Acts of Creation

It was a day to experiment.  Rain brings out that desire sometimes.  Somehow, the soft tikki-tum of raindrops can act as the protective curtain that says "within this space, you can try something new, something bold, something different...and if it works, great!  And if it doesn't, great!"  Whether it works or not, however I understand that, doesn't matter, really.  The important thing is the space itself...entering into that thoughtful, mystical place of letting go, listening to creative desire, and giving in.

Buckwheat shortbread

Today's invitation was buckwheat cookies.  I'd read the recipe yesterday while at the public library--a fabulous source for cookbooks of all sorts.  I read it and felt the stirrings of Hmmmm... I copied it into my notebook of other Hmmms and carried it with me to see what it felt like in a while.  The provoking possibility remained.  I purchased what was needed and waited. The rain began and I knew it was the time. Whisking the dry ingredients into a bowl (1 c. buckwheat flour, 1 c. standard wheat flour, 2/3 c. sugar, 1 t. salt, 1 t. baking powder), I then melted 2 sticks of butter and whisked them into a froth before adding two egg yolks and whisking again.  Bit by bit, I added the dry to the wet and spoon-stirred the dough.    I made little balls and put them on the ungreased cookie sheet.  Once the sixteen little cement colored sandy wonders were in place, I flattened them merrily with a fork and introduced them to a 325 degree oven.

Twenty minutes later, there was goodness on a cooling rack.  The rain continued and so did that notion of the creative process being a cosmic set-aside moment for which I was quite thankful.

This feeling reminded me of a TED talk I'd heard by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the book Eat, Pray, Love.  In her lecture, Gilbert muses about the origins of genius and how world changing it is to understand creative inspiration as precisely that--an inspired gift, originating not within the human self, but with the Divine, and how much freer that can make us.  Among other things, she speaks of having genius, not being a genius, and those moments of  recognizing transcendent divinity in the creative act.  

Some of my favorite parts of the lecture, though, are her minutes about Ruth Stone, a National Book Award winning poet who died at age 96 in late 2011.  In describing how poems come to her, Stone said she could feel the ground shaking beneath her feet and that she knew then that a poem was coming and she had to run and find a pencil and paper before it caught her or thundered by, looking for another poet.

I heard this and said "Yes!!"  Really, I did...and rather emphatically.  Out loud and in the company of others...others who looked at me quizzically and then went back to the screen.

The thing is, I totally understand that.  And it thrills me when I hear that someone else has felt like that and went with it....gave in to the desire to listen when the Spirit is moving.  And not only listen, but respond!  Passionately, creatively, without reserve and with a pen in hand.  Because she was called by that same Spirit to write.

Whether I care for what she writes is secondary...that is a matter of taste, as are cookies.

But responding to the mystical invitation to create...

Amen to that.  ¡Olé!

Another Poem to Mary

Oh Mary (a continuation of a series…)

Oh Mary, I want

to keep my soul free

and keep my soul wide;

I want to remember

the big and the details,

the loose and the particular;

I want to live

what it feels like

to center-down deep—

living lightly while YES

comes springing its AH!

just when I let go and fly.

c. MperiodPress

 

Poet in the Kitchen

After the morning rituals of coffee and writing, praying, and listening, I headed to the kitchen to make dinner with enough time for it to get to know itself better before we would eat this evening.  I found myself uncharacteristically working on more than one dish at a time.  I usually find that rather chaotic, but this morning, it worked.  I was in a place of great harmony in the kitchen...both within the realm of flavors as well as within the balance of silence and conversation inside myself...a balance of considering things and musing with God.  A mayo-dijon mustard chicken salad with diced cucumber and green onion was done in a tick...it is something I have done many times before and the proportions come naturally via pinches, dices, spoonfuls.  The chicken was cooking while I was dicing for the other part of the meal, I was making the dressing while something else was boiling... it all worked.  But, that said, the other salad I was making was much more deliberate, measured, in some way important...I wanted to get it right and I was making it up as I went along.

CousCous Summer Salad

2 c. dry pearled couscous (the bigger grain-size) ; 3c. liquid ; 1 1/2 zucchini, diced fine ; 1 carton mushrooms, rough chopped ; 1 can petite diced tomatoes, drained well--save the liquid ---  juice of a lime and lemon ; enough olive oil to have it come together while whisking ; two bunches green onions, sliced up through light green ; salt and sugar to taste

Boil the liquid (I included the reserved tomato juice as part of the 3 c.) with a dollop of olive oil--add couscous--let boil for five minutes or so--test it periodically after four minutes. Drain in fine sieve when done. Mushrooms and zucchini in a skillet with some olive oil for a couple of minutes until just beginning to soften.  Toss zucchini, mushrooms, tomatoes, and couscous together in a bowl.

