Yesterday was Mom's birthday. She would have been 63. It lands 7 days after the anniversary of her death. I felt peaceful this year around the 11-year mark, wondered how her birthday would feel...all that's predictable is unpredictability. I woke up at 5:30 and sat down with a cup of coffee and my laptop. Turned on Christmas music and started writing an email to a friend and had breakfast and Jonathan left for St Spiridon's and then it hit me like a mack truck and drained me out like a newly slaughtered animal.
I missed her so much I could scream. Hard, wracking sobs that make me just gag. Tears that burned away my skin like sandpaper, scraping away delicate layers around my eyes, leaving the raw exposed. Lonely & unsure & lost. Trying so hard to access her ontology, to know really that once upon a time there was actually this woman in the pictures, and she did know me and she did love me. So angry at God that death exists and that any of this can possibly be ok. How does right even begin to prevail in this?? Trying so hard to get to an actual, felt remembrance of her having been alive, of her having been my mom, for her life to seem real. And even when approaching that place, feeling sickeningly dizzy in my head, disoriented in my body...like all that's real is this loss and it's everywhere in me...and what's real of her just feels illusory in the worst, trickiest way. This year it was way worse than the one right after she died. For that one I was numb. This is much harder.
And better.
Scott Peck says that if it's not paradoxical it may not be true. My entire life feels paradoxical sometimes. It's what helps me know I'm real.
So was she. The battle and the heart's reach help me know it.
When he came home Jonathan folded me in a hug. "Let's make coffee and you can tell me about her," he said. It wasn't what got said that mattered. We had Common Ground last night. The auditorium was cold but most of the quivering came from inside me. He put his arm around me and I felt stillness. Presence matters.
I've been coming back to this for the past month or so as we prepared for last night's program. It speaks to all kind of things in life. It's prayer. The band did it live last night and yes, the tears that fell still stung my skin a little even hours later in the day. Thank God. I had skin. And could feel. And could welcome the tears.
She's still gone. And I'm still ok.
©2011 Mindy Danylak
Monday, November 21, 2011
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Grounding
I'm crying again. Eleven years ago I was crying at this time, late morning, on this day, November 10th, as I flew to Walla Walla for Mom to die.
The anniversary of Mom's death doesn't hit me the same way every year...some years it's full of struggle, other years it's poignant laughter. A different kind of struggle for life. You know...the way life is. I'm glad it's that way. But today I'm on the phone again.
Every year I work on a project at Thanksgiving and again at Christmas that involves phone calls to around 100 of the patients/families I work with. And every year those calls inlcude women exclaiming how they'd forgotten it's nearly Thanksgiving. They are so consumed with their spouse/parent/child/friend/ex's process through transplant, serving as the 24/7 caregiver these patients require, that loving toward life takes over the mundane things, like holidays.
The week after Mom's funeral was Thanksgiving -- we spent it with our neighbors, Truman and Nina, celebrating Thanksgiving a couple days after marking what would have been Mom's 52nd birthday on Nov 20. God she was young.
As I go into this weekend, I remember...that flight back to Walla Walla, the yellow begonias at the front door that held on through the frost until Monday morning when she finally died, the smell of the bedroom, the cap on her hairless head...the laughter of Mom's voice as she talked on the phone, the reliability of her green car on the corner when school got out, the notes and lists as she planned holiday meals, her diet Coke on the desk in the kitchen, the beautiful papers at Christmas, the fuzzy black coat that now hangs in my closet, the box i keep of letters and cards she sent over the years, her brilliant blue eyes & glorious red hair.....
And so I'm crying again, talking to these patients because I know why remembering Thanksgiving is unthinkable, is not even on the radar, and how much the call from someone who does remember brings me back to earth.
And I welcome the ground.
©2011 Mindy Danylak
The anniversary of Mom's death doesn't hit me the same way every year...some years it's full of struggle, other years it's poignant laughter. A different kind of struggle for life. You know...the way life is. I'm glad it's that way. But today I'm on the phone again.
Every year I work on a project at Thanksgiving and again at Christmas that involves phone calls to around 100 of the patients/families I work with. And every year those calls inlcude women exclaiming how they'd forgotten it's nearly Thanksgiving. They are so consumed with their spouse/parent/child/friend/ex's process through transplant, serving as the 24/7 caregiver these patients require, that loving toward life takes over the mundane things, like holidays.
The week after Mom's funeral was Thanksgiving -- we spent it with our neighbors, Truman and Nina, celebrating Thanksgiving a couple days after marking what would have been Mom's 52nd birthday on Nov 20. God she was young.
As I go into this weekend, I remember...that flight back to Walla Walla, the yellow begonias at the front door that held on through the frost until Monday morning when she finally died, the smell of the bedroom, the cap on her hairless head...the laughter of Mom's voice as she talked on the phone, the reliability of her green car on the corner when school got out, the notes and lists as she planned holiday meals, her diet Coke on the desk in the kitchen, the beautiful papers at Christmas, the fuzzy black coat that now hangs in my closet, the box i keep of letters and cards she sent over the years, her brilliant blue eyes & glorious red hair.....
And so I'm crying again, talking to these patients because I know why remembering Thanksgiving is unthinkable, is not even on the radar, and how much the call from someone who does remember brings me back to earth.
And I welcome the ground.
©2011 Mindy Danylak
Monday, November 7, 2011
How did you meet? And then what happened?
Eight of us gathered 'round the candles, voices swinging across the planks, stories spilling laughter and tears, resonance and incredulity, criss-crossing here and there as life is wont to do when four couples start passing pasta.
"So tell us the story of how you met," went the refrain, and each couple filled in blanks. Our marriages are 8 and 9 and over 30 years long. They include a boatload of talents, regional and global long-distance, letters and emails, high regard, college love affairs, arranged marriage, some altered states of consciousness, many kinds of intelligence, deep hurt and healing, transitions, children and no children and grandchildren, foreign languages, crises and near-misses, passion, trust, varying plays of other people, and the mysteries of time. Searching for and abandonment to love and its remarkable ways.
The next morning I woke up early and unloaded the dishwasher, wondering about the point at which people stop telling those stories of meeting and marrying....because people do stop....other stories stand out more and take their place. Or after time, recollecting can lose some sparkle...for some times, for some folks, remembering becomes bittersweet, painful even, depending on where the relationship has gone. I suspect there's not a couple on earth that can't look back at their early relating and find inklings of their relationship's eventually more developed pathologies. I suppose that sometimes in very early marriage those meet & marry stories are the ones that couples tell partly because not much else has happened in their lives together. Later we tell them because they are charming and fun and as the song goes the beginning is a very good place to start. But even where the eventual strengths are sturdy, and even as the sweetness prevails, we didn't all get married to have that one early chapter be the whole book.
When you read good novels you should be able to find intimations of the whole story in the very first paragraph, like harmonics that ring at the slightest touch. Those lines should suck you in, whirl you around, and stir your bones in such a way that the story lives with your very breath, every sentence a respiration. I'm reading a book like that right now -- it's almost 542 pages and I can't put it down -- I read the first half in two sittings. The opening paragraph starts like this: "It's so hard to explain what the dead really want." You're with me, right?
Openings are gates. And open gates are irresistible.
It's well worth it to write good openings in novels. And no less so in life. We all want good starts, right? So the novelist rewrites those first lines endlessly. The editor reads the manuscript and you make pre-printing revisions; but in real life you don't get that luxury. Or is it a luxury? Isn't the essence of craft life? We get redemption, we get transformation, we get process, but not re-writes. Our lives flow -- sometimes roughly, sometimes smoothly. Each story its own paragraph and flowing from the previous. At some point the story has to be let loose to tell itself. The only way that first paragraph gets sweeter is with the liberal permeation of time's release. The constant becoming. Not the re-writing....the writing. And I can't wait to keep reading.
©2011 Mindy Danylak
"So tell us the story of how you met," went the refrain, and each couple filled in blanks. Our marriages are 8 and 9 and over 30 years long. They include a boatload of talents, regional and global long-distance, letters and emails, high regard, college love affairs, arranged marriage, some altered states of consciousness, many kinds of intelligence, deep hurt and healing, transitions, children and no children and grandchildren, foreign languages, crises and near-misses, passion, trust, varying plays of other people, and the mysteries of time. Searching for and abandonment to love and its remarkable ways.
The next morning I woke up early and unloaded the dishwasher, wondering about the point at which people stop telling those stories of meeting and marrying....because people do stop....other stories stand out more and take their place. Or after time, recollecting can lose some sparkle...for some times, for some folks, remembering becomes bittersweet, painful even, depending on where the relationship has gone. I suspect there's not a couple on earth that can't look back at their early relating and find inklings of their relationship's eventually more developed pathologies. I suppose that sometimes in very early marriage those meet & marry stories are the ones that couples tell partly because not much else has happened in their lives together. Later we tell them because they are charming and fun and as the song goes the beginning is a very good place to start. But even where the eventual strengths are sturdy, and even as the sweetness prevails, we didn't all get married to have that one early chapter be the whole book.
When you read good novels you should be able to find intimations of the whole story in the very first paragraph, like harmonics that ring at the slightest touch. Those lines should suck you in, whirl you around, and stir your bones in such a way that the story lives with your very breath, every sentence a respiration. I'm reading a book like that right now -- it's almost 542 pages and I can't put it down -- I read the first half in two sittings. The opening paragraph starts like this: "It's so hard to explain what the dead really want." You're with me, right?
Openings are gates. And open gates are irresistible.
