Lent: Day 6

Did I mention that Cap is only forwarding 4 reading a week? Kind of a Lent Lite? Just in case you thought I was lazy.

Today's reading:

Genesis 9:8-17

 ⁸ Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: ⁹ “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you ¹⁰ and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. ¹¹ I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

 ¹² And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: ¹³ I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴ Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, ¹⁵ I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. ¹⁶ Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

 ¹⁷ So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.” 

When I went to summer camp, we learned a song sung to the tune of the theme song from "The Friendly Giant" with the words, When you see a rainbow, you know that God is love. 

I like that in the Bible, there is one concrete proof of Love mentioned and that it's one that is still useful today, in that tangible, "Yep I can see that" kind of way.  Right this second, I can't think of one other item we can use directly today as they did back when all this stuff was written. 

God is Love. God promised not to destroy all life. No matter what we did, from that day on, Destruction Of All By Flood was off the list.  At least there's that. 

To be honest, I feel a bit destroyed to night. But not all the way destroyed. This flood won't be my end. And God is Love.  That's the promise and I can think of a half-dozen days in the last 6 months that a rainbow has shown up and reminded me that the promise stands. I could use a rainbow tonight, or maybe just some clarity about how God being love could possibly make a difference - it's hard to see somedays, you know?

Oh boy. Nothing good here tonight.  Stupid Lent.

Lent: Day 2

Tonight I cheat.  CapChurch allowed me to write one of the responses and it was today's. It remains my prayer tonight, so I'll repost and trust that a prayer prayed twice is twice as heard.

Psalm 51

    For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.  ¹ Have mercy on me, O God,
   according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
   blot out my transgressions.
² Wash away all my iniquity
   and cleanse me from my sin.
 ³ For I know my transgressions,
   and my sin is always before me.
⁴ Against you, you only, have I sinned
   and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
   and justified when you judge.
⁵ Surely I was sinful at birth,
   sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
⁶ Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
   you taught me wisdom in that secret place.
 ⁷ Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
   wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
⁸ Let me hear joy and gladness;
   let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
⁹ Hide your face from my sins
   and blot out all my iniquity.
 ¹⁰ Create in me a pure heart, O God,
   and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
¹¹ Do not cast me from your presence
   or take your Holy Spirit from me.
¹² Restore to me the joy of your salvation
   and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
 ¹³ Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
   so that sinners will turn back to you.
¹⁴ Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
   you who are God my Savior,
   and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
¹⁵ Open my lips, Lord,
   and my mouth will declare your praise.
¹⁶ You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
   you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
¹⁷ My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
   a broken and contrite heart
   you, God, will not despise.

Reflection

But Lord, what about when I don't feel like I'm all that bad? When all I can see are the ones who are So Much Worse and the ones who are Doing Me Wrong? What if my darkest sin is that I don't truly believe myself sinful at all? What if I somehow forget that my broken - the broken that I find kind of innocuous, and frankly, a bit funny and cute - what if I forget that my broken is actually Really Broken and actually needs Real Forgiveness?  Actually needs Real Repentence?

Show me the truth.  The Whole Truth.  When all I see are how others fail, bring my eyes back to my own cracked heart. When all I hear are words that hurt and offend me, bring my ears back to my own sharp tongue.  When all I feel are others' arrows in my heart, remind me of the quiver of anger I carry on my own back and maybe help me put it down.

And then, maybe then can you remind me that all this broken yuck is the part that you came for? is the part that you redeem and turn into goodness? Can you remind me that indeed remembering my own deep cracks is the beginning of remembering your own deep love?  Please?

Lent: Ash Wednesday

CapChurch is offering a series of emails with Lenten readings and writings.  Part of my Lenten practice will be to make space to reflect on those and hear The Word Of The Lord. Join and add as you will, please.

Today's reading comes from Isaiah 58:1-12.

 

¹ “Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
   Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
   and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.
² For day after day they seek me out;
   they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
   and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
   and seem eager for God to come near them.
³ ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
   ‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
   and you have not noticed?’

   “Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
   and exploit all your workers.
⁴ Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
   and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
   and expect your voice to be heard on high.
⁵ Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
   only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
   and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
   a day acceptable to the LORD?
 ⁶ “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
   and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
   and break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your food with the hungry
   and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
   and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
⁸ Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
   and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
   and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
⁹ Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
   you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
   “If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
   with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
¹⁰ and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
   and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
   and your night will become like the noonday.
¹¹ The LORD will guide you always;
   he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
   and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
   like a spring whose waters never fail.
¹² Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
   and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
   Restorer of Streets with Dwellings. 