In a separate bowl, squeeze the juice from the lemon and lime, add a pinch of salt, a good pinch of sugar, and begin to whisk.  While whisking, drizzle in olive oil just until it comes together and won't take any more.  Taste and adjust salt, sugar.  Toss in the green onions and let it steep a while.  Then dump the whole bowlful over the couscous mixture and toss with a large spoon.


What I liked most about that salad was the salty/sweet/citrus of the dressing and how that began to permeate everything...it got together with the onion, conversed with the zucchini and mushrooms, danced with the tomato, and became one with the couscous.

And in that mysterious way that I have come to realize and accept as the way my mind works, those flavors got me thinking about my summer... This summer.  The Incredible Summer.  A summer where I have known both sweetness and salt, have known tang, bite, fullness, and delight.

I have washed the feet of my sister who believed in me enough to give me a chance to translate at an international meeting; I have sat at table with a community from five countries and shared both the nourishment of a meal and the nourishment of stories.  I had a mango hedgehog on my plate for breakfast, bats come to dinner, and two hummingbirds flying together closer than arms length in front of me.  I've been two weeks with an incredibly international group of over forty of my sisters, listened in and spoken in two different languages at the same time, and traveled by bus under three different names, none my own.  I have been too tired to know what language I was speaking, lost in the midst of conversations, and panicked on a train.  I have been welcomed for who I am, been extended the precious gift of friendship, and invited to share what I love.  I have played drums and ping-pong and tapped a message on a wall.  I have been witness to new life and hope, made mistakes, and hurt a friend.

I have asked forgiveness, I have offered forgiveness, I have broken bread, shared chapati, and passed the tortillas... And over and again, I have offered my thanks to the Hati Kudus Jesus, Sagrado Corazón de Jesús, and Sacred Heart of Jesus.




My summer.  This summer. This incredible Summer... salty and sweet, full, flavorful, nuanced, complex, to be savored, learned from, shared.

If it be your will, let the journey continue, Al-Latif, The Subtle One, you who know the delicate meanings of everything. (From the 99 Beautiful Names of God.)

All at once

Walking home from Church,
Jakarta, Indonesia

I could still hear the singing
that reminds me of butterflies-
rising on the delicate colors
of hope and humble praise

when I teased out
the sweet thread of jasmine
from the rough woven cloth
of hard living

worn by the man
selling hot steamed mussels
and clacking his stick
against the cart.

He passed as I turned
to wonder in sighs
at the child's red sandal
in the muck-water roadside ditch.

c. MperiodPress

Brilliant In the shadows

These are some of the wayang gedog, gedog puppets or shadow puppets, first created and used in 16th century Indonesia....which of course wasn't yet Indonesia.  I saw them yesterday on a visit to Taman Mini cultural center, here in Jakarta.  I was quite taken by them...mesmerized, really.  Carved from water buffalo leather,they have extraordinary detail--the tiniest curls of hair, the finest line of a moustache--and are sumptuously painted though the puppets would only ever be seen in shadow form from the other side of a screen.

It was a moment of...what? Profound connection...a certain roomy looseness and generosity in the Cosmos...a deep breath of Aha.... to see them.  When I saw these characters, these puppets, I could immediately see/hear the stories they wanted to tell--good versus evil, beautiful princesses, nasty witches...it was nearly as though the puppets spoke to me...or to the part of me that enters into and understands Story.  Story Universal.

And That was something that truly moved me...the puppets represent something that I understand already--but teach me even more about it, make it something more full, more whole, because it comes alive in different clothing, different languages, different contexts.  This element of relationship between what is deeply known/felt/recognized and learning even more about it by the experience of difference seems to me to have everything to do with freedom and integration... of expanding toward the infinity of God and becoming more deeply, fully, who I am as created by God.

And that expansion/contraction movement, the flow of inner~outer~inner, is the heartbeat of true Home...it is an exquisite, intricately unique and astoundingly beautiful dance between God and each one of us.

Jakarta, Entry II

Dalam nama Bapa, dan Putera, dan Roh Kudus....

(In the name of the Father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit...)