It's well worth it to write good openings in novels. And no less so in life. We all want good starts, right? So the novelist rewrites those first lines endlessly. The editor reads the manuscript and you make pre-printing revisions; but in real life you don't get that luxury. Or is it a luxury? Isn't the essence of craft life? We get redemption, we get transformation, we get process, but not re-writes. Our lives flow -- sometimes roughly, sometimes smoothly. Each story its own paragraph and flowing from the previous. At some point the story has to be let loose to tell itself. The only way that first paragraph gets sweeter is with the liberal permeation of time's release. The constant becoming. Not the re-writing....the writing. And I can't wait to keep reading.
©2011 Mindy Danylak
Friday, November 4, 2011
What are you?
A few months ago three friends started coming to my house every Wednesday afternoon. Shannon, Colleen, Jana, and I fill our coffee cups and settle in. I love autumn. It's a good time to settle in. We range in age from 36 to 61. The first time we met, we watered our laps with tears...tears for ourselves and for each other...and I knew that the meaning of life was present. I've known each of these women for a long time, years, but never in this way and every week my heart is astounded at the richness of it all. Our conversations usually overflow the clock. We take turns emailing something ahead of time...poetry, quotes, pictures, stories...so we have time to reflect a bit before filling our cups together. Conversation is never boundaried by those words from others...they do not define...but they do weave, inspire, assist.
This past week, the text below was our launch. I haven't studied Maya's life and I've only briefly read the Unity School's "Lessons In Truth" and whenever this remarkable woman is mentioned I always think about the remarkable women who Oprah will never notice and I want to be in the room with them instead. I love being in the room with them. At the same time, Maya's poetry is beautiful too and I too hope to be more amazed the older I get and Mamma's faith seems so solid. So on Monday these words landed in my in-box and on Wednesday Shannon read them aloud to us, her northern Alabama accent lilting the words warmly, and then followed with this question: What are you? And so I ask you: What are you?
Many things continue to amaze me, even well into the 6th decade of my life. I am startled or taken aback when people walk up to me and tell me that they are Christians. My first response is the question, “Already?” It seems to me a lifelong endeavor to try to live the life of a Christian. I believe that is also true for the Buddhist, for the Muslim, for the Jainist, for the Jew, and for the Taoist who try to live their beliefs. The idyllic condition cannot be arrived at and held on to eternally. It is in the search itself that one finds the ecstasy.
One of my earliest memories of Mamma, of my grandmother, is a glimpse of a tall cinnamon-colored woman with a deep, soft voice, standing thousands of feet up in the air on nothing visible. That incredible vision was a result of what my imagination would do each time Mamma drew herself up to her full six feet, clasped her hands behind her back, looked up into a distant sky, and said, “I will step out on the word of God.” The depression, which was difficult for everyone, especially so for a single black woman in the South tending her crippled son and 2 grandchildren, caused her to make the statement of faith often.
She would look up as if she could will herself into the heavens, and tell her family in particular and the world in general, “I will step out on the word of God. I will step out on the word of God.” Immediately I could see her flung into space, moons at her feet and stars at her head, comets swirling around her. Naturally, since Mamma stood out on the word of God, and Mamma was over 6 feet tall, it wasn’t difficult for me to have faith. I grew up knowing that the word of God had power.
In my twenties in San Francisco I became a sophisticate and acting agnostic. It wasn’t that I had stopped believing in God; it’s just that God didn’t seem to be around in the neighborhoods I frequented. And then a voice teacher introduced me to Lessons in Truth, published by the Unity School of Christianity.
One day the teacher, Frederick Wilkerson, asked me to read to him. I was 24, very erudite, very worldly. He asked that I read from Lessons in Truth, a section that ended with these words: “God loves me.” I read the piece and closed the book, and the teacher said, “Read it again.” I pointedly opened the book, and I sarcastically read, “God loves me.” He said, “Again.” After about the 7th repetition I began to sense that there might be truth in the statement, that there was a possibility that God really did love me. Me, Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person with God, constitutes the majority?
That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me. I am big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I’m a spring leaf trembling in anticipation.
This past week, the text below was our launch. I haven't studied Maya's life and I've only briefly read the Unity School's "Lessons In Truth" and whenever this remarkable woman is mentioned I always think about the remarkable women who Oprah will never notice and I want to be in the room with them instead. I love being in the room with them. At the same time, Maya's poetry is beautiful too and I too hope to be more amazed the older I get and Mamma's faith seems so solid. So on Monday these words landed in my in-box and on Wednesday Shannon read them aloud to us, her northern Alabama accent lilting the words warmly, and then followed with this question: What are you? And so I ask you: What are you?
One of my earliest memories of Mamma, of my grandmother, is a glimpse of a tall cinnamon-colored woman with a deep, soft voice, standing thousands of feet up in the air on nothing visible. That incredible vision was a result of what my imagination would do each time Mamma drew herself up to her full six feet, clasped her hands behind her back, looked up into a distant sky, and said, “I will step out on the word of God.” The depression, which was difficult for everyone, especially so for a single black woman in the South tending her crippled son and 2 grandchildren, caused her to make the statement of faith often.
She would look up as if she could will herself into the heavens, and tell her family in particular and the world in general, “I will step out on the word of God. I will step out on the word of God.” Immediately I could see her flung into space, moons at her feet and stars at her head, comets swirling around her. Naturally, since Mamma stood out on the word of God, and Mamma was over 6 feet tall, it wasn’t difficult for me to have faith. I grew up knowing that the word of God had power.
In my twenties in San Francisco I became a sophisticate and acting agnostic. It wasn’t that I had stopped believing in God; it’s just that God didn’t seem to be around in the neighborhoods I frequented. And then a voice teacher introduced me to Lessons in Truth, published by the Unity School of Christianity.
One day the teacher, Frederick Wilkerson, asked me to read to him. I was 24, very erudite, very worldly. He asked that I read from Lessons in Truth, a section that ended with these words: “God loves me.” I read the piece and closed the book, and the teacher said, “Read it again.” I pointedly opened the book, and I sarcastically read, “God loves me.” He said, “Again.” After about the 7th repetition I began to sense that there might be truth in the statement, that there was a possibility that God really did love me. Me, Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person with God, constitutes the majority?
That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me. I am big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I’m a spring leaf trembling in anticipation.
- Maya Angelou, from Wouldn’t Take Nothing For My Journey Now
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Making a Marriage
Eight years ago today Jonathan and I married each other on a hot sunny day in Seattle. He wore a tux, I wore a big dress. Our families and many dozens of friends celebrated with us. The flowers were lovely, the food was divine, the wines were fantastic (all from Walla Walla, of course). We vowed and sang and kissed and were photographed and took a ride in a fancy car. We mixed our losses with our gains and shed tears of missing with those of joy. There are things I would do differently today but that's because we're 8 years older now and we've changed a lot. But that being said, we loved the day and love remembering it.
I had imagined I might never get married. I wasn't opposed to it but I didn't feel like I had to get married. I am not a a squishy romantic. I grow weary of fluff & flourish quickly--I am sentimental and desire richness but not the flowery or the gushy. I also didn't love dating, and dating is sort of a prerequisite for marriage. I did date several guys through college & my early 20s and all but one were good men. But I figured that if the confetti fell from above & prince charming emerged from the sparkle I would be right there and recognize what was in front of me. In fact, I sort of hoped that it would happen that way--fast & clear & smashingly passionate--and that's pretty much exactly what ended up happening!
I love being married with Jonathan. He is kind and loyal and gets to know the neighbors. He remembers people and continues to call someone "my friend" years after they last saw each other. He has absolutely THE greatest laugh in the world hands down--it should be a ring tone! He loves to dance and doesn't hide his tears. He is philosophical and he thinks. He's artistic and abstract and he sometimes sets things down and loses them; he also makes mobiles and does origami and leaves data models all over the house. He likes keeping papers out where he can see them and when I swish things into piles and hide them in the dryer before company comes he gets worried we'll forget about the credit card bill. He tracks our finances on these spreadsheets that blow my mind. He may not know how much money we have but he takes great delight in designing the spreadsheets. He never misses the Stanley Cup or the World Cup and yells robustly at the television during games. When I go out with my girflriends for the evening he stays home and sautes onion into perogies and drinks vodka and the house smells like a Russian kitchen when I get back. He is occasionally irreverant and generally not overly serious. He's funny in the mornings, which is a big plus, and he sings in the shower and pays my library fines and he kills all the spiders.
However, anyone who has ever been married can tell you that it takes more than that. So I thought about it--what describes the spirit of us?--and came up with three things:
1. We're each responsible for cleaning our own bathrooms.
2. We value the life in each other.
3. We encourage each other to be in rich friendships.
I'm sure there are other ways to describe it, but so far the best of our relationship can be described by those three realities. Everything pretty much lines up behind their essence.
Jonathan doesn't always sing in the shower and take out the trash. We don't always feel in sync with each other and the occasional season has felt a little more like mid-winter's wait for the burst of hyacinth. My nightmare version of marriage is when it looks more like a merger, when there's so much "us-ness" that you can't find the two people inside it. But with Jonathan I don't have to worry about that. I am not obliterated in our relationship. If anything, our work with each other is more about attending to being found than to not being lost. And I do go flippy when our relationship's best is experienced in 3D.
I've always said that love messes with our sense of timing, and I think I'll add the spatial realm to that as well. Just when you think things are linear and known, there's this firework...sometimes pretty and celebratory but also fire-y and bound to disrupt the status quo. And when life is chaotic and messy there can still be this internal calm. Sometimes the best of times all go together and there are periods of playful rest. And sometimes the worst of times all go together and the darkness is also bleak. But when they do, they are not the final word.