On this first day of Lent, much conversation is had about what is to be given up. A few will add something instead.  All who notice Lent will at some point try to do something differently so that the waiting, the dread of the walk to the cross, the anticipation of the promise of New Life, so that all of that won't go un-noticed.

In Isaiah, God rails against crappy fasts, and I think so many of my fasts have been crappy, ending as is described here, in strife and quarreling and stiking others with my wicked fists.

This year as I try to think of a way to make space (again) for the Risen One to rise up in me, I yearn for a fast that looses the chains of injustice, that feeds the hungry and gives shelter, that does not turn away from my own flesh and blood. And so I think this will be my fast: a fast from deciding who deserves what I have to give. A fast from being the Knower of What Should Be Known. A fast from doing as I please.

I will give up some time in each of these 40 days to hear who needs what I have to give from the Knower of All That Is Known and to hear also what pleases him.

May it be so. Amen.

 

Love Keeps No Record

What a dumb standard.  Honestly. Was that Paul? What an asshole.

I love a lot of people and a lot of people I love do a lot of wrong and I would really relish the opportunity to tell them about it. A lot.  I am an excellent record keeper and it seems wrong that God would make me this way if God didn't want someone to keep track of all the wrong shit people do.  Particularly the wrong shit people do to me!

Now my beloved will tell you that despite Paul's suggestion, my love for my husband does include a record of his wrongs.  What he doesn't realize is how many wrongs I don't keep a record of, just letting them slide away all easy-like. 

This month that husband's mom is dying.  More dying than she was before, but probably a tiny bit less dying than she will be in a few weeks. But for sure, pretty dying.  And so all of us who love her are trying to love her now in ways that matter, which mostly looks like lingery visits in her hospital room and whatever version of empathy or sympathy we know.

Everyone is doing their best.  But since everyone is a novice at the whole Mom Is Dying gig, everyone is doing it wrong.

Now you may be wondering, how do I know they're doing it wrong?  Because (of course), they're not doing it like me. Obviously that's ludicrous - they can't all do it like me, because they have to do it like their own selves. But they should be doing it the way I think their own selves should be doing it. Because that would make me feel better. 

Were I a lesser person, there would be the possibility that I was doing it wrong and that my plans for how other people could avoid doing it wrong were in fact, also wrong.  But I am so not wrong that I actually make space for this and keep telling people how I may be wrong.  They seem to think I mean it though and take that as permission to carry on doing it their own way.

Their own Wrong Way.

Now in seriousness, there are some pretty big Wrong Things that have happened over the last several weeks, even one or two by me. But in the face of death, I find myself with a tiny bit more humility (hard though that may be to believe), and therefore a tiny bit more willing to stop keeping a record. But it's just so hard, you know? Really, really hard to not want to tuck away sticky notes so that later on I can say, "But then you did THIS wrong thing and it made THIS bad thing happen and YOU are responsible for EVERY bad thing that followed!!" 

But love doesn't do that.  Love says to let it all slide away.  To only tuck away people's best parts, to only remind them of the right and good and pure and true things they did and said, and in fact, to only remember those parts.

This is the part where Jesus has to show up and do a miracle because honest to Pete (never Paul, always Pete), this part sucks.

What If The Good Parts Are True?

I don't want to type a lot tonight but I want to remember this part:  sometimes people start saying things to a person or about a person that are kind and affirming and that make a person feel all Possible inside. And mostly a person believes those things until they run into the part of themselves that believes that believing good things about one's own self is conceit and sinful and so they might try to start remembering their flaws and not-so-greats.  And then that might person might end up in a big ball of conflictedness because of course secretly they believe themselves to be awesome (and actually, between you and me, a bit awesomer) but then they know that there are some fairly deep flaws that sometimes obscure said awesomeness and probably those are a bit truer than the other bits.

That person might then start to wonder then about what they see in others and that person might realize that often they really do mostly see and observe and comment on other people's not-so-greats, mostly because those not-so-great bits are the parts that make that first person's life so miserable most days. And so then that person wonders if it would be possible to become the kind of person who instead lives with other people's awesome, because really, wouldn't that be awesome?