I renewed my vows in Indonesian yesterday!  It was a beautiful celebration of the Feast of the Sacred Heart...we had mass in the house here with the entire area minus two who are away--fifteen people, five nationalities...the local pastor celebrated with us.  There was a chorus of novices and postulants who sing beautiful harmonies together, accompanied by guitar...everyone sitting on the wooden floor and the altar perhaps at the height of your knees when sitting.  The front of the tabernacle in the chapel here is beautiful...it is a very thin layer of tough paper that looks like horn...it is batiked with an image of the open heart so when the light shines behind the chapel, you see the light through this door and the image is illuminated.  Quite something.  Afterwards, serious feasting on chicken, fish, rice, rice, rice, veggies, salad, juice, and a pound cake topped with shredded cheese--a nice flavor combo, actually.  And, to go with the cake, fruit salad flavored icecream that tastes EXACTLY like "Frozen Fruit Salad"  that my great-grandmother/mother used to make!!  We all then gathered in the living room for much laughter and a game involving everyone's names.  Just as has been true in other places, my name is a source of curiosity and amusement for people...it sounds Asian to many and reminds people of Kimberly Clark the paper company, King Kong, the ape...and is difficult to sort out first name from last.  I juggled fruit from the basket--my contribution to group entertainment... :)

The morning of the Feast (Friday) I was up when I have been all week--around 4.  I write for a while, I pray for a while.  That morning I was especially moved...because in the midst of the morning call to prayer happening all around me, there I was praying...and it being Friday, the holy day for both Muslims and Jews...I was adding my prayer to untold millions of others from major world faiths all happening at the same time... the image that came to me was of a shimmering, undulating wind that smells of spice and flowers, love and tragedy...a wind that blesses, refreshes, and can also part the sea.

The day before was a trip to the local market to buy food for the celebration.  As I later wrote--The market was something else...PACKED with people and stalls everywhere selling everything from diapers to dried fish, bins of chipped, fried radishes, peanuts, snakefruit, a whole variety of chilis, the biggest chunks of ginger I have ever seen (wrist to elbow), fashion head scarves, sandals of all sorts, incense, and a hot almond nougat wrapped in corn husk and sold by the 2X4.  There was more there than I could hope to describe that all came together to ears, nose, mouth, and eyes as a nearly overwhelming sensual cacophany... It was intense and it was amazing.

A New Corner of the Sky

I am sitting in a kitchen not my own...in a city not my own...in a state not my own... and yet, as I head out into the coming Adventure, I am feeling quite at home.

These last days have been days filled with walking for miles each afternoon, long morning thinks accompanied by a strong mug of coffee, plenty of time to write, and lots of time to pray.  It actually hasn't felt so much that prayer has been a separate time, to tell the truth.  It has been a week of presence, of conversation with Jesus whether in Mass or stopping to notice a bee stuffing his sacs with sweetness, conversation while walking, conversation while listening, and the silent exchanges of love between those known to one another who can share quiet with joy and ease.

I include here some lines from my notebook...

If I think truthfully about my life...about the desire I have to serve the international Society, I realize that this desire to live "in geographic breadth" is a way to live aligned with the call of God in my life and how I most readily experience God.  It is like I have sought a coherent way to respond in living to the way I experience God...the way God has revealed God's self to me...the way I experience who God IS.


It feels organic, this desire...and something that is also part of the joy of being known by name by people who speak other languages and being able to respond... So often it is by circumstance and not intention that this happens...I am at a meeting here or there, someone is here or there visiting and I happen to be there too...I find something organic in this.  The spread of people I have known and that I know... I talk with everyone at school...moving between circles...knowing what is happening in Primary as well as in Eighth grade... I don't know, but thinking on it now, I am caught by the relationship between this gift you have given me and one of the facets I find most attractive about you.

I see you as a depth and a breadth...an Infinite in human form...and I am so attracted to this.  You are more than I can imagine and at the same time you are real, a human who walked and walks the earth and who has said to me "Nothing can separate you from my love."  Part of the importance of this, the strength of this reality is that I hear--and more than hear, I feel, that you are telling me that I too can live with a breadth and a depth of love...and that precisely That is your desire for me too--that at the same time I want to draw near to you, you are drawing near to me.  And when I don't remember, or don't believe it, or don't feel it, or when I fail or make mistakes--in those times, too, you persue me, you draw near.

Several days later, while praying and thinking about this image of Jesus as a breadth and a depth, a vulnerable Infinite in human form, a poem that touched me deeply returned to my heart.  In a biography of Janet Erskine Stuart, RSCJ, her biographer quotes GK Chesterton--

There are more ways than the wind knows,
or eyes that see the sun,
In the light of the lost window
and the wind of the doors undone.

For out of the third lattice
under low eaves like wings,
is a new corner of the sky
and the other side of things.

I think somehow that Breadth and Depth that I experience as Jesus, IS the other side of things....is what can be seen from out of the third lattice and under the low eaves... and seeking that new corner of the sky is entering the pierced heart, receiving fullness and eternity of life from the fountain of love that is there, alive, waiting, breathing, refreshing, cooling, offering respite... that the journey home might continue.

Adventure untold awaits me this month as I head to Indonesia in a few hours to work on organizing a library that is there... a library that is quite literally, if only geographically, on the other side of things...on the other side of things I know... 

What a thrill that there is always more to discover...more to reveal and have revealed...