I’m not a big fan of quoting things in a post without making comments of my own. Anything I might post I probably found somewhere else online and is easily available to anyone. But I saw at the Writer’s Alamanac that today is Stanley Kunitz‘ birthday. He would have been 103. He lived to be 100; he hasn’t been gone long. I met him several years ago at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival (which I wish I could get to again this year). His most popular poem, I suppose, is called “The Layers.” I have come back to it again and again because it has much to say to me. Tonight, I offer it without further comment as my birthday gift to a great poet.
The Layers
I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings. Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered! How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? In a rising wind the manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face. yet I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever I need to go, and every stone on the road precious to me. In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: “Live in the layers, not on the litter.” Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written, I am not done with my changes.
As I listened to the news today, I realized our church has a choice to make.
What caught my ear was the story about the man who walked into a church in Knoxville, Tennessee and opened fire on the congregation. He left a four page note in his truck, part of which said he thought he had lost his job because of “liberals and gays.” The Knoxville Police Chief said:
It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that, and his stated hatred of the liberal movement.
My first emotion was one of deep sadness for the dear people in that congregation. As I drove on, I began to think of the similarities between the Knoxville Church and our congregation here is Durham:
college town
Southern city
small congregation in a somewhat secluded setting
liberal congregation
and I thought, “We have a choice to make as to whether we will be led, in the coming days, to act on our calling or play to our fears since, if the zip code had been different, that church could have easily been ours.
I was teaching at Winchester High School when the shootings at Columbine took place. In that instance, similarly, we were the same high school in a different zip code. One of the things I loved about the school was the corner on the second floor where all the kids threw their book bags when they got to school. To me, it signified the comfort and safety level of the students. They didn’t expect anyone to steal stuff and, for the most part, no one did. The first day of school after Columbine, the edict came that glorious stack of bags had to be removed because it was a security threat. In their fear, the administration removed the best monument to safety and community on the campus. It didn’t help and it didn’t go unnoticed.
About a week later, one of the other English teachers handed me an essay from one of her students. He was a senior who, for as many days as he had walked into the high school, always wore a long black coat. For that matter, all of his clothes were black. He was reclusive, cynical, intelligent, and often hard to reach. He admitted to all of those things as he described himself in the essay. He also went on to say as he watched the stories on the two boys who did the shootings in Colorado, he was struck by how the descriptions the reporters gave of the boys could very easily have been said of him. And he wondered out loud why he didn’t want to come to school and shoot everyone. He then went on to talk about the teachers who pushed him to be a better writer, about the art and drama classes, about the school community that made him feel safe.
He didn’t say anything about getting rid of the book bags.
Our little church is a wonderful and wounded collection of people who are deeply committed to our God and our city. We are a liberal congregation – on purpose. Many of our community have ended up there because it is a fellowship that feels safe and welcoming. We need to choose to understand our congregation is to be relished rather than defended. If we start posting deacons at the door to keep an eye out for threatening looking people, we will not be taking precautions, but we will be losing part of ourselves. Every Sunday morning, Ginger says, “As we say here at Pilgrim and in the UCC, ‘Whoever you are and wherever you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.’”
Whoever you are. Those words are our stack of book bags. We can’t afford to scare ourselves out of that invitation.
One of the stories that sticks with me is of a missionary to Lebanon who was in the States and preparing to return to Beirut. After a speaking engagement, someone said to her, “We will pray for you to be safe.”
“Oh, no,” answered the missionary. “If you pray for our safety, we might never get back to Lebanon. It is not safe. Pray that we will be faithful.”
This Sunday, and the ones to follow, we have a choice to make: be fearful or be faithful. Let us all pray for one another.
I read a thought-provoking post this morning over at The Other Jesus. Greg Garrett, the author, is an acquaintance from years past and a good writer and thinker. His words have kept me thinking all day:
At the risk of beating a dead horse, faith is not really faith if it’s easy. What the Christian tradition teaches us about faith is that we are called to exercise it, that we are called to try to believe in worthy stories—like the story of America, for one.