Finally, that person quits and hopes to Jesus that awesome really, truly does show up.

Oh My Word

My sweet boy turns three this week.  On Saturday night he was celebrated with friends and family, a smallish gathering of our favourites.  He opened three really great gifts.  One of them was for me.

Technically, I think it was for him. But I can tell you that all the goodness of it was for me.

A small bench, painted red and blue and a nice vanilla colour. Legs, bracing and top, all attached with screws. Four knobs attached with wing nuts. And a small basket of extra bits and two Allen keys.  Boy bliss.  Nate grabbed a "screwdriver" and started taking that thing apart. And I had a little cry.

A few weeks earlier I had posted on facebook that my boy had taken some unsupervised playtime and used it to take out any and all screws he could find in his bedroom, including those holding together his bookshelf and bunkbed ladder.

Over those same few weeks, I have been blogging out my wrestle to be Occupied and transformed in the hopes of being part of a transformation somehow. I have written about giving what we have to give to those who need what we have. I have written about receiving what is given.  I have written about needing less and giving to people, not causes and paying cash and being producers instead of consumers.  I have ached to be changed in the hopes of somehow, at the same time, seeing hope for Real Change.

Right there, wrapped in purple and white tissue paper, was my heart's hope.  I didn't know that's what I needed, but it was given by the one who had it to give and who knew to give it.  I felt loved. And Loved.

The perfect gift.

It got me thinking about gifts over the subsequent days that have passed.  And how I can't figure out how the gifts fit into Christmas and how irksome it is that presents just have to wreck Christmas every year.

And then today in the kitchen, I was innocently making coffee and finding myself getting kind of excited about Christmas.  Kind of feeling a hint of Christmas Spirit and that nauseous-making anticipation that always lingers at the edges of December for me. Kind of looking forward to Christmas morning and wondering if there would be another Perfect Gift.

And then it hit me, in that "I can't believe I'm being this trite and embarrassingly sappy, but holy shit, this is true!" kind of way: Jesus is the Perfect Gift and he's coming! Again! This year, this miracle happens again! We get Jesus! And it makes me so... happy!  Oh my word. I'm actually kind of embarrassed and typing fast to make this end quickly, but there it is: I'm finally getting the part where the excitement I've been feeling all these years, the hope that this will be the year, the anticipation that the Perfect Gift is coming.... all of that is about WAITING FOR JESUS!!!! I can't even tell you how good news this is to me! Jesus came! Jesus is coming! Hope is here! The Good News shows up! I got Jesus!  We all did, do, will!! Oh my.

It made me giggle a bit because I don't really think of myself as a particularly I-Love-Jesus-So-Much kind of person. I actually probably wouldn't have put Jesus on any kind of list of gifts I'd like to receive.  Or maybe I just put Jesus in the socks and underwear category: sure, throw 'em in the stocking and call 'em a gift, but we all know they're just filler. And yet here I am, for the first time (can this be?!) realizing that Jesus is in fact the huge, Oh-No-They-Didn't-Yes-They-Did gift that you kind of keep your eyes on all morning, hoping that it is, but fearing that it isn't and that finding out that Yes! it is!

Jesus is that gift for me this year!!

I am floored.

And then came this: I don't need to feel badly about the presents things anymore, about my kids getting excited about Christmas because they're going to get so many presents, some wanted, some not-so-much. Because that hopefulness, that belly full of hope - all of that points to Great News that we have already received the Perfect Gift and the receiving of it is so, so good. Maybe one day they'll have this moment too, when they look at God with slightly different eyes, full of wonder that God knew this! this! this was what I've been needing all along.

Receiving the perfect gift is unusually wonderful.  I'm thankful for the bench that was so perfectly given, and that pointed the way to this Knowing that indeed, I Am Known.

May you know that too. Whoever you are.

When Love Shows Up

When a person is trudging through mud, day after day, a person gets tired.  When a person is trudging through mud, and falls into the deep part and gets mud up their nose, it's so awful that when they are finally back up and trudging through mud again, they forget that trudging through mud is tiring, so thankful are they to have finally blown all the mud out of their nose. But a few miles later, they're exhausted, and faltering and it dawns on them, This Is Mud. And I'm Still Trudging.

And then they cry. A lot.

