Rainbow Bread and its many forms...

My church holds an annual World Communion Day on the first Sunday of October. There is usually wheat bread (America's impoverished), tortillas (Mexico), baguette (France), naan (Indian), arepas (Colombia), Malaysian rice cakes, cookies (the world's children), corn bread (African-American), and lavash (Persian).  Even though my church is rather small, we have an ethnically diverse community, and each bread is presented by a church member that represents that community. Since I joined the church in 2007, I have been asked to prepare the rainbow bread to represent the LGBT individuals that are afraid to come out for fear of losing their family, jobs, and/or church. I think I may be asked yearly because the planner of the event knows where I stand on LGBT issues, but I can't help but wonder if anyone else would stand up...

Anyway, each year I have tried something different. The first year I painted dough balls with food coloring and got ridiculous results. The following year, my daughters and I tried painting the bread after it was cooked, which made it look even worse. Last year I made a cake in loaf pans, which looked really neat, but no one ate it (was it the food coloring or what it represented??).

This is what I did this year:

I started with white cake mix (after I removed the double box tops for the Big One's school).

Next, I divided the batter into six bowls and set the dye in order. The Big One loved mixing the colors!

Gel colors work best. You can get them at any Michael's or Joann's (with a 40% coupon it's only $5.00 for a set)

And put it in the oven...

Actually, it was while I snapped this awesome pic that I realized I missed a CRUCIAL step. Can you guess what I forgot?

Yep, who has two thumbs and forgot to flour the pan? This girl. Which led to...

wait for it...

wait for it...

THIS. I had to dig it out of the pan in chunks. I wondered if I could make it a political statement... but decided to just let it be.

So I got the chunks to church and the kids went crazy for it. My Short One went up with me to present it as rainbow bread, and it was like I was torturing the little girl. The old saying "like taking candy from a baby" is quite a fallacy.

Two year olds love sweets and it's nearly impossible to pry it from their chubby little hands.

Lately I've been at an impasse.  Even though I have only written one submission, I have found I don't have much to say that relates to being a wedding officiant.  I have joined several social media websites (Facebook, Twitter, and several wedding-related sites) but have not found many people like myself.  In fact, when I searched for "Wedding Officiant" or "Minister/Pastor" on any of those sites, my profile is the only one that came up on several of them.  I guess that can be a good thing - untapped resource and all, but I really didn't know what to do with it and I still didn't know what to say...

That was until today.

I came across a blog from the Huffington Post by John Shore titled "What Would Jesus Do If Invited to a Gay Wedding? " Intriguing title, no?  I mean, after all that has happened in the past year here in California with Proposition 8 and the rest of the country going back and forth on the same-sex marriage issue, this blog is sure to strike a chord (disharmonious for some) in us all.

Now, I'm not going to take this opportunity to expound Biblical references to make that point; Mr. Shore did just fine by me. Mr. Shore was debating whether or not as a Christian, if he should attend a few gay weddings he had recently been invited to.  His inward debate resulted in 244 comments at last count.  I wonder if he had anticipated such reaction...

There is also a debate of what kind of man Jesus was.  I think Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code created quite a controversy with the possibility that Jesus had been married and...OMG had children.  My husband and I have even had discussions about who Jesus was and is in relation to today's social norms and expectations.  I've come to the conclusion that Depeche Mode was right - we each have our "Own Personal Jesus."

Anyway, I can't help but think of the possibilty that my Jesus indeed attended a homosexual union.  Since there is evidence of such marital relationships in Roman times, why not Biblical times?  And just because it isn't written in the Bible doesn't mean it didn't happen.  Shore's blog says basically the same.  Jesus surrounded himself with theives, tax collectors, and even a protitute, but it was the Pharisees who used God's law to judge and punish other that really ticked him off. To quote Mr. Shore:

"Around Jesus you can whine, lie, shift your loyalties, be late, be greedy, be too ambitious, be stupid, be a coward, be a hypochondriac, constantly complain, fall asleep at every wrong moment -- you can do nothing right, and it won't in the slightest way seem to offend him. But you put dogma ahead of empathy? You transmogrify God's law into a justification for denying God's grace?

Then ... yikes, man. Then you've got yourself a problem no one wants."

He decided to attend the weddings, by the way, because he realized it is the right thing to do, as he would expect people he invite to attend his special events.  But I think it's more than that.  Because our culture de-values marriage and there are so many couples that refuse to marry out of fear of divorce (which has increased 200% in the past 20 years), I think it even more important to support and bless ANY adult couple that has decided to take the lifelong vows of commitment to one another.  Marriages fail most of the time due to lack of support.  After being married to my husband for eight years, I still seek support from my family and close friends, which I don't see ever ending, as my mom also seeks support from her family and friends for her marriage.

So in answer to Mr. Shore's title question, I think yes, Jesus would have attended the wedding, danced the night away, and would have probably brought the wine!