In her reflections upon marriage and ontology, Madeline L'Engle writes:
I don't entirely know what that all means but I am drawn to it. What I love most about marriage is that it is life. Being married is different from but not outside the hallmarks of any kind of life. Dynamic, creative, and real at its best. And in any event, not static. Not even tied by time. Eight is a number. It represents a passage of time but it does not boundary or define what has been nor what will be. And for both what it has been and what will be, I am grateful to be in it with Jonathan. It's right.
Happy anniversary, love!
May you live forever!
___________________________________
©2011 Mindy Danylak
I had imagined I might never get married. I wasn't opposed to it but I didn't feel like I had to get married. I am not a a squishy romantic. I grow weary of fluff & flourish quickly--I am sentimental and desire richness but not the flowery or the gushy. I also didn't love dating, and dating is sort of a prerequisite for marriage. I did date several guys through college & my early 20s and all but one were good men. But I figured that if the confetti fell from above & prince charming emerged from the sparkle I would be right there and recognize what was in front of me. In fact, I sort of hoped that it would happen that way--fast & clear & smashingly passionate--and that's pretty much exactly what ended up happening!
I love being married with Jonathan. He is kind and loyal and gets to know the neighbors. He remembers people and continues to call someone "my friend" years after they last saw each other. He has absolutely THE greatest laugh in the world hands down--it should be a ring tone! He loves to dance and doesn't hide his tears. He is philosophical and he thinks. He's artistic and abstract and he sometimes sets things down and loses them; he also makes mobiles and does origami and leaves data models all over the house. He likes keeping papers out where he can see them and when I swish things into piles and hide them in the dryer before company comes he gets worried we'll forget about the credit card bill. He tracks our finances on these spreadsheets that blow my mind. He may not know how much money we have but he takes great delight in designing the spreadsheets. He never misses the Stanley Cup or the World Cup and yells robustly at the television during games. When I go out with my girflriends for the evening he stays home and sautes onion into perogies and drinks vodka and the house smells like a Russian kitchen when I get back. He is occasionally irreverant and generally not overly serious. He's funny in the mornings, which is a big plus, and he sings in the shower and pays my library fines and he kills all the spiders.
However, anyone who has ever been married can tell you that it takes more than that. So I thought about it--what describes the spirit of us?--and came up with three things:
1. We're each responsible for cleaning our own bathrooms.
2. We value the life in each other.
3. We encourage each other to be in rich friendships.
I'm sure there are other ways to describe it, but so far the best of our relationship can be described by those three realities. Everything pretty much lines up behind their essence.
Jonathan doesn't always sing in the shower and take out the trash. We don't always feel in sync with each other and the occasional season has felt a little more like mid-winter's wait for the burst of hyacinth. My nightmare version of marriage is when it looks more like a merger, when there's so much "us-ness" that you can't find the two people inside it. But with Jonathan I don't have to worry about that. I am not obliterated in our relationship. If anything, our work with each other is more about attending to being found than to not being lost. And I do go flippy when our relationship's best is experienced in 3D.
I've always said that love messes with our sense of timing, and I think I'll add the spatial realm to that as well. Just when you think things are linear and known, there's this firework...sometimes pretty and celebratory but also fire-y and bound to disrupt the status quo. And when life is chaotic and messy there can still be this internal calm. Sometimes the best of times all go together and there are periods of playful rest. And sometimes the worst of times all go together and the darkness is also bleak. But when they do, they are not the final word.
In her reflections upon marriage and ontology, Madeline L'Engle writes:
A Russian priest, Father Anthony, told me,
"To say to anyone 'I love you' is tantamount to saying 'You shall live forever.'"
I am slowly beginning to learn something about immortality.
I don't entirely know what that all means but I am drawn to it. What I love most about marriage is that it is life. Being married is different from but not outside the hallmarks of any kind of life. Dynamic, creative, and real at its best. And in any event, not static. Not even tied by time. Eight is a number. It represents a passage of time but it does not boundary or define what has been nor what will be. And for both what it has been and what will be, I am grateful to be in it with Jonathan. It's right.
Happy anniversary, love!
May you live forever!
___________________________________
©2011 Mindy Danylak
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Mouldywarp
The other night it was pretty late and I was trying to fall asleep. I don't usually have to try -- my siblings and I have all been blessed with a remarkable ablity to conk out at the mere suggestion. But I was laying there, not falling asleep, and Jonathan says, "ok, what are you thinking about?" He knows I've been thinking a lot lately but it floors me how he can feel me thinking. "Moles," I say, "I'm thinking about moles." He busts up laughing. They're not in my usual repertoire. Yes, the little guys who pop out of the ground in my back yard in the middle of the night. They left evidence of their tunnels last week.
I aspire to write something every month to post here, but July came and went and now it's into August and there's no July post. Maybe it's because it's finally summer in Seattle and I'm starting to feel human again. I was starting to feel like summer was ignoring me; and then when it rained a few days after the sun came out I was worried it was just gonna skip me like a joke I didn't get. But now it's actually been over 60 for several days in a row and it feels miraculous. I think I've almost forgotten how much I felt like a shadow all "spring." Almost.
At any rate, this summer I've read a lot and celebrated a lot and and worked a lot and walked a lot and spread a lot of bark and am launching a new venture with a dear friend. (More to come soon on that.) I've spent countless hours thinking about memory and time and stories and family and landscaping and the economy and cooking for crowds and dream interpretation and communicating vision and web hosting -- and, yes, moles (did you know there are none in Ireland?) -- and frankly I sometimes just get tired of thinking.
So I'm considering all of that evidence of my own tunneling, sniffing my way along a process and a path, knowing that something new and noteworthy is about to pop up, that there's a whole lot of life under the surface in smaller yet vibrant spaces and that when the time is right there will be a different kind of evidence of me. And that will have to do in lieu of a "regular" blog post.
In the meantime, I give you an excerpt (in italics below) to enjoy from Mary Karr's fantastic memoir, "Lit". Her writing in this story shares the kind of energy I feel like I'm in these days...pithy, rich, reflective, basic, to the point, meandering, leaving some things unsaid but carrying much and being fully tuned in. I also love the way they talk about God. And that Mary Karr's healing involves a near-blind nun who has a weakness for cookies and a very wise heart. If I were a nun I'd want to be like Sister Margaret. The below is Mary's writing, not my own....it's not even necessarily relevant to what I've been thinking about, certainly not to moles, let alone to web hosting. But sometimes in the tunneling we find other people's work & know that certain proteins in the roots are found in our own roots.
How do moles decide when to pop up?
***
The night after the train debacle, I drive under a sky black as graphite to meet my new spiritual director for the Exercises — a bulky Franciscan nun named Sister Margaret, patiently going blind behind fish-tank glasses that magnify her eyes like goggles.
Asked my concept of God, I mouth all the fashionable stuff — all-loving, all-powerful, etc. But as we talk, it bobs up that in periods of uncertainty or pain — forlorn childhood, this failed relationship — I often feel intentionally punished or abandoned.
How’s that possible, I say, if I have no childhood experience of a punishing God?
Margaret says, We often strap on to God the mask of whoever hurt us as children. If you’ve been neglected, God seems cold; if you’ve been bullied He’s a tyrant. If you’re filled with self-hatred, then God is a monster-making inventor. How do you feel sitting here with me now?
I don’t know, like some slutty Catholic schoolgirl.
She laughs at this and says, I see you — she peers through those lenses — what I can see of you, as my sister, God’s beloved child. The hairs on your head are numbered, and we’ve been brought together, you and me, to shine on each other a while.
So you don’t judge me? I want to know.
For what? she said. I don’t even know you.
Well, I say, I’m not married, and I aspire to be sexually active again some day.
She says, I’m not naive. But Jesus might ask: Should you be vulnerable to a man without some spiritual commitment? Is that God’s dream for you?
God has a dream for me? I say. I love that idea. It sounds like a Disney movie.
I know, Margaret says. Her pale round face opens up. Everybody uses the phrase God’s will or plan. That has a neo-Nazi ring to it.
I like the Disney version.
I feel you, she says, and I sit for a minute silently disbelieving she’s a nun. She adjusts her heavy glasses, and her eyes once again magnify.
Let’s eat a cookie and pray for each other’s disordered attachments, she says. Mine involves pride and cookies.
Mine, I say, involves pride and good-looking men.
Together we bow our heads.
I aspire to write something every month to post here, but July came and went and now it's into August and there's no July post. Maybe it's because it's finally summer in Seattle and I'm starting to feel human again. I was starting to feel like summer was ignoring me; and then when it rained a few days after the sun came out I was worried it was just gonna skip me like a joke I didn't get. But now it's actually been over 60 for several days in a row and it feels miraculous. I think I've almost forgotten how much I felt like a shadow all "spring." Almost.
At any rate, this summer I've read a lot and celebrated a lot and and worked a lot and walked a lot and spread a lot of bark and am launching a new venture with a dear friend. (More to come soon on that.) I've spent countless hours thinking about memory and time and stories and family and landscaping and the economy and cooking for crowds and dream interpretation and communicating vision and web hosting -- and, yes, moles (did you know there are none in Ireland?) -- and frankly I sometimes just get tired of thinking.
So I'm considering all of that evidence of my own tunneling, sniffing my way along a process and a path, knowing that something new and noteworthy is about to pop up, that there's a whole lot of life under the surface in smaller yet vibrant spaces and that when the time is right there will be a different kind of evidence of me. And that will have to do in lieu of a "regular" blog post.