And then they get a note from a friend that says "You're doing great in that mud. Keep going."  And another friend says, "That mud is worthwhile mud. Keep going."  And another friend sends stickers and says, "Sticker charts aren't dumb at all. Keep going.*" 

And in one day, a person trudging through mud remembers that the journey is not unseen, is not for naught, is not without its rewards and that maybe even Jesus is watching.  And that person trudges on, deeply grateful to be so well-loved.

*A person trudging through mud might decide that a sticker chart is the only motivation they need to stop throwing mud at the people trudging through mud beside them, an action that probably makes falling into the deep part and getting mud up the nose a lot more likely.

Love is What You Bring With You

I have been trying to decide what to do with my life.  Again.

For a while, I was considering the Dream That Could Not Be Named, but as a decision became required, it became clear that there was no Yes for this dream yet.  Maybe it even became clear that the dream wasn't actually The Dream after all.

So this got me thinking about how maybe I ought to give some space and time to looking a bit more carefully at the dream and making sure I understood exactly where I was being called by said Dream.  Maybe I had almost shown up at the wrong location...

Within days of the deadline passing for What I Thought Might Be The Dream, I found myself mid-femur deep in my Occupy Me obsession and I now find myself wondering if perhaps I've arrived at the right house. 

Last night in our sweet small group, as we read 1 John (Lord, why is the Bible such a mess? who can follow that thing?), I heard over and over that love is where we should be and what we should be doing.  And one thing that is new for me is that my new "passion" (I just can't do it yet...) fills me with some kind of Love-Like experience.  I can't quite explain it, but as I think about how hard it is to make a change or two that might hint at the Kingdom coming, The Will being done on earth as it is in Heaven, I find myself full of love for me and for every other person I know who thinks it's probably just too hard, but wants to try to anyway.  And then I think I might even love God and want to talk more to the Creator of all things and the bringer of the Kingdom who may or may not be hanging out in this house where I think The Dream might live.

It's a new and surprising turn of events, but it is lovely and good and I'm going to try to live in it.  And keep trying to remember to pack a bit more Love in my bag everytime I visit The Dream.  Because I think that's the point, no matter what happens to the dream.  That we just keep adding a bit more love.

Oh Snap.

I think I accidently got a passion.

I don't know what happened, but suddenly I have all this energy for an idea and I keep thinking about it and I actually took steps to make it happen.

I hardly even know myself.  Where is my apathy? my too-tired? my cynical regret?

Not sure but alas, I'm going to act like the passion's permanent until it burns itself out.

Visit my current passion here:  Occupy Me.

Evidence

Oddly, when the guy who wrote Galatians was listing the fruits of the spirit, he left out wine.  Or more accurately, empty bottles of wine.  Weird.

Weird because tonight after everyone had gone home, all that remained of my bible study was an empty bottle of wine and a picked-at crust of bread.  A few lip-marked glasses and some unused tea cups. And yet, surely the spirit was here.  That was the Spirit, wasn't it?

I won't lie - I am not altogether clear on the answer. I would like it to have been the Spirit.  Jesus even. Hell, I'd even take the Father, up close and personal if that's on offer. But for sure, at least one tine of the Trinity would be nice.  The promise is that when a few of us get together - us being Jesus-inviters - Jesus shows up too.  Except that he's awfully quiet and sounds a lot like my own preferences and loud thinking most times.

I think I said somewhere before that my surest knowing that what I'm hearing is God's whisper is when what I'm hearing is New and Good News.  New Good News.  New Good News that leaves me wanting to love people.  I don't think I said that part before but since we're here, let's add that part too. 

And tonight, there was not a lot new.  No GOOD NEWS!  Just the familiar... oh yeah, that is good news. Could be the Spirit, could be last night's talk radio.  Whatever it was, I remained unmoved in my unlove of a few, and my piss-poor love of the many.

Regardless though, we sat together and broke bread and poured wine and confessed sin and received forgiveness and read the Word and remembered together that there is Light in all this Darkness and maybe even remembered that the Darkness does not overcome the Light.  Or at least were willing to hope so. At the end of it all, all that remained was the bottle poured out.

And that will have to be my evidence for now.

F*ck Me

Tonight is my 20th Grad Reunion and I have woken up this morning with a giant Nobody Likes Me growing right in the middle of my brain.

I had felt it coming on the last few days, but I'm not a teenager anymore and know these things are easily treated with a little healthy self-talk, some affirming connections and of course, gratitude.  I applied all three liberally and went to bed last night still feeling a bit off, but certain that sleep and a new day would bring restored peace.

