I’m so glad it’s time to talk dough. That’s right, bread! What can I say? I get the biggest kick out of making bread, and I’m beginning to delve into history, society, culture, and religion to supplement/flesh out my enamor. Sure, there is satisfaction solely in recipe: commitment to the perfect process of bringing bread from a few raw ingredients to the table. “Giddy” is an appropriate word, here. Then, there is a hunger for more than what the stomach alone can tell.
Did you know that kneading bread involves all of the acupuncture pressure points in your hands? In Arabic, the words commonly used for bread and life are one in the same. Bread is metaphor, it is poetry, it is sacred in some form or fashion within most religions. It is economy and nourishment, and I count it privilege to partake in an ancient recipe that is life for millions ( or taken for granted by millions ). So begins my bread blogging…
I found something beautiful tonight thanks to charity:water. Four children bake homemade bread in exchange for donations to provide water for another. (Here is “we belong to one another” in action.) Read more >>
Stay there, eat.
“Difficult and stressful breakthroughs occur most often when the release involves long-held feelings of sadness, grief, confusion, or another strong emotion that a person has carried unconsciously throughout his or her life.
‘Whenever something happens to us as a kid, our body is involved,’ says Michael Lee, founder of Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy[...]. ‘This is particularly true of trauma. The body comes to the defense of the whole being. In defending it, the body does things to stop the pain from being fully experienced.
‘Emotional pain is overwhelming for small children, because they don’t have the resources to deal with it,; he continues. ‘So the body shuts it off; [...]. But then the body keeps doing the physical protection even long after the situation has ended.’
Painful experiences, Lee adds, can range from small, acute ones to intense, chronic problems. Still, the mechanism at play is unclear: ‘We really don’t understand the body-memory thing,’ he says, ‘at least in Western terms.’”
“…[W]hat happens to the mind also happens to the body. In other words, if something is bothering you spiritually, emotionally, or mentally, it is likely to show up in your body. And as you work deeply with your body in yoga, emotional issues will likely come to the fore. ‘ source
This fascinates me.
Once, a friend asked, “Why is pigeon so emotional?” One of my favorite postures, pigeon digs into the uncomfortable depth of the psoas for the purpose of opening up the muscles around the hip that don’t get ENOUGH attention moving around, daily. I read once that the psoas, clutching the bottom vertebrae and wrapping around the side-hip, has been deemed the place in our body where fear is horded away. When we refuse to “deal,” or cannot, that fear or unbearable feeling has to go somewhere. Check your hips.
Check your shoulders. Check your neck. Check your chest.
We can literally become physically (in addition to the mental/emotional) crooked by the things that have happened to us on this earth that we have/had no control over, or, even, awareness of muscles taking the hits for us. The more the ‘thing’ is released, opened, let go..the more we relax, rest, be. Please understand that I am not harping on this with means to say, “the cure for your ‘issues’ is to stretch a little more.” Not so! I don’t have answers for any of us, there.
“Do what you can do,” and G-d will do what you cannot do; which still leaves us with a responsibility to take care of these vessels while we have them. Just, whoa so cool, to me, how the wheels turn beneath the surface, with or without our participation. I don’t know about you, but I want to get in on that in whatever way that I can as long as there is a ‘for better or for worse’ at stake, here. Bring on the breakthrough.
Season
April 26, 2012
I have no green thumb, but I’m going for one and it all starts here. I am more than delighted to sit outside and hang out with my plants and my silly cat, after work. Nurturing these little containers on the balcony has become one of my favorite things to do; I’m just short of introducing my Rosemary to Chopin. Yes, yikes might be appropriate.
Three days until 24.
I want to say so many things that are bound to wear out many ears, but thats what a blog is for, right? Who is reading me anyway. I want to be so stinking transparent for once, as walls continue to crumble during this season.
Thank goodness.
Something Good About This Holiday.
March 19, 2012
“I bind myself today, -
To the power of God to guide me,
The might of God to uphold me,
The wisdom of God to teach me,
The eye of God to watch over me,
The ear of God to bear me,
The Word of God to speak for me,
The hand of God to protect me,
The way of God to lie before me,
The shield of God to shelter me,
The host of God to defend me
Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me, Christ within me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ at my right, Christ at my left,
Christ in breadth, Christ in length, Christ in height”
-St. Patrick
Go tell it.
March 17, 2012
I’ve never climbed that high in the sky. I’ve only set eyes, not feet, on the mountains, but can tell that it is only – mysteriously – natural to throw a party in song and dance when there’s a whole, geological world wonder beneath you.
It is awe-inspiring to think that there are places in this world where you get used to the echo of distant screaming, not because of hostility or terror, but because someone has finally reached the top of a mountain.
Plucking
February 29, 2012
“Alouette, gentille Alouette,”
Every time I hear this, I hear Grammy teaching it to me as we wended aisles of Wal-Mart many moons ago. What a memory sparked by a commercial jingle.
When she passed away in December, I was on my lunch break, sitting in the parking lot of Whole Foods. I went inside, dished out some carrot ginger soup from the bar, checked out, sat in the cafe and wrote down every single memory of her that I will never forget on a slim brown napkin.
Alouette, je te plumerai.