In the meantime, I give you an excerpt (in italics below) to enjoy from Mary Karr's fantastic memoir, "Lit". Her writing in this story shares the kind of energy I feel like I'm in these days...pithy, rich, reflective, basic, to the point, meandering, leaving some things unsaid but carrying much and being fully tuned in. I also love the way they talk about God. And that Mary Karr's healing involves a near-blind nun who has a weakness for cookies and a very wise heart. If I were a nun I'd want to be like Sister Margaret. The below is Mary's writing, not my own....it's not even necessarily relevant to what I've been thinking about, certainly not to moles, let alone to web hosting. But sometimes in the tunneling we find other people's work & know that certain proteins in the roots are found in our own roots.
How do moles decide when to pop up?
***
The night after the train debacle, I drive under a sky black as graphite to meet my new spiritual director for the Exercises — a bulky Franciscan nun named Sister Margaret, patiently going blind behind fish-tank glasses that magnify her eyes like goggles.
Asked my concept of God, I mouth all the fashionable stuff — all-loving, all-powerful, etc. But as we talk, it bobs up that in periods of uncertainty or pain — forlorn childhood, this failed relationship — I often feel intentionally punished or abandoned.
How’s that possible, I say, if I have no childhood experience of a punishing God?
Margaret says, We often strap on to God the mask of whoever hurt us as children. If you’ve been neglected, God seems cold; if you’ve been bullied He’s a tyrant. If you’re filled with self-hatred, then God is a monster-making inventor. How do you feel sitting here with me now?
I don’t know, like some slutty Catholic schoolgirl.
She laughs at this and says, I see you — she peers through those lenses — what I can see of you, as my sister, God’s beloved child. The hairs on your head are numbered, and we’ve been brought together, you and me, to shine on each other a while.
So you don’t judge me? I want to know.
For what? she said. I don’t even know you.
Well, I say, I’m not married, and I aspire to be sexually active again some day.
She says, I’m not naive. But Jesus might ask: Should you be vulnerable to a man without some spiritual commitment? Is that God’s dream for you?
God has a dream for me? I say. I love that idea. It sounds like a Disney movie.
I know, Margaret says. Her pale round face opens up. Everybody uses the phrase God’s will or plan. That has a neo-Nazi ring to it.
I like the Disney version.
I feel you, she says, and I sit for a minute silently disbelieving she’s a nun. She adjusts her heavy glasses, and her eyes once again magnify.
Let’s eat a cookie and pray for each other’s disordered attachments, she says. Mine involves pride and cookies.
Mine, I say, involves pride and good-looking men.
Together we bow our heads.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Holding On
"To be alive is to be vulnerable."
-- Madeline L'Engle
There's an office building about half way down the block that has a steep gravel driveway running behind it, from the street level up to a hilly area in back. I walk that stretch of Eastlake twice a day. They were a ways ahead of me but caught my eye immediately when I stepped outside onto the sidewalk. She, in her faded jeans, worn jacket, tennis shoes and backpack. He, in black pants, black shirt, black baseball cap and gold hoop earrings. He had a backpack too, a nicer one. Purple. He may have been as old as 22. She definitely wasn't. It immediately felt off.
As they walked she ducked her head slightly toward him the way 17-year-old girls do when they're insecure and under the control of someone who they think loves them. He paid her no heed. They didn't speak. He never looked at her. She was with him but they were not together. And his grip.... He held on to her, not by the hand but by the top of the wrist. They weren't going somewhere; he was taking her somewhere.
I was getting closer when he turned up the gravel ramp toward the weeds under the Mercer Street ramp. By the time I crossed the street they were at the top of the ramp. He cut off along the chain link fence and they were gone.
I know she was not safe.
There are times when the sense of paralysis is swift and overwhelming. "You have to do something!" careening through your brain mixes with "There is nothing I can do to stop this." The whole thing lasted seconds but my thoughts covered a lot of ground in that time. Angry tears flushed mascara to my lap as I drove home. I was livid. With him, with me, with the whole situation. Should I have tried to talk to them? I was so far behind I'd have had to make a bit of a scene to do that, but I've made a very public scene before on behalf of a young woman and it worked and I would do it again...and better. But do it and say...what? Or call the police? "Yeah, um, I think the girl down the sidewalk is in trouble; could you send someone right away? and I'll climb the fence and try to find them in the foot-trails under the freeway and if I do I'll follow or stall them until you get here." Maybe I should have called. The police here have done a fair amount of work around trafficking issues. Or maybe I should have attracted attention in hopes that they'd think I needed help. Sometimes, though, attention places the girl in more danger than she's already in. The need to prove loyalty intensifies. The wrist grip tightens. To notice her is personal. She is not there for her. No one should notice her.
And yet, notice is imperative.
There are a couple of women in my life who I wonder about all the time. They are young but adult, relatively independent, making choices. They have taken and stopped many a hand extended toward them. Some of those hands were extended for good, some for ill. They don't always know the difference.
We have this idea that we can do so much. We raise money, we write letters, we call our senators. We host awareness events, we attend conferences, we volunteer on work trips. We write books, we change laws, we throw people in prison. We rescue and we provide counseling and job training and we talk about systemic problems. The modern-day abolition movement runs on the very idea of eradicating slavery forever. It won't happen. At least not in this lifetime. It's good work but I don't believe any of it is enough for all time.
But I do believe in doing it.
And then in doing it again.
"Write me of hope and love, and hearts that endured."
-- Emily Dickinson
A month ago Jonathan & I attended a fundraising dinner in Walla Walla for a nonprofit that provides orphan support in Jamaica. Money was raised that night for three projects, each of them valuable investments in the furtherance of life for thousands of orphaned children. A few months ago a I helped a friend with a scholarship fundraiser here in Seattle, benefitting young people trying to move beyond extreme poverty in the Philippines. Last night I spent hours pouring over the website and mission materials of an orphanage in Kenya. A gal I've met with visited someone there this year, putting it on my radar. I'm deeply drawn to this kind of work for a number of reasons. It's along a path I've been on the past few years.
Noticing is part of who I am. I know that none of these projects can fill all the gaps. I've been through enough grief to know that sometimes you just have to accept the holes and learn to live with them. Loss is real. But it's not all the same. We all face losses but some losses are more ripping for us than others. So these projects are important pieces of protection and care, of notice, and where the fill is love the holes can become less sharp around the edges.
Kids become orphans in many ways. For many of them, their bodies tell heartbreaking stories of abuse and neglect. In her address at the dinner, Carla Francis Edie, head of Jamaica's Child Development Agency, emphasized that many of the children in their system need extensive psychotherapy to deal with the profound abuses that landed them in the state system to begin with. I hope that one way or another they'll get it.
But that's not all I hope for.
Carl Robanske, EO's founder, interviewed a 14 year old girl whose story was shared at the dinner. She held up her hand, showing him the scars she bears from the time her mother flew at her face with a machete. If she hadn't raised her hand... Carl spent very little time discussing EO's work but he didn't need to. He summed it up in 3 words: "We hold them."
I'm for holding.
I feel haunted by the girl on Eastlake. I know we all have our versions of this story...real scenarios, and if not our own then others'; and, when others', where we wonder if we should step in or not, where we wonder if we made the wrong decision, whatever the decision was. There are all kinds of reasons not to, many of them good ones. The decision is not always straight forward. I don't berate myself, but I do feel the bind. But she feels it more. Well actually I don't know about that -- she may not feel it. But I know she's in it, and someday it may become more than she can bear. Regardless of whether it does or not, though, it's heartbreaking that she is bearing it. Some people say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. In some cases that may be true and life is found in or from all of it; but in any case I'd rather strength be gained by what we are behind, by the good that we hold, not at the hands of exploitation or pain for its own sake. I tend to think that's the only way pain makes us stronger....we gain strength through the hands held out to us that offer hope, whether they are the hands of people or the hands of Hope in the heart. It's a given that there will be pain and grief. I don't deny that nor, even in my losses, do I wish it away. But it should not be the only thing that grows us.
I am just home from a week in Alabama and South Carolina, where I spent hours and hours listening to women tell defining stories from their lives. Holding was thematic, literally for some...holding a dying child, wanting to be held by a deceased mother, holding a depressed husband, dreams of a grandfather's hands. And then there's that holding of the wrist... Holding is not neutral. And at its best it won't be enough either. But where it is loving presence and support, affirmation of human value, rest, redemptive touch and respectful offering, it is good.
I'm for that.
_________________
©2011 Mindy Danylak
see also at:
http://geographyofgrace.com/2012/10/08/holding-on/
-- Madeline L'Engle
There's an office building about half way down the block that has a steep gravel driveway running behind it, from the street level up to a hilly area in back. I walk that stretch of Eastlake twice a day. They were a ways ahead of me but caught my eye immediately when I stepped outside onto the sidewalk. She, in her faded jeans, worn jacket, tennis shoes and backpack. He, in black pants, black shirt, black baseball cap and gold hoop earrings. He had a backpack too, a nicer one. Purple. He may have been as old as 22. She definitely wasn't. It immediately felt off.
As they walked she ducked her head slightly toward him the way 17-year-old girls do when they're insecure and under the control of someone who they think loves them. He paid her no heed. They didn't speak. He never looked at her. She was with him but they were not together. And his grip.... He held on to her, not by the hand but by the top of the wrist. They weren't going somewhere; he was taking her somewhere.
I was getting closer when he turned up the gravel ramp toward the weeds under the Mercer Street ramp. By the time I crossed the street they were at the top of the ramp. He cut off along the chain link fence and they were gone.
I know she was not safe.