Wrong-O Buck-O.

It's worse than ever. I'm pretty sure the friends I spent the evening with only invited me because they had to - they've started running together every Monday morning which is obviously their way of slowing easing me out of the circle. It goes without saying that if we were truly friends they would know never to mention running to me...  No friends (and by "no friends", I mean "neither of the two I took the time to call and whom I would enjoy") can meet me early tonight to make me feel better about showing up at all because one is driving from White Rock after spending the day in Richmond and the other has to pick her husband up from work downtown before running to Lions Bay and back - likely stories both.  Probably they're going to a cool kids party first that I wasn't invited to...

The thing is, I know I'm mostly being ridiculous.  But there is the small part of me that is crying on the couch while I type this that isn't sure this is ridiculous at all.  That part of me is feeling lonely, and fairly convinced that living with my flaws on the outside as often as I do has been a terrible mistake. 

To be sure, I don't think that keeping all those flaws tucked away on the inside (as I assume those other un-flawed-looking people must do, assured as I am that all of humanity is flawed) is a wise or prudent thing to do, and in my case, probably not even possible.  And yet, there are days when knowing that all my flaws are so well-known by so many is just too hard to live with - I prefer the version of my life where everyone around me is astounded by my awesomeness and yet loves being around me because I'm so frikkin' humble about said awesomeness.

Oh well.  Chances are this will clear up in a few days and in the meantime, I'm just going to have to take a few extra minutes tonight to cover up the Nobody Likes Me with some of my better I'm Good! Concealer and hope for the best.  I'll let you know how it goes.

The Way You Should Go

And by "you", of course, I mean Me.

At some point a person might start to believe there is just One Way To Go.  That person might spend some (or most) of his or her youth trying to "discern" That Way, might think that if they were to pray long enough, or fast often enough, or just have really kick-ass morning devotions enough, or hell, even move far away enough to serve the poor enough, that The Way might make itself known.

Eventually, if Grace and Mercy show up as they are wont to do, that person will figure out that when Jesus said that thing about being The Way, that was kind of all there was to it.  The rest is details.

Sadly, that same person might, from time to time, forget that part.

That person might start reading great writers, or watching great lives, or hearing great words and might start to wonder if maybe there isn't a better way to do The Way than the way they're doing it. They might start to add several ways to the way they've been doing things to make their own way look a little more Right Way. But if they do that for too long that they eventually find themselves sure that there is No Way At All.

But there is A Way and I think I'm glad that this person remembered that fixing their eyes on The Way is the best way.

Maybe my only way.

What's On The Flip Side?

Our car got creamed yesterday.  Just sitting there, minding its own business in front of the barber shop, and BOOM! smush-a-rama.  The back quarter of it is really, really wrecked.  Happily SJ and the boy were tucked inside of said barber shop and were able to watch it all happen from a distance. Happier still, two very credible, We're Friends With Police People types also witnessed it all and took down the license plate number of the very large truck that kept on driving.

It looks pretty terrible. It's probably going to be a huge hassle to repair, if it even can be repaired.  And yet both Scott and I found ourselves very at rest with the whole thing.  Like we could just check one more box off the List of Shit We'll Deal With In 2011.  Almost a relief, really.  There aren't that many days left in the year relatively speaking - surely we're almost done?

What I find odd is the space between this Life That Is Actually Happening and the Life That I Think Should Start Soon.  I could actually be convinced that the Car Smush is just a twist in plot of a movie playing on TV, while my real car is just fine in that other life I'm meant to be living.  I realize typing this, that this may reveal a bit more of my crazy than is wise.

A friend asked if this introspection is typical of the "new year" that is September and indeed it is.  Every summer we find ourselves in moments where we taste rest and contentment.  We begin wonder if we ought to be doing something differently more often to live in that rest and contentment more full time.  And every September, the lastest version of Same Old Same Old starts up again with all its familiar sore spots and resentments and boredoms and vanities and we realize, This Is It.  Again.

Tips?

Quit It!

These Simple Mom people are killing me. I may have to quit them soon.

This morning's post was about - well, I don't even know what it was about. I just know that reading it left me feeling like shit.

