a tenacious greens assortment
portuguese sea kale, dec 30 2020
I’ve been cooking a fair bit the past week, enjoying the process of some favorite festive foods. My wife Amy made green chile stew with wheat tortillas, and sopapillas another night, for Christmas. Maybe next year we’ll serve this for a Workshop open house or early winter lunch break.
Today we’ve got pork and sauerkraut in the oven for New Year’s day. (Speaking of holiday roasts and shopping, here is a link to United Food and Commerical Workers.) I’m not sure what the cultural/class/geographic map might look like of New Year’s day pork and sauerkraut eaters. From my recent phone conversations about how we’re planning to fix this dishwith members of the pork and sauerkraut diaspora, I suspect it probably skews heavily toward folks with some PA German heritage. Why eat pork and sauerkraut?
Eating sauerkraut is said to bring good luck for the new year. This article describes some ways that the pig and the fermenting kraut are ‘read’ for gestures and symbolic qualities that can be incorporated into our being. Maybe it has to do with the greenness that kraut keeps a hold on in the depths of winter. A little like the coniferous trees some people bring into their dwellings for Christmas. Trees that keep their nail-like leaves through the dark months, holding on to their greenness in a hopeful gesture, while the green-ness of deciduous trees, along with various mammals, has begun its underground hibernation.
The kale and turnips in my garden are still green, and growing very slowly. Strangely I didn’t grow any cabbages in 2020. Cabbage were the tenacious green vegetables that fed us and several friends in fall and winter of 2019.
Shred, salt and ferment them in a crock, and why, you have some greeny food to last you even longer, until the spring arrives with photosynthetic vigor.
arugula blossom
Keep your Christmas tree out at least thru the Epiphany on January 6th this year. It can be a gesture of prayer to ask for a similar green-ness of spirit.
With such a spirit you can recollect the past year in its truth and fullness. I would suggest that you let yourself be present to your losses and grief from 2020. That you notice and accept forgiveness for your mistakes, confusions, undoings. With kindness and compassion review your life. And let yourself notice and receive the real gifts of the past year, which may have been pushed beyond awareness by the overwhelming feelings of grief. I have talked to many people who felt that the winnowing, abrasion and harrowing of this year revealed something true for them and for life.
Consider how to press into that spirit of green life holding onto you.
I’m looking back on the past year, and looking with care, not too high or far, toward this new year. Today I’ll eat a nice full plate of kraut. Next year, come on over.
heart orientation, ready to turn, sweep, walk
In the workshop, I’m slowly building the frames for two duck dories. I tentatively expect these newest boats to be ready by early summer. As I finish the frames, I store them on the strongback. There is an art to fitting multiple projects into a small space.
It’s also time for some overdue maintenance on the lawnmower engine. I’m really pretty excited about this! Looking forward to going down the checklist of all the usual maintenance items, and cleaning this engine up. Maybe I’ll build a wooden boat that takes an outboard motor later in 2021. New things? Dreams?
For now, a way to take care of things, learn things I’ve missed so far, and make inner quiet.
New Mini-Retreat Offering
In February and March 2021, I am offering a five-session lenten retreat.
“Matter at Hand: Five Practices for Everday Spirituality”
We will meet Monday 10-11:30 Feb-March, via videoconference. We will explore a practical tool-kit for the day by day drawn from ancient and monastic christian practice.
Calendar, Daily Prayer, Silence, Manual Work, Reading
Each session will include silent prayer, short teaching and reading mixed with ample opportunity for response and discussion, and the invitation to re/newed practice in your life. I hope these practices can help you simplify, connect with clearer intention, greater wholeness, and openness to the ‘sacrament of the present moment.’
Sign up for all five, or for a single session. There is more info on the “offerings” page, and you can contact me with questions. Email me on the contact page, or otherwise, to sign up.
By Hildegard of Bingen - Hildegard von Bingen: 'Werk Gottes' (Codex Latinus 1942 in der Bibliotheca Governativa di Lucca?)., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1823924