There are times when the sense of paralysis is swift and overwhelming. "You have to do something!" careening through your brain mixes with "There is nothing I can do to stop this." The whole thing lasted seconds but my thoughts covered a lot of ground in that time. Angry tears flushed mascara to my lap as I drove home. I was livid. With him, with me, with the whole situation. Should I have tried to talk to them? I was so far behind I'd have had to make a bit of a scene to do that, but I've made a very public scene before on behalf of a young woman and it worked and I would do it again...and better. But do it and say...what? Or call the police? "Yeah, um, I think the girl down the sidewalk is in trouble; could you send someone right away? and I'll climb the fence and try to find them in the foot-trails under the freeway and if I do I'll follow or stall them until you get here." Maybe I should have called. The police here have done a fair amount of work around trafficking issues. Or maybe I should have attracted attention in hopes that they'd think I needed help. Sometimes, though, attention places the girl in more danger than she's already in. The need to prove loyalty intensifies. The wrist grip tightens. To notice her is personal. She is not there for her. No one should notice her.
And yet, notice is imperative.
There are a couple of women in my life who I wonder about all the time. They are young but adult, relatively independent, making choices. They have taken and stopped many a hand extended toward them. Some of those hands were extended for good, some for ill. They don't always know the difference.
We have this idea that we can do so much. We raise money, we write letters, we call our senators. We host awareness events, we attend conferences, we volunteer on work trips. We write books, we change laws, we throw people in prison. We rescue and we provide counseling and job training and we talk about systemic problems. The modern-day abolition movement runs on the very idea of eradicating slavery forever. It won't happen. At least not in this lifetime. It's good work but I don't believe any of it is enough for all time.
But I do believe in doing it.
And then in doing it again.
"Write me of hope and love, and hearts that endured."
-- Emily Dickinson
A month ago Jonathan & I attended a fundraising dinner in Walla Walla for a nonprofit that provides orphan support in Jamaica. Money was raised that night for three projects, each of them valuable investments in the furtherance of life for thousands of orphaned children. A few months ago a I helped a friend with a scholarship fundraiser here in Seattle, benefitting young people trying to move beyond extreme poverty in the Philippines. Last night I spent hours pouring over the website and mission materials of an orphanage in Kenya. A gal I've met with visited someone there this year, putting it on my radar. I'm deeply drawn to this kind of work for a number of reasons. It's along a path I've been on the past few years.
Noticing is part of who I am. I know that none of these projects can fill all the gaps. I've been through enough grief to know that sometimes you just have to accept the holes and learn to live with them. Loss is real. But it's not all the same. We all face losses but some losses are more ripping for us than others. So these projects are important pieces of protection and care, of notice, and where the fill is love the holes can become less sharp around the edges.
Kids become orphans in many ways. For many of them, their bodies tell heartbreaking stories of abuse and neglect. In her address at the dinner, Carla Francis Edie, head of Jamaica's Child Development Agency, emphasized that many of the children in their system need extensive psychotherapy to deal with the profound abuses that landed them in the state system to begin with. I hope that one way or another they'll get it.
But that's not all I hope for.
Carl Robanske, EO's founder, interviewed a 14 year old girl whose story was shared at the dinner. She held up her hand, showing him the scars she bears from the time her mother flew at her face with a machete. If she hadn't raised her hand... Carl spent very little time discussing EO's work but he didn't need to. He summed it up in 3 words: "We hold them."
I'm for holding.
I feel haunted by the girl on Eastlake. I know we all have our versions of this story...real scenarios, and if not our own then others'; and, when others', where we wonder if we should step in or not, where we wonder if we made the wrong decision, whatever the decision was. There are all kinds of reasons not to, many of them good ones. The decision is not always straight forward. I don't berate myself, but I do feel the bind. But she feels it more. Well actually I don't know about that -- she may not feel it. But I know she's in it, and someday it may become more than she can bear. Regardless of whether it does or not, though, it's heartbreaking that she is bearing it. Some people say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. In some cases that may be true and life is found in or from all of it; but in any case I'd rather strength be gained by what we are behind, by the good that we hold, not at the hands of exploitation or pain for its own sake. I tend to think that's the only way pain makes us stronger....we gain strength through the hands held out to us that offer hope, whether they are the hands of people or the hands of Hope in the heart. It's a given that there will be pain and grief. I don't deny that nor, even in my losses, do I wish it away. But it should not be the only thing that grows us.
I am just home from a week in Alabama and South Carolina, where I spent hours and hours listening to women tell defining stories from their lives. Holding was thematic, literally for some...holding a dying child, wanting to be held by a deceased mother, holding a depressed husband, dreams of a grandfather's hands. And then there's that holding of the wrist... Holding is not neutral. And at its best it won't be enough either. But where it is loving presence and support, affirmation of human value, rest, redemptive touch and respectful offering, it is good.
I'm for that.
_________________
©2011 Mindy Danylak
see also at:
http://geographyofgrace.com/2012/10/08/holding-on/
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Good-bye Robin
"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."
-- Emily Dickinson
A few weeks ago I stood in the foyer at College Place Presbyterian Church on Easter morning, reading a letter my mom wrote over a decade ago to our pastor and his wife, Robin & Kriss Peterson. "They thought we should have this," Mel said, handing the envelope to me. "Do you want to read it?" Mom's handwriting spread across the paper expressing her gratitude for Robin & Kriss's kindness and care, how she felt about her upcoming treatment process, her resonance with him as the two of them moved through cancer diagnoses together. Several months later he & Doug Barram together led my family down the aisle at her memorial service.
I handed the card back to my sister, thinking about him. Mom was not alone...there are thousands of people whose lives are peppered with these kinds of stories, who Robin walked with in their life and whose casket he stood by in their death...many kinds of aisles people do not want to walk alone...the moments that mean "to live."
Robin Peterson died yesterday.
Walking will continue but it does feel like the earth takes a brief pause to re-adjust itself when people die. The very lilt of a day is altered by breath, our own and others'.
I am grateful to have known this man who lived the kind of startle that is awakening...who tended hearts and animals with equal passion...who cared for his land and prayed for his community...who saw and who was with and who recalled...who spoke the language of the soul...who sang joy and whispered peace...who rained kindness and lived generously...who was honest about himself and grieved his losses...who understood and entered the story...who pursued love.
Thankful tears fall for you.
Good-bye, Robin.
-- Emily Dickinson
A few weeks ago I stood in the foyer at College Place Presbyterian Church on Easter morning, reading a letter my mom wrote over a decade ago to our pastor and his wife, Robin & Kriss Peterson. "They thought we should have this," Mel said, handing the envelope to me. "Do you want to read it?" Mom's handwriting spread across the paper expressing her gratitude for Robin & Kriss's kindness and care, how she felt about her upcoming treatment process, her resonance with him as the two of them moved through cancer diagnoses together. Several months later he & Doug Barram together led my family down the aisle at her memorial service.
I handed the card back to my sister, thinking about him. Mom was not alone...there are thousands of people whose lives are peppered with these kinds of stories, who Robin walked with in their life and whose casket he stood by in their death...many kinds of aisles people do not want to walk alone...the moments that mean "to live."
Robin Peterson died yesterday.
Walking will continue but it does feel like the earth takes a brief pause to re-adjust itself when people die. The very lilt of a day is altered by breath, our own and others'.
I am grateful to have known this man who lived the kind of startle that is awakening...who tended hearts and animals with equal passion...who cared for his land and prayed for his community...who saw and who was with and who recalled...who spoke the language of the soul...who sang joy and whispered peace...who rained kindness and lived generously...who was honest about himself and grieved his losses...who understood and entered the story...who pursued love.
Thankful tears fall for you.
Good-bye, Robin.
Monday, May 9, 2011
On Weddings & Asparagus & Social Convention
So I'll just come out and say it: I watched The Royal Wedding. The whole thing. I hadn't set an alarm but Jonathan woke up coughing and it woke me up and I looked at my phone and it was 1:09 am. So I chalked it up to serendipity and decided that, since I had to get up in 4 hours anyway and I was in fact interested in the wedding, I'd go ahead and put on the coffee and watch the whole thing. And so I did.
About 42 minutes into the pre-event coverage I was more sick of Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters than usual but The Today Show drives me nuts so I stuck with ABC and made the best of it. And there was a lot of the best to make of it. I thought the feeling was lovely and the dresses gorgeous and the hats phenomenal and the service beautiful and the coordination flawless. I saw an interview earlier in the week with a gentleman who works for the palace and he was asked what could go wrong. "Nothing," he replied, "Nothing will go wrong." The interviewer laughed. "Nothing?!," she asked incredulously. "Nothing," he responded. And I'm sure there were great sighs of relief back at the palace that everything did go so well. But it went deeper than that.
Later that day I was reading the wall of a college student's Facebook page....some of her peers expressing boredom and a "lack of romance" in the structure and formality of the wedding. I realize there's an individual perspective thing partly at play here, but I strongly beg to differ. In my real life, I'm not a wildly demonstrative person. But the ascot opening race sequence in My Fair Lady is one of my all-time favorite scenes in musical theater and I've watched or played in the pit through many a musical. If it weren't for the structure in that scene, the entire thing would fall apart and lose its personality. The form provides a certain vital energy. It could take over the experience but it doesn't. Events can be that way. Life is often that way. Try spending time with someone who has no boundaries or alternately who is super tightly wound, whether they are 8 years old or 80 years old. Or partner dancing. Just the right amount of tension and decision is paramount to movement. It's partly why I love salsa dancing. And why I am fascinated with fashion, details, ritual, occasion. The drama. The hats. The precision. The contrasts. It's fantastic! I love a good event.
That night Jonathan and I drove to Walla Walla for a weekend fundraising event. The evening's guest speaker was here from many time zones away. She stayed with my sister and her family for a few days so one evening J and I walked across the street (from my dad's) to have dinner at Mel's house. We sat down, toasted and said grace, and then started passing food. Both ways. They must do it differently in her country because left is right went out the window as the aspargus and the salad dressings met in the middle on one side and the meat loaf and the salad met on the other. Everything eventually got around but the asparagus got caught wondering which way to go a couple times. For all kinds of reasons it didn't matter a single bit to the experience of the evening. But it brought to mind something I think about a lot: social convention.