I appreciate his call for us to be diligently hopeful and faithful and I don’t think my faith in Christ compels me to pledge allegiance to the United States of America. Faith and patriotism are unrelated. And I’m talking about more than the usual discussion of separation of church and state, which mostly revolves around institutional hot button issues. On a personal level, which – for me – includes our local church communities, the call to discipleship – to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God – means to be unaffiliated, ultimately, because it’s too easy for us to make excuses and allowances for “our” side. If, for example, another country was holding hundreds of Americans in the same manner as we are keeping those at Guantánamo imprisoned would we say, “It’s just how they have to act in a post-9/11 world?” Would we sit as quietly as we have for the last seven years?
The answer to both questions is, “No.”
The kind of strange thing is Greg and I kind of end up in the same place, even traveling different roads. Hear him again:
This year, I want to challenge people of faith, whatever their political affiliations, to ask themselves whether Jesus, a victim of political imprisonment, torture, and execution, would be for or against political imprisonment, torture, and execution. I want to ask people of faith to be a people of hope as well. I want to ask us to love, to serve, to witness to the best that is in us, and not the worst.
I agree and I would add that the best in us will not be found in our government and political structure. Hear me clearly: I plan to vote and I hope Barack Obama is our next president for a number of reasons and how we love and serve and witness as people of faith does not swing on who moves into the White House. God is not on our side. The last best example of Christianity in action, on a national scale, was the Civil Rights Movement. Things changed in this country because people of faith, mostly coming from the poor and marginalized in American society, marched with King and others in God’s name, sitting at lunch counters until they were beaten down, choosing not to answer violence with violence, and bringing an unjust nation to a new realization of itself. The legislation and cultural changes that have come since would never have come about had our government and the rich and powerful who influence it most had been left to their own devices.
It seems to me that the church has been most effective down through history when it has been farthest from the halls of wealth and influence. Sure, the institutional church rose to power once Constantine baptized everyone in his army and made Christianity the state religion, but power and effectiveness, in terms of the Community of God we are called to build, are not the same thing. To follow Jesus’ call to discipleship is, in part, to come to the understanding that “Christian nation” is an oxymoron. We are called to be the church — not the country — of Jesus Christ. If we want to know where the hope for the next generation is gestating, we would do well to turn our gaze from Washington, or from the pristine suburbs that house many of our most beautiful (and expensive) religious buildings, and start looking for faith in the places Martin looked for those who pledged their allegiance to God: among the homeless, the undocumented, the displaced, the marginalized, the wounded. You know – the people Jesus healed and loved.
In Jesus’ parable of the final scene when nations stand before God, some were affirmed for the way they had lived out God’s call:
I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was homeless and you gave me a room, I was shivering and you gave me clothes, I was sick and you stopped to visit, I was in prison and you came to me.’
“Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’ (The Message)
The second part of the parable reverses the story and chastises those who didn’t take time or resources to care for those in need. Perhaps in a country – our country – where, for example, 47 million people live without health insurance, we would do well to look across oceans and borders to learn from the rest of the world. We are the most powerful nation on earth, and we are not the world’s last best hope. We may be able to win more gold medals than anyone at the Olympics next month, but we are not Number One in many categories, particularly those that have more to do with compassion than competition. We are better tellers than listeners. We prefer to be in charge rather than in community. As Christians who also happen to be Americans, we do well to remember we are called to be God’s people, not act as though we are the Chosen Ones.
Greg closes his post with good questions:
Let’s show the world what it means to be a people of integrity, faith, and hope.
If not now, when?
If not us, who?
The questions are powerful to me because I choose to read them as a pilgrim, not a patriot.
For days in a row, now, the sun has shone brightly on me, making me begin to believe it is summer: a season of light. I finished two two projects in the house yesterday; today I painted a room that has been waiting for weeks to be a different color, and tended to my garden, watering the small green tomatoes that hold such promise. I even made a soup from left overs in the fridge. I feel awake, aware, and even useful, and I find it hard not to wait for the other foot to fall – the foot that stomps daylight into darkness and kicks me into free fall, into the days of unpainted rooms, undone projects, and unplanted gardens. “How do you feel?” the doctor asked. “Like myself,” I answered. Why, then, do I let myself believe the lie that is my depression, the lie that says it can permanently change the weather of my heart when I know it will come (and go) like the Dixie storms that punctuate my Carolina afternoons; the dark thunder clouds are real and they are temporary; the sun, however comes up every morning — it’s true.