The difficulty is that it isn't the kind of bad feeling where I'm annoyed because the content is so terribly wrong or the writing is so heart-breakingly poor. It's the kind of bad feeling where I find myself wondering if I'm on the entirely wrong road. The kind where I start to think maybe God is in heaven looking at the map, then looking back at me, and wondering if maybe he overestimated me afterall: "Seriously? She thought that was north?"

To be honest, I mostly don't think that God works this way.  I think God has read most of the same parenting books I have and really tries to use positive messaging to nudge us about.  Shame and fear, as God well knows after all those debacles of the Old Testament, aren't effective in moving people in they way they should go.  But are low-grade nausea and a hunger to do something different on the list too?

I don't know.  I do know this - I'm not settled these days and it's not clear to me where settledness lies.  Reading other people's journeys makes me itchier still to get moving, but alas, it's my own journey I must take. I wonder if there's a back up copy of the map God's looking at that I could borrow...

Justice Pesto

I blame Heidi.

First she wondered if I had spent any time cruising Simple Mom.  Then she posted a picture of her award-winning jam.

In the last four weeks I have started moisturizing with coconut oil, cleansing with combinations of olive, almond and castor oils, exfoliating with lemons and sugar, masking in egg yolks and yogurt and washing all of us with Dr. Bronner's Castille Soap.  I figure I've cut our chemical lode in half and our cleaning/soaping/face restoration budget by two-thirds. My skin is happy, and now I have something to do with the egg yolks left-over from pavlova making.

However, getting in touch with my inner hippie (hippy? really? spelling is an odd game sometimes) did not stop at homemade deoderant (coconut oil, cornstarch and baking soda).  It moved into the kitchen.  First I tried home-made yogurt in the crockpot (going to try making vanilla next time and I'm accepting tips on how to make it thicker).  Next I started making granola.

And then I decided to make the pesto.

This year we planted five basil plants.  Our north-west bed just loves to grow tomatoes and basil and who am I to stop it? The field of green goodness looks quite You're Such A Good Gardner all summer and I do enjoy tossing some fresh basil onto pizzas and into dips now and again.  But come early September, that basil needs to be harvested and in my mind there is no higher purpose for basil than pesto.  So I grab the neighbour's food processor and a swack of pine nuts, my Costco-sized jar of minced garlic and a block of parmesan and I pesto.

Pestoing requires picking basil.  A lot of basil.  For the first 6 or 7 minutes of basil picking, I'm quite zen about the whole thing.  I delight in the sweet smell, the buzz of bees in the buds, the abundance of it all.  Somewhere around the 8 minutes mark, I consider complaining.  It's getting boring, and none of the leaves look good any more.  And is this basil kind of bitter? Quickly, I drag my broken mind back to the delight of toiling on my own land and try to focus on the softly bending tendrils of green. At minute 8 and a half, I'm back to wondering why our beds are so low, and how I'll ever get the green out from under my fingernails. Around minute 9, I remind myself that for so many, this is the work that feeds families and that it is honourable work and that I could busy my brain praying for the migrant farmers who suffer such terrible injustice picking the food I underpay for...  but then at minute 10, my prayer is cut-off by my own voice yelling at the boy, "For f*ck's sake!! Why would you throw dirt into my bowl of basil!!! I didn't want to have to wash and dry this!!"*

At minute 10 and a half, the husband suggests maybe I have enough basil.

In I go with my easily-16-cups of basil.  I whir, I grate, I salt, I season.... I gently spoon my vibrant green sauce into my boiled and readied jars.  All four of them.  All four half-pint jars. 

Yep - 4 cups of pesto.

Good people would share.  Actually, I did share one jar with the neighbour who shared her food processor. But the other three jars? In *my* freezer. For *my* chicken/halibut/noodles.

I'm not sure this is the outcome those wonderful SimpleMom people intend when they encourage us to live more simply.  I'm almost certain this wasn't what Heidi intended when she innocently photographed her raspberry jam.  But on the other hand, I do kind of like remembering every time we break into our $15 dollar jar of pesto, that nothing is as simple as I would like it to be and that we do really have an abundance of many things, not just basil, and that when the abundance is condensed, it may seem too small. 

But it's not. It's more than enough.  Again.


*I figure it's been growing in my organic garden all summer. I know it's not sprayed and washing and drying takes SOOOOooo long. Besides, it's just us eating it and I can assure you, we've eaten far worse than unwashed organic basil.