I grew up with a lot of them. I'll bet you did too, possibly quite different from mine. Either that or you didn't grow up with many which leaves you with an entirely different set of questions. But in either case we got messages and patterns and those affect our perceptions and behaviors and interactions and judgments. And for the rest of our lives we'll be sorting out which ones to keep, which to toss, which to re-introduce, which new ones to adopt, when and why to do that at various times, what they mean, what they hinder, how they allow, and on and on. They can be strange things, whether at royal weddings or at meals. It's sorta like Christians at Easter....where you put the emphasis is partly a matter of tradition and personal style. But we use them for reasons. Sometimes people say they don't care about how things like that go but I rarely believe them because at some point they do care...whether it's a meal or a conversation or a bike ride it's just a matter of when and about what and all of the sudden they'll care.
We can get caught up in the emphatic, that's very true -- emphasizing order can stifle engagement, not attending to it can mean engagement doesn't happen cuz we're super hungry but no one's passing the asparagus. If no one passes the asparagus it just sits there on the table. But even in cultures where the food does just sit in the middle, they have ways of doing it -- people know how to go about having some and if you don't know you want to find out. Or you go without asparagus. But who would want to do that?! Hopefully we aim for the middle, taking care of what needs to be taken care of, in ways that allow for the most life possible. You figure it out. Each lends life to the other. Any fan of Dr. Seuss will tell you that.
Honestly, it doesn't probably matter to the asparagus whether it goes left or right. It's only asparagus. But not all of life is asparagus. Like royal weddings.
Ok, that's all.
©2011 Mindy Danylak
About 42 minutes into the pre-event coverage I was more sick of Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters than usual but The Today Show drives me nuts so I stuck with ABC and made the best of it. And there was a lot of the best to make of it. I thought the feeling was lovely and the dresses gorgeous and the hats phenomenal and the service beautiful and the coordination flawless. I saw an interview earlier in the week with a gentleman who works for the palace and he was asked what could go wrong. "Nothing," he replied, "Nothing will go wrong." The interviewer laughed. "Nothing?!," she asked incredulously. "Nothing," he responded. And I'm sure there were great sighs of relief back at the palace that everything did go so well. But it went deeper than that.
Later that day I was reading the wall of a college student's Facebook page....some of her peers expressing boredom and a "lack of romance" in the structure and formality of the wedding. I realize there's an individual perspective thing partly at play here, but I strongly beg to differ. In my real life, I'm not a wildly demonstrative person. But the ascot opening race sequence in My Fair Lady is one of my all-time favorite scenes in musical theater and I've watched or played in the pit through many a musical. If it weren't for the structure in that scene, the entire thing would fall apart and lose its personality. The form provides a certain vital energy. It could take over the experience but it doesn't. Events can be that way. Life is often that way. Try spending time with someone who has no boundaries or alternately who is super tightly wound, whether they are 8 years old or 80 years old. Or partner dancing. Just the right amount of tension and decision is paramount to movement. It's partly why I love salsa dancing. And why I am fascinated with fashion, details, ritual, occasion. The drama. The hats. The precision. The contrasts. It's fantastic! I love a good event.
That night Jonathan and I drove to Walla Walla for a weekend fundraising event. The evening's guest speaker was here from many time zones away. She stayed with my sister and her family for a few days so one evening J and I walked across the street (from my dad's) to have dinner at Mel's house. We sat down, toasted and said grace, and then started passing food. Both ways. They must do it differently in her country because left is right went out the window as the aspargus and the salad dressings met in the middle on one side and the meat loaf and the salad met on the other. Everything eventually got around but the asparagus got caught wondering which way to go a couple times. For all kinds of reasons it didn't matter a single bit to the experience of the evening. But it brought to mind something I think about a lot: social convention.
I grew up with a lot of them. I'll bet you did too, possibly quite different from mine. Either that or you didn't grow up with many which leaves you with an entirely different set of questions. But in either case we got messages and patterns and those affect our perceptions and behaviors and interactions and judgments. And for the rest of our lives we'll be sorting out which ones to keep, which to toss, which to re-introduce, which new ones to adopt, when and why to do that at various times, what they mean, what they hinder, how they allow, and on and on. They can be strange things, whether at royal weddings or at meals. It's sorta like Christians at Easter....where you put the emphasis is partly a matter of tradition and personal style. But we use them for reasons. Sometimes people say they don't care about how things like that go but I rarely believe them because at some point they do care...whether it's a meal or a conversation or a bike ride it's just a matter of when and about what and all of the sudden they'll care.
We can get caught up in the emphatic, that's very true -- emphasizing order can stifle engagement, not attending to it can mean engagement doesn't happen cuz we're super hungry but no one's passing the asparagus. If no one passes the asparagus it just sits there on the table. But even in cultures where the food does just sit in the middle, they have ways of doing it -- people know how to go about having some and if you don't know you want to find out. Or you go without asparagus. But who would want to do that?! Hopefully we aim for the middle, taking care of what needs to be taken care of, in ways that allow for the most life possible. You figure it out. Each lends life to the other. Any fan of Dr. Seuss will tell you that.
Honestly, it doesn't probably matter to the asparagus whether it goes left or right. It's only asparagus. But not all of life is asparagus. Like royal weddings.
Ok, that's all.
©2011 Mindy Danylak
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Easter
Holy Week is a lesson in how life is. Some Christians emphasize celebrating the risen Christ and triumph over death, others emphasize his death, the darkness and the grave. But love is both. Both are real and important, for themselves and for each other. I am by nature more optimistic than pessimistic, but I have also known more pain than I'd like to have known for my age. I know it's both. I'm feeling a little blah lately; and, even with that being said, I think this year I'm landing more in the celebratory mood around Easter. Maybe I need it as the balance for where I am. At any rate, this coming Sunday is Easter and I can't wait. I've been looking forward to it for a year.
I didn't grow up celebrating Easter. My family was quite 'religiously involved' but the group we were in didn't observe any of the traditional Christian liturgial seasons...Christmas, Lent, Holy Week, Pentecost, Ordinary Time...none of that. Actually, I didn't even know there was such a thing as a church calendar until my early 20s. No, we weren't Jehovah's Witness...it was probably not a group most of you have ever heard of unless you know me and we've talked about it or you grew up in or around it yourself. There's some information out there but it doesn't convey the experience. I'll share more of my story someday when I get around to writing it, but for now I'll just say that it was a Christian-esque group with some idiosyncracies that included not paying attention to the church calendar.
So the group didn't do Easter. I knew that many people celebrated Christmas as a religious holiday, although we celebrated it as a fun family holiday. But Easter was a mystery, almost entirely off my radar, and we didn't do anything around it. I vaguely remember two of my aunts talking about their families gathering for Easter...the big dinner and the family photos and all that but I never understood what the big deal was. A couple years Mom hid plastic eggs full of foil-wrapped chocolates around the house but it was a little odd. I understood gathering for Christmas, because we did that. But Easter? It felt like any other Sunday to me. I barely noticed that it was Easter at all, let alone that it meant anything. My relatives were all in the same religious group as us so I figured it was just something they did for some reason that my family didn't do. I let it go and never wondered about it. Then we left the group in 1995 and it was sometime in those years, so probably in the early 90s, that I realized that on Easter Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. But realizing it, even observing it every year, didn't mean I developed an attachment to it. Until last year. Before that, there were a just couple years that stood out as significant Easter seasons for me.
2002. I was living in the Czech Republic that year and took the train up to Krakow for the weekend with Brooke, Megan and Priya. We attended mass at the Dominikanie Krakow (Dominican Church and Monastery) then walked up to Wawel Castle. Poland has been a santuary for me...it had been a rough couple years and the gorgeous, sunny, warm Krakow afternoon, in the company of dear friends, and under the canopy of a very old church and traditon, was just what my battered heart needed. We wandered through Josefov where a few boys threw water balloons at us. I think Brooke threw one back. Polish tradition. The city was alive with people -- people in church, people walking, people dressed to the nines, people just wandering around, out and about enjoying the day. At the castle I sat down on a low stone wall, watching people and writing, enjoying the sunshine and the Bach Unaccompanied wafting from the music shop across the lawn. I was going through a period of deeply missing Mom and it was hard to connect with the liturgy; but the liveliness all around me sank in...the transcendence of God. I felt the truth of Easter...the exhasution and the relief...the beauty. I brought home a double-cd set of the Bach.
2003. The year Jonathan and I got married. We went to church on Easter Sunday. I wore a lime green silk dress. I love that dress. I still have it. I bought it on a sale at Talbot's on my way to my friends Matt and Sharon's wedding in Portland right after I moved back from the Czech Republic in summer 2002. Jonathan also taught me that spring how to dye eggs in the (his) Ukranian tradition. Pysanky. He actually got college credit for it and does amazing work. His brother came to visit this past weekend and we dyed eggs most of Saturday. Jonathan puts on Rachmaninoff Vespers, we cover the table with brown craft paper, and we work. Eggs are fragile. Sometimes the shells are left in pieces, the insides running all over your hands. Getting good at the craft necessarily involves becoming ok with brokenness. You have to love the creating, not just the final piece.
A few weeks ago we drove to Portland to visit our friends Alex and Jessica and we went to church with them on Sunday. It's a fairly small, very unassuming little building. Warm, friendly people. We sang old hymns and all the people prayed and I was captured by the amazing cross hanging on the front wall...grape vines stretched out, wrapped with these intricate hand-knit roses of varying sizes, in the most amazing red you've ever seen. And I remembered.