At the risk of sounding like a lackey for the Durham Chamber of Commerce, I want to talk about our great neighborhood. Our street is actually on the border between three neighborhoods – Old West Durham (where we actually reside), Watts-Hillandale, and Walltown. Our local weekly newspaper, The Independent, publishes a list of The Best of the Triangle. Here is everything that made the list that is within walking distance (I’m talking three or four blocks here) of our house.
Dogstar Tattoo (finalist) Best tattoo studio Best place to get pierced
Whole Foods Best retail cheese selection Best green business Best place to people watch (finalist) Best outdoor dining in Durham County Best business lunch Best salad Best comfort food (finalist) Best brunch/breakfast (finalist) Best bagel (finalist)
Dain’s Place — I can vouch for all of these Best burger in Durham County Best neighborhood bar in Durham County (finalist) Best place to watch televised ACC in Durham County (finalist) Best bar food in Durham County (finalist)
From burgers to bicycles, tattoos to tiramisu, with all kinds of ethnic food, coffee shops, an old school pool hall, and a great pub with a great burger, all I can say is I love where I live.
One of the food blogs I read regularly is Smitten Kitchen. I don’t know who writes it, but it is among the most beautiful and accessible of the blogs that take food seriously. In one of her recent posts, she asked people to talk about why they were afraid to cook. Her list set me to thinking about fear in general and, for some reason, my thoughts fell into rhyme.
Fear Factor
It’s my favorite room, but that’s not true for some; when it comes to the kitchen, those some come undone, who’re afraid to sauté or to simmer or sear, who’d opt for some take out and grab a cold beer.
We’re all scared of something – it doesn’t have to be cooking that makes our palms sweat or sets us to looking with eyes of suspicion and stares of disdain. No, it’s much more than food that sets our fears aflame.
The things that are scary go past breads and béarnaise, beyond cupcakes and corn (you know some call it maize), to the questions and quandaries that fester and foment in both fears for a lifetime and fears of the moment.
Some fears are big, like tornadoes or earthquakes; some fears are small—think of hangnails and toothaches. A snake or a spider can send some running to hide, while a few are afraid of things battered and fried.
Some are scared of the dark, or of turbulent weather And others that N’Sync might just get back together Some are frightened of hula hoops, hot wings, and horses, Others scared of their marriages, some of divorces,
Some are scared of Al-Qaeda, some of Al Roker, Or that they might be doused with their kid’s Super Soaker; Some are scared of the new, some afraid of the old, Others fear that their neighborhoods should be more patrolled.
Some are scared they will die, some are scared they will live; Some are frightened the blood drive will ask them to give. Just the thought of a needle can give others a chill, and then there’s the terror of the credit card bill.
The climate is changing, gas prices are rising – perhaps, that we’re fearful is not so surprising: nuclear warheads can make us afraid — that Celine Dion songs are allowed to be played;
Cat-burglars, kidnappings, foreign attacks, cockroaches, coal mines, that mole on your back; Outsourcing, outside, and some outboard motors, slick politicians and party-line voters;
Insurgents, incumbents, wifi, and water, on particular days – your own sons and daughters; foreclosures and Fox news, dark streets at night, lumberjacks, lawyers, and airplane flights;
Kleenex and Clorox, Keanu Reeves movies, people who still say things like “far out” and “groovy,” botox and beetles, eviction, ebola, satellites, cell phones, and sugar-free cola;
Loneliness, failure, new places, old wounds, arthritis, amnesia, rejection, blue moons, chemicals, cholera, downed power lines, clear cutting, kudzu, signs of the times;
TV evangelists, late night news anchors, hankers and flankers and cankers and bankers, being buried alive or left somewhere for dead, hybrids and hotheads and the not-so-well-read;
I’m fearful of stopping lest I leave something out; I’ve yet to mention Google or gout, or governments – see, there’s so much to fear: the Yankees, umbrellas, poodles, cashmere.
Whatever our fears, we all have our reasons for running and hiding, for living in seasons of conflict and doubt, of turmoil and stress because of the things that make life a mess.
The fears are quite real, and so are our choices to push through the scared and find other voices To speak to our fears without acquiescing to all that is frightening, but instead keep ‘em guessing.
