getting intimate with the ingredients of life

"So many creative pursuits demand a period of solitude for the germination of projects - writing, music-making, painting. The same can be said of cooking. Aside from music, food might be the most social of those pursuits, but it is that time alone that allows us to develop an intimacy with our subject - here, the raw ingredients that will become a meal. Without distractions, we pay closer attention to the behavior of our materials, and gain a nuanced understanding of their qualities and how they come together to create a dish...

"Cutting pounds of carrots, potatoes, parsnips, or squash asks that the cook yield a little to the process - those tubers don't offer themselves up easily. And that's where the process becomes a hypnotic, almost trance-like activity. There is the gentle resistance of the fibrous vegetable and the slow, careful push of the knife, over and over...

"Those moments to myself, lost in the rhythms of chopping, prepping and combining, are often what I crave most from cooking, whether it's for thirty minutes, three hours or all of a Sunday. Later the house may be filled with friends and family. There's little that I love more than that ritual - spending time with the people I care about, eating together. But I relish the time prior to the meal equally, that hushed, engrossed period where I am alone with my materials."

words by Kimberley Hasselbrink
from Kinfolk magazine, volume two

amen.  i think that's what i've been doing over the past few months, in my little experiments with banana and pumpkin bread and muffins, with squash stir-fry, with sweet potato curry-fry, with red pepper/tomato/basil sauces, with blackberry/red wine or blackberry/strawberry/peach sauces, with fresh tomato/green pepper salsa, with taking some avocado and salt and a lemon and adding dollops of hot pepper sauce to make guacamole, or adding tahini and garlic and olive oil and cumin and coriander to make a mediterrannean style dip, as i did last night for our Sunday night community meal with dear friends...

and these videos are some of my new favorite images of food in motion, ingredients blended with beauty and imagination. watch below, then go Google 'kinfolk videos' for more of these addictively simple yet luscious celebrations of the earthy materials, weathered hands, and vibrant communities of living things and beings that feed us...

lenten.prayer.and.art.therapy.

Catch Me in My Scurrying

Catch me in my anxious scurrying, Lord,
and hold me in this Lenten season:
hold my feet to the fire of your grace
    and make me attentive to my mortality
        that I may begin to die now
            to those things that keep me
                from living with you
                    and with my neighbors on this earth;
            to grudges and indifference,
                to certainties that smother possibilities,
                    to my fascination with false securities,
                        to my addiction to sweatless dreams,
                            to my arrogant insistence on how it has to be;
            to my corrosive fear of dying someday
                which eats away the wonder of living this day,
                    and the adventure of losing my life
                        in order to find it in you.

Catch my in my aimless scurrying, Lord,
and hold me in this Lenten season:
hold my heart to the beat of your grace
    and create in me a resting place,
        a kneeling place,
            a tip-toe place
where I can recover from the dis-ease of my grandiosities
    which fill my mind and calendar with busy self-importance,
that I may become vulnerable enough
    to dare intimacy with the familiar,
        to listen cup-eared for your summons,
            and to watch squint-eyed for your crooked finger
                in the crying of a child,
                    in the hunger of the street people,
                        in the fear of the contagion of terrorism in all people,
                in the rage of those oppressed because of sex or race,
                    in the smoldering resentments of exploited third world nations,
                        in the sullen apathy of the poor and ghetto-strangled people,
                            in my lonely doubt and limping ambivalence;
and somehow,
    during this season of sacrifice,
        enable me to sacrifice time
            and possessions
                and securities,
to do something...
    something about what I see,
        something to turn the water of my words
            into the wine of will and risk,
                into the bread of blood and blisters,
                    into the blessedness of deed,
                        of a cross picked up,
                            a saviour followed.

Catch me in my mindless scurrying, Lord,
and hold me in this Lenten season:
hold my spirit to the beacon of your grace
    and grant me light enough to walk boldly,
        to feel passionately,
            to love actively;
grant me peace enough to want more,
    to work for more
        and to submit to nothing less,
           and to fear only you...
               only you!
Bequeath me not becalmed seas,
    slack sails and premature benedictions,
        but breathe into me a torment,
            storm enough to make within myself
                and from myself,
                    something...
something new,
    something saving,
        something true,
a gladness of heart,
    a pitch for a song in the storm,
        a word of praise lived,
            a gratitude shared,
                a cross dared,
                    a joy received.

