“The children’s father, he’s good to them?”
Yes.
Mrs. Zimnoski and Her Vegetables
“He never hit you?”
No.
“He drink?”
No.
“So why you get divorced?”
If only life were that simple, I thought, and wondered if it could be and if, for her, it was. But all I knew for sure that was simple was the way she lived: the same hard work she structured her days with, the focus on what was and what had to be done, and no time to worry about what could have been.
I guess she was my teacher, someone I was meant to meet. There was one summer, though, when I almost didn’t see her. I was too busy searching for answers. Not simple answers, but things like meaning, certainty, and strength. I walked miles on that country road, trying only to silence the chatter in my mind. The farm’s magic hadn’t worked. And I hadn’t seen Mrs. Zimnoski.
I was feeling too anxious for idle chatter, too self-involved for cookies and juice. Still, I finally decided to visit since I didn’t know how soon I’d be back. So I stopped by, ate some of her fresh sauerkraut, and listened to her talk.
“Look!” she commanded and showed me a cauliflower just picked from her garden. “Look how beautiful!”
It did look beautiful, jewel-like, with its creamy white florets and pale green leaves, the brown soil still clinging to its roots.
She went on to tell me the four vegetables Farmer Dabrowski said could keep you from getting cancer. “Cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts . . . what else he tell me? I not remember what she say.”
I was only half-listening, too distracted to respond.
“Broccoli? . . . Onions?” she mused, half-talking to herself, half-talking to me.
“Beets?” I said, somewhat soothed by this conversation. “Beets,” I repeated, looking out the kitchen window to potato fields beyond.
“Cabbage,” Mrs. Zimnoski murmured, counting the litany on her fingers.
I realized we were talking vegetables, yet not really talking at all. It was as if we had entered together some country meditation where the mantra was “cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and beets.” And for a few minutes, the voices in my mind were stilled, as I rested in the goodness and clarity of vegetables.
Then, time to go. Hugs and chirping until I left: feeling better, as always, and carrying home her ripest tomatoes.
SACRED SOUND BITES
Food is alive.
I forget that sometimes, until I reach up and pick an apple from our tree.
A Jewish thing.
I’ve always felt that food is sacred. At first, I thought it was a Jewish thing. Not only because we loved to eat (and had a Jewish mother urging us on), but also because we celebrate our holy days around the table, with special foods for each.
On Sabbath, we bless the wine and hallah and give thanks to the Lord, “who creates the fruit of the vine” and “brings forth bread from the earth.” On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, we eat apples dipped in honey to bless the year with sweetness.
And on Passover, we eat matzah, unleavened bread, to remember our ancestors who were slaves fleeing Egypt and had no time to let the bread rise. We eat the matzah with bitter herbs and bless them both.
But, I soon learned, this is not just a Jewish thing—it’s universal. All religions and indigenous cultures agree: Food is sacred, the source of life. It’s something to give thanks for every day.
“One eats in holiness and the table becomes an altar.”—MARTIN BUBER
There is a Zen monastery in upstate New York that’s housed in an old mansion along the Hudson River. I went there with a group for a weekend retreat, and after a long day of chanting and meditation, we gathered together at a long table for dinner. But before we were served, the Zen master said a prayer—a long prayer—thanking the earth, the sun, the air, and the rain, the farmers, the cook, and everyone else who helped grow or prepare our food and bring it to the table. Then he asked us to be silent, eat slowly, and appreciate each taste. The meal was spare, yet it felt like a feast.
The other meals I’ve eaten in holiness, albeit a rowdier version, were at Helen and Allan’s home on a pine-treed mountainside in Jamestown, Colorado. John and I would sit with them and their children around a wooden table near the fire, and before we’d eat, we’d all hold hands. Sometimes it was enough to just do that and feel the energy pass between us. But it got even better when they’d start singing with gusto a full-bodied rendition of grace:
Thank you for the world so sweet,
Thank you for the food we eat,
Thank you for the birds that sing,
Thank you, God, for everything!
This was followed by a loud series of “Yums” in raucous harmony.
John and I now say this prayer almost nightly. And when we sing it with our young grandsons Eli and Isaac, they get so excited to be singing, blessing, and holding hands at dinner that they ask us to sing it “again!” and “again!”
All food is sacred. But some foods seem more sacred than others:
Homemade soup and home-baked bread (making it, smelling it, eating it!).
Southern fried chicken and collard greens (Black soul food).
Tea and scones with clotted cream and jam (English soul food).
Corn-on-the-cob with salt and butter (sacred enough that the Indians do a Corn Dance).
Refried beans, rice, and salsa (Mexican soul food).
Warm milk with honey (which they’d serve us each night at the yoga ashram before we chanted and went to bed).
Chocolate (which the Huichol Indians believe is a gift from paradise and leave as an offering at places of prayer).
Bagels and lox with cream cheese and olives (Jewish soul food).
And, best of all, food fresh from the garden.
From the garden.
Annie and Ellie created a huge vegetable garden. It became a community project, with friends and neighbors pitching in: plowing, weeding, and sowing. It was a beautiful garden, with plantings in spirals and Buddhist flags hanging from the fence.