Whether frightened of food, or afraid of the dark, of undersea monsters or dogs that don’t bark, one simple reminder can keep us prepared: before you can be brave, you’ve got to be scared.
Once a month a few of us gather at church for a potluck dinner and discussion. Sometimes we have specific topics; sometimes we don’t. Tonight we were looking at Joy Jordan-Lake’s book, Why Jesus Makes Me Nervous; Ten Alarming Words of Faith. I was fed by the meal, the book, and the discussion.
Joy is a good writer who also happens to be a dear friend. Three of my godchildren live at her house. The book is full of great stories that help to move the discussion of what it means to be a follower of Christ beyond the academic and doctrinal into the messy relational reality of our lives. Though she didn’t tell any stories about me (Ginger makes a bold appearance in the chapter on Holiness), I think Joy has written a hopeful and challenging book.
I had to smile this week when my package of books came from theooze.com, because one of them – titled, if you can believe it, Oh Shit! It’s Jesus!: The Relevance of Jesus Without All the Religious Crap – only wishes it could be Joy’s book. (The review book is nowhere as edgy as it was trying to be with its title, which does little more, I think, than shock. I have no idea what marketing genius thought that cover would get people to buy it.) Though I think the review book is destined for the remainder bin from Day One, I can only hope Joy’s book gets the reading it deserves, even though the publisher has done little or nothing to promote it.
She works down her top ten list – resurrection, community, abundance, wisdom, holiness, peace, blessedness, worship, forgiveness, hope – with candor and compassion and left all of us sitting around the table talking about how her stories had helped us better articulate our own. Here. she writes about her disappointment in trying to open a food and clothing pantry, which appeared at the time to be futile:
Aware that we had no funding to speak of, and that our opening day had been reason enough to close the world’s finest food pantry for homeless people altogether, I walked home in despair.
I was not meditating on the word worship. Or how it derives from worthship, the th being dropped in the fourteenth century. Or how it’s because God is worthy of our adoration that we worship, and because those made in the image of God are worthy of our respect that we serve. And the –ship of the worth/worship: the understanding that this is something we’re on board with together. This same ideal caused the architects of medieval cathedrals to build sanctuaries in the long shape of a ship – even naming these main sections “naves” from the Latin, navis, for ship: all of us journeying together, with God, to God.
All this I’d managed to forget in one single morning – just me, journeying alone. Sulking. (96)
Somewhere in our discussion, our associate pastor asked, “What word about Jesus makes you nervous?”
Though I didn’t answer first, I knew right away what it was: small.
My world started big when I was little. I grew up in Africa, the son of missionaries. I’ve traveled on three continents and seen amazing things. This summer, my brother and sister-in-law have been in Guatemala and Greece, one of my nephews has been in India, and my dad runs a foundation sending students all over the world on mission. I walk a block to work every morning here in Durham and come home to Ginger. We’re going to Texas next month to lead a retreat, but other than that, I’ll be here in my neighborhood.
It’s hard to take and I’m happy. Both things are true.
One of my recurring thoughts as I was reading The Tangible Kingdom was, “I’m not an evangelist.” One of the things both Ginger and learned in four years of trying to plant a church in Boston was evangelism is not our gift. Sharing the love and grace of God matters to me, but I wear away at you the way the hands of children wear smooth the tail of the library lion: it takes time. This week, I saw a message on the neighborhood listserv from someone new to the neighborhood asking to borrow a lawnmower. I lent them ours and invited them to dinner Sunday night.
Hospitality is my thing.
And, in terms of scale not importance, hospitality works best as a smal thing. As much as I’m tempted to be drawn into the quest for The Grand Gesture of my life, that is not the life to which I’ve been called. I find myself in this line: “I was hungry and you fed me.”
That’s me. My blogging friend Simon, who lives in Australia, has a book whose title I love: God Next Door: Spirituality and Mission in the Neighbourhood. I haven’t read the book because it’s not available in America. Too bad. It’s just been nominated for Christian Book of the Year down under. I would love to go see Simon in Australia. I want to get to Morocco and Prague. I want to go back to Istanbul and Paris. I wish I could do something about what is happening in Darfur or the Congo or Zimbabwe. I look forward to hearing my family’s stories of the things they saw and did on their mission trips and, these days, I’m finding God here in the ‘hood.
