to others and presuming of others the same.   The conversion of Scrooge feels real, because he goes from doing the minimum to exist, to the penultimate to thrive.   Joy seasons his life, and the difference is tangible in all he does. 

Decorating the tree, the cookies, lighting the candles, wrapping the presents, sending cards, all of these things reveal love, attention to beauty, to joy, to warmth, to light, to caring, to thinking of others rather than ourselves.   Today is Gaudete Sunday, meaning rejoice.   Rejoicing is also deliberate. This Sunday is a call to each of us to dust off the spiritual sloth that winter can cause, to be deliberate and joyful in all we do.   

My dad and mom made bourbon balls on this Sunday, to give to the court clerks.  It was a joyful memory, it is a joyful tradition.  For me, it is the taste of Gaudete Sunday.  They were deliberate in making these for others, and it brought much joy and still does.  It is not an ordinary thing, and that is part of what makes it special.  It is deliberate.    

I hope it will be a tradition for my children one day too.  The bourbon balls aren't for court clerks, but they are a fun way to breathe on the embers of enthusiasm that might otherwise be waning in these last twelve days of Advent.   

Here's the recipe:  Bourbon Balls  

1 12 onz box vanilla wafers

1 cup powdered sugar

2 Tablespoons Cocoa

1 cup chopped walnuts

3 Tablespoons of Kayro syrup (white or light)

1/2 cup bourbon

Extra Powdered Sugar

Crush wafers into fine powder, add sugar and cocoa and mix, add walnets and mix, add three tablespoons of syrup and burbon to dough.  Mix.  Form into 1 inch balls by hand and place on a cookie sheet.  Sprinkle in powdered sugar.  Store in airtight container.   Add more bourbon if the mixture seems dry. 

 --taken from my mom's recipe in Cooking with Saint Anne, Saint Anne's Catholic Church in Beaumont.   

I would tell you, buy more than one box of cookies...because there are always snackers.  Twelve days to go....