“Take anything you want,” Annie said, when she proudly led me through it. I took three heads of lettuce and some baby chard.
Our own garden was more modest. Still, it took work: John digging, me weeding, and both watering each day. But the reward for our work came in August when I’d be making a soup or salad and run outside to pick cherry tomatoes and leaves of sweet basil to toss in at the end—fresh from the earth, straight to the table.
There’s something special about eating food you plant and tend. Annie says it’s because you have a relationship with it from all that work you did to help it grow.
Light a candle.
Before I make dinner, I sometimes light a candle and maybe say a prayer to bless the meal. I especially like to do this when company is coming and I’m cursing the clock and wondering why I ever thought I could have fish, rice, and spinach all be done at the same time. Calm down, the candlelight says. And more often than not, I do.
Tortillas.
When we visit Mexico, one of my favorite jaunts is walking to the village tortilleria in the early morning when the roosters are still crowing and stray dogs are barking. I enter the shop, smell the freshly baked tortillas, and buy a dozen for ten pesos. Lined up behind me are old women and young girls who buy a much larger stack of soft corn tortillas to fill with eggs and chilies, or rice and beans, or maybe fresh fish for dinner.
My tortillas are wrapped in brown paper to keep them warm. I feel their heat as I carry them back to our casita. The butter melts on them at breakfast.
Cooking together.
Sure, there was sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. But what really kept the hippie communes going was the outright fun of cooking together—and making something finer than you’d ever make alone.
The year I met John, we spent our first New Year’s Eve at a small cottage in Vermont. Outside, there was nothing but piles of snow,
and you couldn’t walk out without freezing your nose. Inside, we cooked an English feast: parsnips, jacket potatoes, brussels sprouts, and carrots—preceded by Cheshire cheese and crusty bread and toasted with champagne. It was the first time we cooked together, and it deepened our bond.
The body-mind connection.
It’s well known that our mind affects our body (with stress causing disease, and placebos working if we believe in them). But the opposite is also true: Our body and what we put into it can affect our mind and mood.
When I eat light, I feel light, physically and spiritually. I first became aware of this when I attended retreats where the meals were modest and vegetarian—brown rice with lentils, that sort of fare.
But I also love hot fudge sundaes, Elise’s butter-cream cakes, and the high I get from two margaritas. What can I say? I guess “moderation.”
“Everything’s fine in moderation,” said Aristotle. Or maybe it was my mother.
THE HUMBLE OATMEAL
In the 1980s, I was a social worker in Harlem, directing a program that helped kids stay in school. At that time, nearly seventy percent of minority children dropped out, and what I learned made me understand why. They were scared of rats in their bedrooms and junkies on the street; their teachers were happy when they didn’t show up; and almost every child I worked with had seen someone get killed—their father or brother or friend.
One autumn day I looked out the barred windows of one of the schools and saw a brilliant blue sky. “Look how beautiful it is,” I said to Lakisha, a nine-year-old I felt drawn to and was teaching to read during lunch.
She answered dully, “It’s ugly here, miss.”
And suddenly, through her eyes, I saw it all in stark relief: the boarded-up tenements, the wandering homeless, the treeless streets littered with garbage.
That’s when I knew I had to do more, something more radical than my everyday job. I wanted to get to the bottom of things—to clean up drugs and crime, to create great schools so all kids had a chance, to end poverty, racism, and injustice. Simply put, I wanted to save the world. But how?
Well, it was around that time that I saw a flyer for a workshop in Massachusetts. It was titled “Follow Your Calling.” So I signed on and landed up in a rural farmhouse, where there were only a few participants besides myself. Ironically, though, one of the few was a man who also saw his “calling” as saving the world. I sensed a subtle competition, and we didn’t really click—which was unfortunate, since teaming up might have made the job a lot easier.
But as it turned out, the workshop leader, Sally, thought my goal was a bit sweeping and suggested I think smaller. Maybe help save one little piece of the world. And maybe start with me.
“One way to find your calling,” Sally announced, “is to know what makes you happy.” Then she asked us all to make a list of whatever makes us happy and take it from there.
Makes me happy . . .
I jotted down the first thoughts that came to mind:
Nature
Love
Helping others
Oatmeal
Oatmeal? Why oatmeal? Who knows. Perhaps it was childhood memories: my mother making oatmeal on a cold winter day. The comfort of eating it with toast and jam. And I’m talking real, old-fashioned oatmeal, the kind you have to cook and watch and stir. A hippie slogan around that time was “You are what you eat.” Well, I wanted to be oatmeal: simple, healthy, and close to the earth. And when I eat oatmeal, that’s kind of how I feel.
Getting back to my list, I looked at “helping others” and remembered all the children in Harlem I had come here to help but didn’t know how. Then I remembered teaching Lakisha to read, how excited she was with each new word, and how good it felt to have something real I could offer.
With that in mind I wrote “teaching” right below “oatmeal.” I envisioned having my own kids in my own classroom, where I would give them love and support and teach them to read—things that just might change their lives.
So I left the workshop knowing this: I would make and eat oatmeal a few times a week and go back to school to become a teacher.