My world is small. My God is not. It’s hard to fit those two sentences together sometimes, in similar fashion to Joy’s walking home alone from the food pantry in her then neighborhood in Cambridge, Mass., particularly when I look at my life in comparison to friends who are getting to do things – big things – I wish I could do. And they are doing great things. They are not, however, making muffins, sharing lawnmowers, or having my neighbors over for dinner.
This is the life to which I have been called.
Joy, again:
To worship is to prepare for the uncomfortable. For God’s showing up, often not when and how we expect.
To dig out, make room for change and birth and re-birth.
Worship with cymbals and the clatter of clothes-closet racks. In stained-glass cathedrals and dark basements.
Everything we have and we are on the altar, laid down with awe for a God whose ways are not our ways but whose face is all around us.
With gratitude for a God whose love flows like the deep end of the ocean, and whose power is bound to catch us up short, knock us clear down to our knees.
Though it was almost thirty years ago that I was on a mission trip in the interior of the Yucatan peninsula, in a little village called Hoctun, I can still see the man vividly.
Our task was to dig wells and put in water pumps to help the subsistence farmers do more than, well, subsist. The ground was covered in rocks and the vegetation was almost as sparse as the rainfall. When we got to our first site, the man was standing in his small field, a cloth bag draped over his shoulder and a pointed stick about five feet long in one hand. He would wedge the stick in between the rocks and twist it to make a small space, reach the other hand into the bag and drop two or three kernels of corn in the hole, and then cover them by scraping the dirt back over with his foot.
“What’s he doing?” I asked. “Planting corn,” replied the missionary who was our team leader. “That won’t work,” I said.
The man came to mind again this morning as soon as the gospel reading began: “A farmer went out to sow his seed.” Ginger began her sermon by describing how the Palestinian farmer of that time would have had the bag over his shoulder and would have broadcast the seed by the handful over the ground around him, letting the seed fall wherever it might.
(A short break so you can watch the best telling of this parable I know – and the song is killer, too.)
It makes for great theater, but my feeling about that farmer is the same I felt back in Mexico: it won’t work, which makes the fact that it was Jesus’ metaphor for how the Community of God (I’m still chasing a better word for kingdom) grows downright perplexing, particularly when I take myself back to what we went to do for those three weeks in the Yucatan.
We went to teach them to farm differently. We brought diggers (by that I mean people to dig), tools, water pumps, and all kinds of things to offer them the chance to not have to live on a stick and prayer. Underneath the rocks was fertile soil. The water would mean they could grow vegetables they had grown before. They could also keep chickens and rabbits. Part of our message was, “If you want your farming to be productive, you’ve got to use more efficient technology and practices.”
Don’t get me wrong. They needed the help. I think we did good work during those three weeks. I think we helped to save some lives. But I’m thinking in metaphor here. Jesus uses the image of a subsistence farmer to represent how the Community of God takes root and grows, or doesn’t in us. I find deep comfort, somehow, in knowing our God whose name is Love, is full of grace and hope and even power, and is marvelously inefficient. If the world is a farm, then God doesn’t appear to think a tractor’s sexy. The crop, instead, gets planted one randomly dropped seed as a time.
The whole of Matthew 13 is filled with parables that are somewhat counter intuitive by most current standards. Jesus talks about a farmer doesn’t pull any weeds and just harvests everything, then of the Community of God being like mustard seeds and yeast (both rather mysterious in their workings), then on to treasure hunters on land and sea willing to give up everything for their quest, and then a fishing version of the inclusive farmer, with the fishermen hauling everything into the nets. We read the stories and then we, like the disciples come looking for explanations. Much of the time, the explanations I’ve heard move to the parts of the parables that deal with who gets left out: the soils that don’t measure up, the tares to be bundled and burned, the fish to be tossed out.
I’m not sure the culling comes quite so easily.
