When I was in seminary, which now seems a lifetime ago, in one of my preaching classes we were assigned to take a scripture which involved violence against women and develop a sermon on it in a way which was honest, but empowering. The result was a sermon I wrote called Take Back the Night, which was what I envisioned Tamar would have said if Tamar had been invited to speak at a Take Back the Night March.
One of the things I learned while I was researching this scripture was about the name Tamar. Tamar means date palm. In biblical times, people’s names were a prophesy about their lives. Date palm might not seem like much of a prophesy, but it is. You see the date palm is said to be the oldest cultivated tree. For the people of her area, the date palm held particular symbolic significance.
Read moreIt is more then just a kitchen!
When I first was led to foodbuzz.com, I was not sure whether my writing about food would fit. I am not a restaurant reviewer, nor do I spend hours developing recipes. Yet, for me, food is so much more then that. My philosophy of food has changed dramatically over the years. When I was younger, food ranged from something that you had to eat to avoid being punished (my mother could bake, but not cook) to something which amazingly appeared before your eyes at a restaurant and you did not have to do the dishes. Food came from the small markets, the grocery store, and the backyard. My favorite foods were the raspberries that never quite made it from the raspberry patch to my mother’s kitchen and the pickles, pickled tomatoes, and sauerkraut at the pickle king.
There have been times in my life when food was what you ate because you were hungry, but for a good part of my life, food was a source of comfort.
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