It wasn’t long after then that I met John, an Englishman passing through New York. This was fortuitous. Not only was John changing his life course at the same time I was, and not only did he smile and say gently, “Well, I never thought of saving the world, though I do try to make it a little better,” but like most Brits, he loved oatmeal (which they call porridge), even for dinner. “It’s an ancient grain,” he said. “I think of monks in monasteries eating bowls of gruel.”
One year later, John moved in with me, and one night a week we ate oatmeal. I stood and stirred it, just like my mom, and served it with toast and jam. It was a meal so humble it almost felt sacred.
Then, in the mornings, I took the crosstown bus to teach my young students. And that felt sacred too.
Part Nine
* * *
RITUALS AND CELEBRATIONS:
BIRTH TO DEATH AND IN-BETWEEN
Rituals are like ladders:
They can take you
to a higher place.
JOIN THE FAMILY
One year, after family plans fell through, John and I were destined to be home alone for Christmas. We were feeling quite dreary . . . until we decided to go to Taos, the most magical place we know. We’d never been there in winter but had heard about a Christmas Eve procession at the Taos Pueblo, the ancient village and longtime home of the Taos tribe. Now sometimes when we’ve visited reservations, I’ve left in sadness, feeling the sorrow of the people, their history, their land. But when we’ve attended their festivals—the Corn Dance, the Deer Dance—I’ve seen pride, spirit, and the power of tradition.
It’s a long drive to Taos from Boulder, about five hours. We played tapes of Robert Mirabal most of the way. He’s a flutist and singer who grew up in the Pueblo, and his songs blend native music with a sound called tribal rock. As we crossed the border leaving Colorado, the drumming on the tape grew mysteriously louder: Welcome to New Mexico, “Land of Enchantment.”
On Christmas Eve, we parked at the edge of the reservation and followed hundreds of people—Spanish, Native, and Anglo—on a dirt road to the village. It was a moonless, wintry night, and most folks were walking briskly to stay warm. When we reached the open space in front of the chapel, next to one-thousand-year-old dwellings made from mud and straw, we fell into clusters and a circle of sorts, and a buzz of excitement began to grow.
Church bells rang, and as if on cue, huge bonfires were lit, one by one, filling the black sky with golden flames and the sweet smell of burning pine. In the fires’ glow I saw families and elders, all chatting, laughing, and smiling hellos. And there, right across from me, was Robert Mirabal! He looked just like the picture on the front of his tape—long black hair, leather boots—and he held a young child wrapped warmly in his arms.
Then the fires shot up around us, blowing soot in my face, and I moved aside but stayed close enough to still feel their heat. I had never seen so many fires, nor any this high. It was almost frightening, yet exciting. It felt timeless and primal.
Just as the excitement was reaching its peak, from the courtyard of the church, the procession began: A painted wooden statue of the Virgin Mary, dressed in bridal white, was carried on a dais for all to see. Around and around the church folk carried her, slowly and reverently, while men behind them beat hand drums and chanted native chants. Next came the tribal dancers in headdresses and masks. Illuminated by the blazing fires, they stamped their feet to the droning rhythm played by musicians who followed. Last of all, the carolers came, singing in Spanish and their native tongue of Tiwa.
There is no electricity within the village walls, but the flames from the fires leapt high in the darkness as we huddled together, like a family, in the cold. “It’s about the sun returning,” I heard someone say. “It gives us light for the new year,” said another. It’s Christmas, it’s native, it’s solstice, it’s magic.
> Looking back, it all feels like something I dreamed. But it happens every Christmas, and one year we were there.
HELLO TO DAD, NANA,
UNCLE BOB, AND . . .
Every morning, after greeting the sun, I give a big hello to my ancestors as I look up at the southeastern sky. Why there? I’m not sure, but that’s where I picture them hanging out. Some days my thoughts go just to my dad; some days to Rebecca, the grandmother I never knew but was named after; and sometimes I think of them all and say hello to each. There are a few I like a lot better now than I did when they were alive. That’s the thing about death: You start to miss everyone after they’re gone.
On some mornings, I thank my departed family for what they gave me—a memory, talent, or trait—and that alone recharges my love. When I’m feeling lost, I ask for their help: for courage, faith, or my dad’s sense of humor. I also ask them to guide my children and, just as often, bless friends who are sick. I guess they’re my own band of angels, ones I have real ties to.
These morning “hellos” are a way to honor my ancestors, to remember them and feel their presence in my life. At the same time, I gain a sense of connection to the vast, unseen realm they’re now in, which somehow lessens my fear of death. And maybe, just maybe, when I die, they’ll be there to greet me in the southeast corner of heaven. What can I say? I like Hollywood endings. What I’m hoping for is that God does too.
MEDITATIONS ON MEDITATION
I often think about meditating when I’m meditating. Like, Wow, this is cool, I’m really meditating! Of course, that instantly ruins it. Well, here are some thoughts about meditating, which I might have had while meditating.
It’s nice to light a candle and ring a chime when I begin. It helps me enter a sacred space.
Recipes for a Sacred Life: True Stories and a Few Miracles Page 11