The folks at theooze.com sent me some books to read and write about (who am I to turn down free books?). I was a couple of chapters into The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay when I heard Ginger’s sermon on the Sower, and I got a little past halfway sitting at Panera yesterday afternoon. The authors live up in the Pacific Northwest and are working out a new model for Christian community that has more incarnation and less institution than the church. Rather than sitting in sanctuaries waiting for people to join them, they are out in the pubs with the public, working hard to incarnate Christ’s love to those who have been burned by religion or who know nothing of faith. Though much of their critique is aimed at the evangelical church and uses a vocabulary with which I’ve lost much of my familiarity, I appreciate their passion and their willingness to work out their faith in public. The book is giving me much on which to ruminate and I think it’s worth the read.
As far as where some of their words took me, I got hung up on one sentence. In the midst of their great stuff on how ministers and other Christians needed to get out of the building to share Christ’s love and how they needed to build relationship rather than connect to convert, they wrote of the people with whom they found resonance:
They think the homosexuals’ struggle for sexual clarity isn’t that much different in God’s sight than the heterosexuals’ struggle against pornography.
Man, there’s a lot to unpack in that sentence.
First – and to the point: there’s a big difference between homosexuality and pornography. Being gay or lesbian doesn’t destroy relationships and individuals; pornography does.
Second, what the hell is “sexual clarity”? My gay and lesbian friends are struggling because they aren’t accepted, not because they’re confused.
Third, when we don’t welcome everyone with the love of Christ, we’re missing what it means to be a part of the Community of God. There’s a lot of good gay and lesbian soil out there folks where God’s love is growing strong, in spite of the rejection and ridicule that comes from many of those who call themselves Christian.
One of the themes in the parables is God’s willingness to scatter love everywhere and to take in every growing thing. Yes, the parables talk about sorting things out at the end. I struggle with those parts of the stories because I think it’s completely consistent with the image of God we’re given through Jesus for God to get to the sorting out and just yell, “All ye, all ye, ox in free.” (At least I know I’d be foolish to count on God to agree with me on who should be asked to leave.)
I’m not trying to rail on the guys who wrote the book. I highlighted the sentence because it hurt. Two thousand years on and we still don’t know how to love one another very well. What I know about love is it is fundamentally who God is; it looks the same when it is shared between two people, whether they are gay or straight; and it feels the same to me as I give love and receive love from both my gay and straight friends. When we speak of Jesus, we often say he was “fully human.” I think he loved people in a way that allowed them to be fully human as well. If our call is to create incarnational community, then we are called to love each other into wholeness, which mostly means I love you into becoming the person you feel called to be, not who I imagine you could become.
When it comes time for the sorting, if God says to me I missed the point because I let too many people in, I will smile and take the hit. What would break my heart would be if God said, “I had room for everyone. Why did you keep closing the door?”
When I leave church on Sunday, The Splendid Table is playing on our local NPR station. The show is sometimes a little too don’t-we-all-love-our-villas-in-Tuscany for me to take, but most of the time they offer interesting conversations and recipes. It’s great for a Sunday afternoon.
Today the host, Lynne Rossetto Kasper, gave a brief excursus on “how to eat like a gourmet for less money” that I found interesting. It seemed worth passing along.
Look for the sell by date and if it’s today barter; ask for 50 % off – they have to sell it. Then either use it that day or freeze it.
If you don’t cook, learn to do three simple easy things: make a simple salad with a homemade dressing; learn to boil up some grains; or learn to grill vegetables. If you can do those three things you can put together a meal that is low on the food chain, super cheap, and super healthy.
Every steak or chop starts out as a roast; buy the roast and cut your own steaks or chops and you can save some money.
If you want ethnic ingredients, go to the neighborhoods where these cultures shop. You’ll save money and get a good lunch out of the deal.
Buy imported food and wines where the dollar still has some strength and real estate is still inexpensive like Chile or Argentina.
I know we don’t all want to eat like gourmets and I like the idea of thinking creatively about how good food and affordable food don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Again, not terribly profound, but worth passing along.
GIve me a couple of days and I’ll t ry to come up with some accompanying recipes.
Two things have spoken to me this week: music and muffins.
As I’ve mentioned before, part of my daily ritual at the restaurant is to make the English muffins that serve as the buns for our hamburgers and shrimp burgers. The recipe takes time, so as I’m walking in at eight each morning I start picking up bowls and whisks and measuring cups so I can get the dough going immediately. The recipe breaks into five periods of activity, with corresponding periods of waiting:
I mix warm water, yeast, and honey; then mix in four cups of flour and then two more; then I mix together the eggs, salt, and oil and add that to the flour mixture; then I mix in another cup and a half of flour.