Last year we went to Walla Walla, my hometown, for Easter weekend. Jonathan and I don't go to to church much right now. That's another story too and you shouldn't read much into that. I just say it to provide a contrast - my church in Walla Walla is a special place for me. When we're in town we almost always go. It's the church my family started going to shortly after we left the old group. I feel at home there. I have history there and people there. I moved away from Walla Walla a few months after we left the group, but that church has always felt like mine. I'd heard about their tradition on Easter but never been in town for it. You take a large wooden cross. You wrap it in chicken wire. At the end of the service all the kids walk up the center aisle. As each child comes forward they give their flowers to an adult who tucks the flowers here and there into the chicken wire, and as the congregation sings the cross blooms.
It moved me beyond anything I expected. I sat there singing and as the cross bloomed I felt breathless. There were dozens and dozens of children, and within seconds the line of kiddos filled the sanctuary. One of the adults tossed my sister and me a glance asking for help. We started taking flowers from the kids' hands, anchoring the stems under the chicken wire. By that time the flowers had been clutched in little hands for a long time and they weren't in the greatest of condition; but it didn't matter. I sang and watched the congregation as I took the flowers and bloomed the cross, and something inside me found familiarity. I saw my mom's close friend Kathleen sitting out there and thought, "yes, something is coming full circle here." It was like I was going through my first communion or something. I found Easter. Easter now had a participation that gave it a personal, experiential meaning for me, one that was rooted in beauty and creativity. It's where elements once living are cut down and then give life again. It's where I participate with my body and my soul, singing and watching and blooming. It's where profound Love is honored and remembered and celebrated.
So we're going again this year. We will visit with my family and take care of our 2 year old nephew while my sister and her family go celebrate my brother-in-law's grandpa's 90th birthday for the day. Then Sunday morning we'll get up and go to church. We'll go to the early service. Usually we go to the later service because getting everyone out the door for the early service is just asking too much. But on Easter we go early. The kids each carry a little fistfull of flowers cut from their (or the neighbors'...) lawn and climb into the car and off we go.
I will take my blah-ness with me. I'll take my tiredness with me. I'll take my losses and my questions with me. And I'll take joy. I will find rest and comfort, energy and pleasure, meaning and depth. I'll find Love and Beauty. And at the table on Sunday afternoon, I will look around me and be profoundly grateful for Life.
"Love" by George Herbert
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guiltie of dust and sinne.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked any thing.
"A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here."
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I the unkind, ungratefull? Ah my deare,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"
"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," sayes Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," sayes Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.
I didn't grow up celebrating Easter. My family was quite 'religiously involved' but the group we were in didn't observe any of the traditional Christian liturgial seasons...Christmas, Lent, Holy Week, Pentecost, Ordinary Time...none of that. Actually, I didn't even know there was such a thing as a church calendar until my early 20s. No, we weren't Jehovah's Witness...it was probably not a group most of you have ever heard of unless you know me and we've talked about it or you grew up in or around it yourself. There's some information out there but it doesn't convey the experience. I'll share more of my story someday when I get around to writing it, but for now I'll just say that it was a Christian-esque group with some idiosyncracies that included not paying attention to the church calendar.
So the group didn't do Easter. I knew that many people celebrated Christmas as a religious holiday, although we celebrated it as a fun family holiday. But Easter was a mystery, almost entirely off my radar, and we didn't do anything around it. I vaguely remember two of my aunts talking about their families gathering for Easter...the big dinner and the family photos and all that but I never understood what the big deal was. A couple years Mom hid plastic eggs full of foil-wrapped chocolates around the house but it was a little odd. I understood gathering for Christmas, because we did that. But Easter? It felt like any other Sunday to me. I barely noticed that it was Easter at all, let alone that it meant anything. My relatives were all in the same religious group as us so I figured it was just something they did for some reason that my family didn't do. I let it go and never wondered about it. Then we left the group in 1995 and it was sometime in those years, so probably in the early 90s, that I realized that on Easter Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. But realizing it, even observing it every year, didn't mean I developed an attachment to it. Until last year. Before that, there were a just couple years that stood out as significant Easter seasons for me.
2002. I was living in the Czech Republic that year and took the train up to Krakow for the weekend with Brooke, Megan and Priya. We attended mass at the Dominikanie Krakow (Dominican Church and Monastery) then walked up to Wawel Castle. Poland has been a santuary for me...it had been a rough couple years and the gorgeous, sunny, warm Krakow afternoon, in the company of dear friends, and under the canopy of a very old church and traditon, was just what my battered heart needed. We wandered through Josefov where a few boys threw water balloons at us. I think Brooke threw one back. Polish tradition. The city was alive with people -- people in church, people walking, people dressed to the nines, people just wandering around, out and about enjoying the day. At the castle I sat down on a low stone wall, watching people and writing, enjoying the sunshine and the Bach Unaccompanied wafting from the music shop across the lawn. I was going through a period of deeply missing Mom and it was hard to connect with the liturgy; but the liveliness all around me sank in...the transcendence of God. I felt the truth of Easter...the exhasution and the relief...the beauty. I brought home a double-cd set of the Bach.
2003. The year Jonathan and I got married. We went to church on Easter Sunday. I wore a lime green silk dress. I love that dress. I still have it. I bought it on a sale at Talbot's on my way to my friends Matt and Sharon's wedding in Portland right after I moved back from the Czech Republic in summer 2002. Jonathan also taught me that spring how to dye eggs in the (his) Ukranian tradition. Pysanky. He actually got college credit for it and does amazing work. His brother came to visit this past weekend and we dyed eggs most of Saturday. Jonathan puts on Rachmaninoff Vespers, we cover the table with brown craft paper, and we work. Eggs are fragile. Sometimes the shells are left in pieces, the insides running all over your hands. Getting good at the craft necessarily involves becoming ok with brokenness. You have to love the creating, not just the final piece.
A few weeks ago we drove to Portland to visit our friends Alex and Jessica and we went to church with them on Sunday. It's a fairly small, very unassuming little building. Warm, friendly people. We sang old hymns and all the people prayed and I was captured by the amazing cross hanging on the front wall...grape vines stretched out, wrapped with these intricate hand-knit roses of varying sizes, in the most amazing red you've ever seen. And I remembered.
Last year we went to Walla Walla, my hometown, for Easter weekend. Jonathan and I don't go to to church much right now. That's another story too and you shouldn't read much into that. I just say it to provide a contrast - my church in Walla Walla is a special place for me. When we're in town we almost always go. It's the church my family started going to shortly after we left the old group. I feel at home there. I have history there and people there. I moved away from Walla Walla a few months after we left the group, but that church has always felt like mine. I'd heard about their tradition on Easter but never been in town for it. You take a large wooden cross. You wrap it in chicken wire. At the end of the service all the kids walk up the center aisle. As each child comes forward they give their flowers to an adult who tucks the flowers here and there into the chicken wire, and as the congregation sings the cross blooms.
It moved me beyond anything I expected. I sat there singing and as the cross bloomed I felt breathless. There were dozens and dozens of children, and within seconds the line of kiddos filled the sanctuary. One of the adults tossed my sister and me a glance asking for help. We started taking flowers from the kids' hands, anchoring the stems under the chicken wire. By that time the flowers had been clutched in little hands for a long time and they weren't in the greatest of condition; but it didn't matter. I sang and watched the congregation as I took the flowers and bloomed the cross, and something inside me found familiarity. I saw my mom's close friend Kathleen sitting out there and thought, "yes, something is coming full circle here." It was like I was going through my first communion or something. I found Easter. Easter now had a participation that gave it a personal, experiential meaning for me, one that was rooted in beauty and creativity. It's where elements once living are cut down and then give life again. It's where I participate with my body and my soul, singing and watching and blooming. It's where profound Love is honored and remembered and celebrated.
So we're going again this year. We will visit with my family and take care of our 2 year old nephew while my sister and her family go celebrate my brother-in-law's grandpa's 90th birthday for the day. Then Sunday morning we'll get up and go to church. We'll go to the early service. Usually we go to the later service because getting everyone out the door for the early service is just asking too much. But on Easter we go early. The kids each carry a little fistfull of flowers cut from their (or the neighbors'...) lawn and climb into the car and off we go.
I will take my blah-ness with me. I'll take my tiredness with me. I'll take my losses and my questions with me. And I'll take joy. I will find rest and comfort, energy and pleasure, meaning and depth. I'll find Love and Beauty. And at the table on Sunday afternoon, I will look around me and be profoundly grateful for Life.
"Love" by George Herbert
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guiltie of dust and sinne.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked any thing.
"A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here."
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I the unkind, ungratefull? Ah my deare,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"
"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," sayes Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," sayes Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Daily Bread
"Food is nothing less than sacrament."
-- Leslie Leyland Fields, "The Spirit of Food"
I'm not much of a baker...yeast freaks me out. But I love cooking, and meals are a favorite way for Jonathan & me to spend time with people. I always light candles and I know that the typical tea-light will last about 3 hours. When friends are over, we rarely leave the table before the tea-lights have burned to silent pools in their holders.
I'm reading a book right now called "The Spirit of Food." Each chapter is written by a different person, sharing stories about the intersections of faith & food in their lives. Some chapters are better than others. But I love the Introduction. It makes my very soul water. I've read lots of these lately -- The Spirit of Food edited by Leslie Leyland Fields; Take This Bread by Sara Miles; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver; and others. They make me feel alive. And they make me want to plan meals & invite friends & track down the best-tasting whole ingredients possible. Flavors & tastes fascinate me, plus it's just relaxing for me to chop an onion or mince garlic or stir a pot or flip french toast...and I love eating with friends so it works well!