Poem-prayer by: Ted Loder, from the book Guerrillas of Grace

peace art: watercolor wildness

"okay, so you tried spreading the paint around with a dry brush, you know how that feels...now see what happens when you add more water...see how the color moves on the paper...now try making a straight line...now a wavy line...now make a pool of plain water on part of your paper and put a drop of paint in it, watch what happens...and what does it look like if you dip your brush in water, then in a color, then in water again, and let it drip onto the paper? how about if you take a wad of paper towel and blot it on? what if you wet the paper towel a little first? okay now with your brush again, try mixing colors, either on your paper or in the palette...try with more water, less water...just experiment! see what you can do with it! all the different possibilities..."

patiently and energetically my fellow volunteer and passionate teaching artist, Miss N., gave these instructions and modeled what she meant, as the children listened and followed along at our most recent session of the Camden Peace Art Project. i followed, too! i never knew there were so many variations of techniques and textures to be explored in the wonderful world of watercolors.

and afterwards we went home and were somehow inspired to cut apart N.'s creations from that session, rearrange them on poster-board, and then she painted more watercolor between them to bring them together, and inscribed Langston Hughes poems over them. what wisdom. what peace. what wildness. :)

lately.life.loves.mystery.

so here's how Life's been loving me lately:

- two and a half weeks in lovely Pennsylvania, visiting friends and helping out at the Holy Donut [the office building where the American Baptist International Ministries mission center is housed, which happens to be shaped like a giant Lifesaver] and learning to drive in a city again and helping out/enjoying Frazer Mennonite Church's annual Peace Festival, and hearing a friend preach and another friend teach Spanish and another friend serenade me with her glorious voice and guitar, and interviewing at Franciscan Volunteer Ministries (FVM) sites in Philadelphia, Camden, and Wilmington, and attending a peace theology conference at Eastern University, and meeting with the human resources rep of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), and making Indian food with a friend, and enjoying freedom, and encouraging peace, and listening to jazzy ladies sing in my car on my solo road trip back to Wisconsin

- acceptance into the year-long program with FVM to be part of their inner-city ministries, living in prayerful community with a few other volunteers and working probably in some combination of teaching ESL, engaging in community organization, serving meals or distributing food to families, giving kids and youth things to do after school, and possibly starting a choir in a women's prison. insh'allah/si Dios quiere ;-)

- dialogues with a couple of other organizations about getting applications in process for possibilities after this year

- safety in bringin me back to Green Lake ;-)

- summer haircut, so light off the shoulders!

- sweet visits with friends from Taylor who stayed with me here for a week! and bittersweet goodbyes.

- grace to calm screaming toddlers who miss their mommies while i take care of them during the day at the Children's Center. "Miss Anna, um, can I go poddy? Miss Anna, can we go outside? Miss Anna, can you read me this? Miss Anna, he hit me... Miss Anna, bye, see you later!" praying peace, precious ones.

- i just found this quote while browsing the website of Christa Wells, whose Frame the Clouds album has been on repeat on my mp3 player these days:

"I want to be known (if I am to be known at all) as one of the great lovers of life. I want to make love to these days in new--or at least tender and timeless--ways, to make the trees sigh and the sky kneel for a closer view. (If a few others close their eyes and smile for a few moments with me, it is enough.) I want to dip this paintbrush pen into the best places of my heart--those places I have all but forgotten--and paint pictures that might convince even me that I was not born in vain.

We will write to go about the work of saving our lives.

Tentatively, new words come like a still small voice. This is my unspoken request. By some miracle, I ask that my life be a work of art, even if I never see it as such..." ~Linford Detweiler

- so much is still mysterious about my life, about how it intersects with other lives on this planet, about how to understand and connect with the One who is Life and Light and Love and the only true Peace for us all; there is so much i don't know. but i am willing to wait, to live in the unknown, the 'not yet'... and to keep on enjoying the journey, celebrating the adventure, and being precariously perched in the blessed mystery