Then I wait for about thirty minutes until it gets bubbly.
The second period of activity involves adding five more cups of flour and stirring for about three minutes (to activate the glutens).
Then I wait until the dough doubles – also about a half an hour.
Stage three involves kneading the dough, which includes probably adding another four to six cups of flour and working the dough for five or six minutes.
Then I wait until the dough doubles again, also about thirty minutes.
The next step is to roll and cut the muffins and put them on baking sheets.
Then I wait about fifteen minutes to let them rise again.
Finally, I toast the tops and bottoms of the muffins on the flat top (with a bit of butter) and put them in the oven for about eight minutes. If all goes well, the muffins are ready when the kitchen opens at eleven for lunch. Though the recipe is clear, each stage calls for choices. I have to decide when the dough looks and feels right; when I stop mixing or kneading has an effect on the final product. This week I have paid particular attention, trying to make the muffins better. Yesterday and today I achieved a muffonic convergence, as I like to call it: pretty damn perfect muffins.
“This is why I love this job,” I said to my cooking partner, Cort. “You get to feel like you’ve done something well and then move on to what you need to do next.”
Even though the art I create is incredibly temporary – I put the plate together and you eat it, all in the span of minutes – it is also incredibly gratifying because it is quantifiable: I know what a great plate of fish tacos ought to taste and look like (in that order) and, even though I make about twenty taco plates everyday at lunch, each one requires attention as its own unique creation.
I work in a kitchen, not on an assembly line.
As I’ve also mentioned before, much of our non-culinary conversation during the day swirls around music, either bouncing off the songs playing on the boom box, or rising up out of our past experiences. Somewhere in the course of the day, Billy Joel took his turn as our topic and about the time I was going to say that my brother, who is a musician, said way back in the early eighties that he thought Joel’s music would be enduring, Dave said, “You know the reason he keeps touring and trying so hard is he’s pissed he’s never gotten the recognition as one of the great guys of rock and roll.” (Which makes this clip interesting.)
I never told the story about my brother. I spent the rest of the shift thinking about Billy Joel feeling as though he has somehow come up short. I thought about his song, “Angry Young Man”:
I believe I’ve passed the age of consciousness and righteous rage I found that just surviving was a noble fight I once believed in causes too I had my pointless point of view And life went on no matter who was wrong or right
And there’s always a place for the angry young man With his fist in the air and his head in the sand And he’s never been able to learn from mistakes So he can’t understand why his heart always breaks And his honor is pure and his courage is well And he’s fair and he’s true and he’s boring as hell And he’ll go to the grave as an angry old man
OK, one more thing I’ve mentioned before in this blog: I live with my own sense of worthlessness, with not feeling as though I’m enough. One of the big reasons I’m no longer a high school teacher is I hated giving grades. The essential element of teaching, for me, was the relational connection I made in the classroom. I asked the kids to take risks, to be themselves, to trust me.
And then I gave them a grade: “Thanks for trying; you get a C.”
I couldn’t do it because of the way I internalized the grades I received along the way – and I do mean I received: they weren’t grading the paper; they were grading me. Cooking is different for me. I realize those for whom I cook may not like everything, but they aren’t grading me. The payoff, for me, is in the creation and presentation of the dishes (when I’m at work) and in the sharing of the meal as we sit together around the table when I’m at home.
The difference is as subtle and as profound as my typing grace when I meant to type grade in the previous paragraph. One letter changes everything.
Everything.
The grace is find in my job comes from being able to claim my competence, to to grow and learn, and to both flourish and fail with abandon. It not that failure is without consequence it’s that I’m doing what I love, so I can weather the storm. And so I heard Dave’s words about Billy Joel with sadness because he’s doing what he loves and lives with grades more than grace. In his biggest hit, Joel wrote:
Don’t go changing to try and please me You never let me down before . . . I took the good times, I’ll take the bad times I love you just the way you are
Billy, if you’re listening, you’ve given some of the best words and music to the soundtrack of our lives. Your songs are alive at our house in ways I can’t even begin to tell you. I hope you can get from grades to grace.