Balumtineth Day – Two
February 14, 2012
I don’t know about you, but I’m going to take my liberties and start this St. Valentine’s Day with a breakfast of chocolate, almonds, peanut butter cookie, and Dave Barnes. Perfect combination for a grey Tuesday. The riddles on my little foil-wrapped treasures speak over this day with encouragement. I flatten them out with my fingernail the way Grammy used to…
Believe in those you love.
Celebrate Friends and Family.
Go where your heart takes you.
Exercise your heart today.
There may or may not have been duplicates that I will not mention. 
Nonetheless, I am feeling so much better today than before today, and that is a blessing; my silver hearts will do well to multiply it should I heed their advice. I’ll do my best.
So, friends and family, the day is finally here!
Le Menu
“Pacifico!” Beer Bread[sticks] for the sake of
- Charred out Poblanos blended with the usual melt-your-face good-a fondue -
courtesy of Dave Matthews
- Busty broth fondue palette for our main course under the Dreaming Tree -
a good use for that left over Italian sausage in the freezer, I believe..
Cheers, crazy kids.
Moving On Up
February 5, 2012
Oh man. It’s been so long since I’ve done this, I’m not sure I remember how to. So, I’m going to think in very short sentences, and ramble in long ones, we’ll start from the beginning.
“Have you ever wondered what caterpillars think?”
Yesterday, I started writing this post. Yesterday, when I looked in the mirror, there was no spark in the person looking back at me, which made this post a collection of the most depressing things to think and write to you about; and yesterday night, I realized that something has changed about me that needs to change back, today.
I realized, and by realized, I mean, admitted that I am stuck in the hamster wheel of being stressed and worried, but call everything OK. I am of the belief (thanks to the mentoring of pastors Chan, Chandler, and Bell to name a few) that the thing called ‘happiness’ has insignificant value in comparison to the deeper, lasting thing called JOY in this lifetime and beyond; so I don’t waste much time revolving around the tree of being temporarily “unhappy” and/or stressed, because the root beneath it is what I’m after. Sword ready.
For a few months, I have been slipping off, thinking of places in my life. One minute I’m home, the next I’m back in NOLA. (and while I’m on that topic, can I get an order of Audubon Park? Yes, all natural wildlife, please. Delivery. Thanks.)
I don’t know why I go back to these mental places; is there unfinished business? Did I miss something, here, that I need to move forward? In a breath of prayer – admittance of the wheel-bound state I am in – I hear G-D speaking: The wheel [I have found] has nothing to do with a where, or a who or whos, or the whats associated. Nothing. Why do I keep looking back, in my mind, for today’s peace? The marathon.
When I look at the person I was when I moved, I remember the freakin’ marathon it took to get here.
My store in NOLA looks like this, read by me: From day number one, I was scared…*plus* expletives! I was more alone than I have ever felt alone, spiritually malnourished on most days, and I was way more lost than found on my happy trails post-graduation. But I never wanted to sit on any of these things. I was SO scared, that I forced myself into life every single day. I was bent on filling the empty spaces and figuring out who I was, and what I was going to do, and where I fit in the big picture with…G-D. I started this blog…
With all of the untied ends and questions that sent me to sleep in that fear, at the end of the day, I had actually found a way of living life that I could flourish in, and I didn’t even know it (until now).
For the past few months, there has been no guardian plan or idea as ever before and that’s oK. It’s ok until the wheel becomes the thing, turning me around in the same ol same ol and I’m in for the ride unless intent and gusto get me off and out. G-D reminded me last night that I have to do it everyday, all over again. I go back to ‘me’ in New Orleans, because I made something out of my life and breath and all I want is to do that today in whatever way that I can, and I haven’t been. No riding it out.
Let’s get back to living life, shall we? Hallelujah.
Because, you see, there are things that make living life into a festival, the way that it should be. Like a real sunrise, not a routine sunrise. That’s what I keep looking back for, and now it’s time to bring it here to this time and place. Which brings my Acts 17 back to the front burner, where it has been cooking for a season.
“…and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.”
Or, as the ESV puts it, “that they should [...] feel their way toward him and find him.” *warm fuzzy*
Chan says that the best we can do in this life is to find what it means to be faithful to God in “whatever time and culture we have been placed” or something like that. I’m on board with whatever text is used to say that we are not alone, and that we are surrounded by G-D wherever we are. That there is a marathon to join and it is everyday and it is good.
I’ve just purchased Forgotten God as an audiobook. I know, right? Two years after I began this WordPress spawn that was meant for the journey through a cocoon…there is nothing too new.
Bread is rising in this kitchen, so life is good in my opinion. It really is.
There is creation to be had, and with grace, we’ll find our freedom in it.
Currently chewing on: Forgotten God, and this link.
Currently rocking: “Turn Into,” “Give a Little Love,” “Young Blood” and oh my goodness this version of “The Times They Are a Changin‘” by Flogging Molly.
Currently Lusting at: Pioneer Woman’s Cherry Cake Pudding, among other concoctions.
It’s almost been a year; time to face the giants.
November 19, 2011
I can’t believe it’s already been one year since I uprooted life in Louisiana to move to Dallas. I wanted to put together a list of everything that has happened in the life of me since I moved to DFW last November, so here we are!
Then raise your glass(es); here’s to many more.
