Traveling

I’m on the road again (hmm, that would make a good song), and have a brief minute to check in with my blogging friends.

My day began at 3:40 this morning, when I was awakened by fierce winds rushing up the human-made canyon of 113th Street in New York. It was a spooky experience, and for a minute or two I was captivated by the startling thought that I had to rush outside to feed the evaporator with sap.

Oh, right. I’m not in Brewster this morning. I don’t need to check anything, take Simon out, find my heavy wool socks to protect my feet from what must be a verrrrry cold morning out there.

I lay there in the dark, listening to the irregular howl of air. Slowly thoughts drifted into silence, and I seemed to loose the sense of “me” and “the wind”. Instead there was an “us” that awakened within — the windandI, a singularity of both frightening power and deep stillness.

Pre-dawn moments are often rich with that kind of awakened awareness. Don’t misunderstand; a felt sense of the Sacred can be more than spooky, it can scare the hell out of you. Literally.  Which is not that bad a thing, of course … but it can be wildly unnerving.

What is so amazing to me, the comfort girl of all time, is how much I love the freedom and richness of those awakened, unsettling moments. Life in its deepest reality moves us beyond fear, breathing into us the most delicious, vibrant aliveness. 

Not a bad awakening for 3:40 AM. 

Night Sky Treat

Wednesday evening we will be treated to a third total lunar eclipse in a year! Since we have a Full Moon Fireside event that night, we’re hoping for clear skies and great viewing along with our drum circle, meditation and discussion.

I always wonder what our ancestors thought when a total eclipse occurred. They were all avid sky-watchers; they navigated, predicted weather, planted, mated and who knows what else based on what they observed above their heads. So surely a total lunar eclipse would have been a Very Big Deal.

Total lunar eclipses occur at odd intervals, so drawing conclusions about their import must have been a bit crazy-making. Given its eerie blood-red tinge at totality, when the moon is crouched in the darkest part of Earth’s shadow, there must have been some pretty wild decisions made about what was happening — or would happen soon,

On the other hand, maybe they had a deep, sub-conscious understanding that there was no danger involved at all, and just sat there watching it for hours, awed.

That’s what I plan to do.

The magic of light

All during the year we can sense the tilt of the Earth on its journey around the sun as we sit in chapel. I can fairly well predict the time by the sun now; I know the few days when the rising sun will warm me through the southeast window during Lauds in late winter; I know when it has been dark long enough to signal the end of evening meditation, just before the gong confirms it.

In early January, the sun is still quite low in the southern skies. On Epiphany, the Feast of Lights, I was treated to this glorious site when I entered chapel in late afternoon. Not a regular chapel time for us, I wouldn’t have seen this if I hadn’t left something behind earlier in the day, and only remembered its location around 4:00 pm.

This beautiful picture couldn’t have been engineered; only the chance sun location at that time of year, the time of day, a fortuitous gap in the cloud cover, the lovely altar arrangement (thank you, Suzanne!), and my faulty memory combining at one rare moment made this possible.

You know, the Universe didn’t have to be the kind of place where beauty can surprise you at any turn and practically knock your eyes out. But it is.

Wow.

Pangea Day - May 10, 2008 … will you be there?

Sharing

We eat very well here (very, very well). We grow most of our own food, in our own soil, with the sunshine and rain that falls in this particular place. We also have our own collection of little creatures that, one way or another, participate in the Bluestone Food Chain.

Yesterday, Sr. HM braved a heavy downpour (which followed a respectable snowfall) to harvest some of the root crops that do just fine when left in the ground over the winter. It’s something of a natural refrigerator. No fuss during the heavy harvest-and-preserve days of summer and fall; then any time in the winter just pop out the back door, over to the parsnip bed, and voila, fresh veggies.

Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work. What she found was one fabulous red carrot and a whole lot of veggie shells, like these. Our little buddies the voles have been well-fed this winter, just popping out their own back door (or more likely digging a wee tunnel from the dining room to the yummy root above) to do a little harvesting of their own.

They beat us to the parsnips and carrots, munching happily on the delicious roots, safe and dry and well-protected from the storms that raged above ground.