My sister Melody is an incredible cook. She doesn't just understand gourmet, the science and the art of ingredients & mixing and combining, she was born as part of the definition. There are some people who learn & others who are. She is both. She is a student and a natural. I've learned a lot from her over the years. She puts together meals the mouth remembers. I love watching her kitchen turn into a tornado of flour dustings and spices and heavy knives on butcher block cutting boards, pottery bowls of spiced shrimp in the oven and mixing bowls of sliced peaches on the counter and double boilers of melting chocolate on the stove, her 3 kids swirling around the room. Sometimes, preparing for holidays or special occasions, we all eat dinner and then put the kids to bed, cooking more later in the middle of the night, talking all the while. The best conversations happen at those times. A meal at her home is a thing of delight. It feels like home to me. It feels like her. It feels like love.
I'm not a fancy cook. I don't have the patience for it. But I have a version of her passion. I like watching prosecco bubbles climb the edges of a flute, or hearing the sizzle of a shallot in hot olive oil. I like the oily pucker of an olive and the relief of sea salt on chocolate covered caramels. I love how sage and rosemary permeate a kitchen or fresh basil perfumes mozzarella. I love the artistry of a table & making sure each person has space. I like the forethought....thinking about who's coming & what they like & don't like, how I get to become more creative as a cook for friends who have allergies or are vegetarian or who are Muslim so don't eat pork. I love to anticipate.
When we have friends for dinner we start with a toast. As people gather toward the table Jonathan pours. Each person gets a crystal shot of pomegranate vodka and we raise our glasses at the same time. I love hearing Jonathan offer a toast at the beginning of the meal. A couple weeks ago it was a twist on Julius Ceasar's "veni, vidi, vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered) -- he told this little story & ended by toasting with "I came, I ate, I stayed" (in Latin). We were having dinner with 2 couples, old friends and new friends. It was the first time the 6 of us had all been together so it was perfect! A few years ago at a dinner with 3 couples who didn't know each other, Jonathan whipped out the New Testament & read that story of Jesus cursing the fig tree, and then toasted "for faith that can wither fig trees." !! That one made me nervous because it was so off the wall but conversation never lagged and now I recall it with a smile.
When I think about my growing up years, family circles around the kitchen table, or company in the living room, dessert & coffee in hand, invariably pop to mind quickly. I grew up with groups around the table & loved it. We had people for Sunday dinner virtually every week. My mom didn't especially love cooking but she cared widely for people. I learned from my mom about hospitality, about blends, about thinking about who would be present, about caring, and about ways of expressing myself in the midst of all that.
Conversation happens at tables. Life is shared. Cooking & eating is creating & creative space for me. It's narrative. It's creative. It's life and conversing. With every meal there's a story to create, a story to experience. The arc unfolds across the duration of the meal, each person at the table helping write it. The story cannot be controlled, it can only be joined in. Life and faith are no different.
Next week I'm having a cooking class in my kitchen with a few friends. We'll learn a few kitchen tricks and drink a glass of wine. Women who love cooking will be right at home, and those who consider themselves inexperienced & hopelessly lost cooks will go home with a trick up her sleeve & a guaranteed successful meal she can make at home. But mostly we'll do it together. We'll prepare a meal together, and we'll eat it together. Together being the operative word. I don't mind being alone. When I'm by myself I eat things like bread & cheese with sparkling water. Spinach leaves wilted with a drizzle of warm olive oil. Snap peas tossed in a pan with a little garlic. A scallop wrapped in proscuitto, roasted in lemon zest & black pepper. Being alone is no excuse for eating badly. Food speaks. But eating it together is better.
"This is the first salmon of the season. You all know the tradition that fishermen kiss the first fish. Anyone do that today?" My oldest son rolls his eyes, wanting only to eat. I hurry on.
"I'm going to read something before we start."
I pull my Bible onto the table, and before anyone can resist, I begin:
"This is from the book of Job:
-- Leslie Leyland Fields, "The Spirit of Food"
I'm not much of a baker...yeast freaks me out. But I love cooking, and meals are a favorite way for Jonathan & me to spend time with people. I always light candles and I know that the typical tea-light will last about 3 hours. When friends are over, we rarely leave the table before the tea-lights have burned to silent pools in their holders.
I'm reading a book right now called "The Spirit of Food." Each chapter is written by a different person, sharing stories about the intersections of faith & food in their lives. Some chapters are better than others. But I love the Introduction. It makes my very soul water. I've read lots of these lately -- The Spirit of Food edited by Leslie Leyland Fields; Take This Bread by Sara Miles; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver; and others. They make me feel alive. And they make me want to plan meals & invite friends & track down the best-tasting whole ingredients possible. Flavors & tastes fascinate me, plus it's just relaxing for me to chop an onion or mince garlic or stir a pot or flip french toast...and I love eating with friends so it works well!
My sister Melody is an incredible cook. She doesn't just understand gourmet, the science and the art of ingredients & mixing and combining, she was born as part of the definition. There are some people who learn & others who are. She is both. She is a student and a natural. I've learned a lot from her over the years. She puts together meals the mouth remembers. I love watching her kitchen turn into a tornado of flour dustings and spices and heavy knives on butcher block cutting boards, pottery bowls of spiced shrimp in the oven and mixing bowls of sliced peaches on the counter and double boilers of melting chocolate on the stove, her 3 kids swirling around the room. Sometimes, preparing for holidays or special occasions, we all eat dinner and then put the kids to bed, cooking more later in the middle of the night, talking all the while. The best conversations happen at those times. A meal at her home is a thing of delight. It feels like home to me. It feels like her. It feels like love.
I'm not a fancy cook. I don't have the patience for it. But I have a version of her passion. I like watching prosecco bubbles climb the edges of a flute, or hearing the sizzle of a shallot in hot olive oil. I like the oily pucker of an olive and the relief of sea salt on chocolate covered caramels. I love how sage and rosemary permeate a kitchen or fresh basil perfumes mozzarella. I love the artistry of a table & making sure each person has space. I like the forethought....thinking about who's coming & what they like & don't like, how I get to become more creative as a cook for friends who have allergies or are vegetarian or who are Muslim so don't eat pork. I love to anticipate.
When we have friends for dinner we start with a toast. As people gather toward the table Jonathan pours. Each person gets a crystal shot of pomegranate vodka and we raise our glasses at the same time. I love hearing Jonathan offer a toast at the beginning of the meal. A couple weeks ago it was a twist on Julius Ceasar's "veni, vidi, vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered) -- he told this little story & ended by toasting with "I came, I ate, I stayed" (in Latin). We were having dinner with 2 couples, old friends and new friends. It was the first time the 6 of us had all been together so it was perfect! A few years ago at a dinner with 3 couples who didn't know each other, Jonathan whipped out the New Testament & read that story of Jesus cursing the fig tree, and then toasted "for faith that can wither fig trees." !! That one made me nervous because it was so off the wall but conversation never lagged and now I recall it with a smile.
When I think about my growing up years, family circles around the kitchen table, or company in the living room, dessert & coffee in hand, invariably pop to mind quickly. I grew up with groups around the table & loved it. We had people for Sunday dinner virtually every week. My mom didn't especially love cooking but she cared widely for people. I learned from my mom about hospitality, about blends, about thinking about who would be present, about caring, and about ways of expressing myself in the midst of all that.
Conversation happens at tables. Life is shared. Cooking & eating is creating & creative space for me. It's narrative. It's creative. It's life and conversing. With every meal there's a story to create, a story to experience. The arc unfolds across the duration of the meal, each person at the table helping write it. The story cannot be controlled, it can only be joined in. Life and faith are no different.
Next week I'm having a cooking class in my kitchen with a few friends. We'll learn a few kitchen tricks and drink a glass of wine. Women who love cooking will be right at home, and those who consider themselves inexperienced & hopelessly lost cooks will go home with a trick up her sleeve & a guaranteed successful meal she can make at home. But mostly we'll do it together. We'll prepare a meal together, and we'll eat it together. Together being the operative word. I don't mind being alone. When I'm by myself I eat things like bread & cheese with sparkling water. Spinach leaves wilted with a drizzle of warm olive oil. Snap peas tossed in a pan with a little garlic. A scallop wrapped in proscuitto, roasted in lemon zest & black pepper. Being alone is no excuse for eating badly. Food speaks. But eating it together is better.
"This is the first salmon of the season. You all know the tradition that fishermen kiss the first fish. Anyone do that today?" My oldest son rolls his eyes, wanting only to eat. I hurry on.
"I'm going to read something before we start."
I pull my Bible onto the table, and before anyone can resist, I begin:
"This is from the book of Job:
But ask the animals and they will teach you,
Or the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
Or speak to the earth and it will teach you,
Or let the fish of the sea inform you.
Which of all these does not know
That the hand of the Lord has done this?
In his hand is the life of every creature
And the breath of all mankind.
Everyone listens, watching the food. I want to say far more, to deliver a sermon, but I stop, knowing the wafers of fish on our tongues will deliver its own message."
-- Leslie Leyland Fields, "The Spirit of Food"
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
A scandal afoot
Charissa Jones is one of the world's most amazing women. She is kind, fun, gracious, strong, gentle, and wise. To be with her is to experience the best of what it is to be a woman, to be a person. I also just simply enjoy her company. Charissa speaks from time to time at her church, a beautiful Episcopal parish in Seattle. Here (and below...if this isn't working) is a link to a sermon she gave in December. I always love hearing about women!
http://www.epiphanyseattle.org/media/2010Dec19/Sermon.mp3
http://www.epiphanyseattle.org/media/2010Dec19/Sermon.mp3
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