They also engineered a tunnel exit about two inches from the spot where we place the duck food each day. How convenient is that? About as convenient as a MacDonald’s drive-through window, though this food is about a thousand percent more healthy for them to eat. But things are also a bit more dangerous for them at the duck pan; if one of the ducks happens to be standing right there and notices the potential food thief, the little diner will quickly become the dinee.

That’s how a proper food system works. The plants dine on tiny soil microbes. The vole eats the plant. The duck eats the vole. The humans eat the duck egg. Eventually, something will be dining on my own remains, and that’s just fine with me.

I can’t get too crabby about voles eating from the garden. Or from the duck pan, for that matter. Food is food; it doesn’t have names stamped on it, and it shouldn’t be locked up, which isn’t good for the food or for the consumers. We’re not starving. Neither are the voles.

Seems pretty fair to me.

Ash Wednesday musing

Lent began today, much too early in the year. The skies have been dark, the weather damp and too warm for winter but perfect for a cave, which is fine, since Lent is “cave time”. We bury ourselves in a way, moving among our duties with pronounced quiet, focused attention, prayer; we take on a more somber diet; the TV will sit silently for weeks to come. For now, we are a Lenten people, heading for an uncertain end.

It was about this time of year when my dear friend, Marie, was diagnosed with liver cancer. She’s been on my mind lately; perhaps because she was such a lover of Corgis, and we now have Lady, our own resident Corgi, to remind me of Marie’s little Cricket.

I become a Lenten person whenever I think of Marie, remembering our last days together. I understand just about everything about her physical death and almost nothing about her soul’s journey into the future. But during those final days, I could feel an ambiguous promise heading her way. The signs were gentle, small, quiet — but evidence of the promise in her unfamiliar destiny was there, if one slipped between the long moments of her dying, where listening requires every skill of the whole being.

When Marie finally died, leaving her damaged body to Earth’s care, the weather had transformed from the gray chill of winter to the glory of late spring. That is how I hope my own death will be — the time when I know more certainly that my death will come soon will be a Lenten time, but the death itself will open into a glorious, fecund awareness of the One God-ness that permeates absolutely everything.

Every Lent, then, becomes a little practice for death, every Easter a murmur of the vast futurescape ahead that teems with possibility. Whether we consider ourselves religious or not, this time of year begs us to attend carefully to the slowly changing season. Soon, soon we will each emerge into the glory of a mysterious future.

I wish you all great stillness in the cave-days ahead. Slip between the moments of your own days, attentive to the wisdom that dwells in time-outside-of-time.

Locavoristic

Nah, it’s not really a word. But I liked the sound of it, and of course I invented a definition to keep it company: “The nature of one who eats food grown and processed within approximately one hundred miles of its domicile.” So most animals (the non-captive ones, anyway) are locavoristic.

Technically, I suppose some animals range naturally beyond a hundred-mile limit. The definition should probably not really be about distance, but rather about an area within which the animal in question can obtain food under its own steam. Of course, that would really limit humans today, since we go very few places under our own steam, and most of those trips are within a single building. I’m sticking with the generally-accepted 100-mile range for now.

Humans are an entirely different proposition for other reasons, too. Those who follow a “Western diet”, and that’s most of us these days, eat mostly chemically-”enhanced” edible food-like substances (again, thank you Michael Pollan for this painfully accurate phrase), nearly all of which travel thousands of miles from the point of production to find their way to someone’s table. And a shockingly large percentage of those foods contains some form of high fructose corn syrup. Not a nice thing for bodies.

Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, which you should read for several thousand good reasons, will give you an excellent explanation for how humans left healthy foodways in the dusty past, working long hours instead to make enough money to not only purchase huge (unsatisfying and unhealthy) quantities of frankenfood, but also to pay medical and insurance institutions to try to repair the increasingly obvious damage from such a weird diet.

Earth creatures are made to thrive in a food system that uses and respects every aspect of their own bioregion: soil, water, weather, and billions of creatures, from microbes to bears, who contribute to the quality of the food. Non-human creatures eat that way without even thinking about it; in fact, it’s their only option. Humans, though, can choose to eat foods from anyplace on the entire planet, and that’s what most of us do; rarely do we choose to seek out locally- (and usually organically-)grown food.

So, let’s say you have been convinced by this mini-rant to find out more about locavoristic behavior; just how would you go about it? Here are some beginners:

• Read Pollan’s book, and pass it along for others to read
• Visit Deb Molinaro’s Locavores blog, an entertaining and enlightening site about one woman’s journey into locavorism — another made-up word, but I’m sure you know what it means — including links to a number of local food providers (particularly handy if you live in the general area about mid-way up the NY/CT border).
• Spend a little time finding out what foods might be found in your own locavore range if you don’t live near Deb. Locavores are an increasing presence on the Internet, so your search should produce results with a minimum of effort on your part. Then visit a few of these wonderful folks and sample their goods.

Before you know it, you may be locavoristic, too. Oh, one more tidbit of really good news about becoming a locavore? The food is absolutely, undeniably delicious.

Sun Pillars

Photo credit: Serge Walczak
Bossonnens, Switzerland 2007

Last week we were treated to a spectacular sun pillar. A pillar occurs when flat ice crystals align to perfectly reflect the sun’s rays in a distinct column, usually in cold weather and at sunrise or sunset.

Sadly my camera was more than twenty minutes away from my hands—our local pillar lasted just over fifteen. Though the beautiful picture above wasn’t taken in Brewster, NY, it does give you an idea of how unusual this phenomenon appears.

Nature often causes me to catch my breath, forget everything else and just watch — yet one more opportunity to be struck dumb in the presence of the holy One.

Ice Storm

Friday afternoon we had a brief, and thankfully not too damaging, ice storm. Once again our woods were transformed. The bird house and mail box dripped with icy lace, the white pines and hemlocks drooped with the weight of frozen water, the branches were sheathed in glass.

It was enchanting. Why would I ever want to watch TV when I can just walk out my door and be amazed?

 

Artisan Bread, the easy way: A book review

I love baking bread, and I’ve made traditional (knead-and-rise) loaves for years. It’s a “task” I truly enjoy, and I look forward to the occasions when I have time to spend this way.

A friend of ours recently visited with gifts in hand. One was a book about creating artisan breads in five minutes a day. Uh-huh.

I read the book, though, because I wanted to see just what the authors were hawking as “artisan bread”. Turns out they have put one heck of a lot of effort into their process; and, sure enough, it only takes about five minutes of your time. There is rise time (which varies with the bread type) and bake time, too — but then your body doesn’t need to hang around for that.

These breads require no kneading (at all, and I’m not kidding on this one), no proofing of the yeast, about 30-60 seconds to shape a loaf … five minutes of your precious time (if you goof around a bit) from refrigerator (where your amazing dough lives for up to two weeks), through your oven, and into your mouth.

This, a loaf of European peasant bread, was my second. The first came out rather flat and dense, which I discovered was my own fault. My dough was a little too wet, and I had inadvertently used a very high (21g) protein flour, where these recipes call for flour with a significantly lower range of 10g-12g. Makes a difference.

But my error was easy to repair; I just worked in a bit of the lower-protein flour before shaping, which added all of one minute to my effort and resulted in the taste treat you see here. If you click on this picture you can see the wonderful, rich texture of this bread.

If you are a baker, or someone who enjoys a marvelous loaf of artisan bread, this book is a must-have for your library. If you’ve been scared off of bread-baking with horror stories of achieving the perfect “feel” of dough, this is your book. Honestly, you need to know nothing more than how to measure four ingredients, pre-heat an oven and time the baking!

A baking stone is probably a must-have, too, as well as a pizza peel (a wooden “paddle” that allows you to slide your soon-to-be artisan loaf onto the hot baking stone), both of which can be purchased for about $50. Both are useful for many other things, too. The stone helps regulate the oven heat more evenly, for example. And hang the peel on your kitchen wall to impress your friends: it will, trust me. Besides, there are pizza bread recipes in this book, too, so you can actually use the peel to slide those incredibly delicious pizzas onto the baking stone for perfect pizza every time.

OK, here’s the poop: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François (photography by Mark Luinenburg). St. Martin’s Press, November 2007. ISBN-10: 0312362919, ISBN-13: 978-0312362911

Happy baking!!