THE TAO OF TOES

I’ve found a great pedicurist who makes my feet look cute. So for a break from my everyday schedule of writing that plays havoc with my neck and shoulders, I thought I’d book a different treatment at the same spa.

My appointment yesterday for a deep-tissue massage led to an interesting discussion with the therapist, whose answer to all life’s problems lay, she explained, in the personal application of astrology—a “scientific” system that I should use in getting to the psychic root of my muscular pains. Didn’t God place the stars in the heavens in the expectation that we would use the spiritual powers they afforded?

Earlier in the receiving lounge a waiting client, an aging truck driver wearing plaid flannel, witnessed to me about the wonderful help he was receiving there for his diabetes through reiki (which he pronounced “reekie” like it was a bad smell)—a Buddhist practice whereby the life force energy is transferred through the palms of the healer by the laying on of hands. During his testimonial to me, his portly wife finished her session and limped into the lounge to join us; yes, she proclaimed, her aura was finally adjusted.

Now, I live in a small city built upon the industries of agriculture and natural gas, where Sunday mornings the cops still set up radar traps to catch churchgoers. Most residents here are politically conservative and culturally down to earth, their feet firmly planted in the soil while their heads brush the heavens (to coin G.K. Chesterton). Yet, in the span of two hours, I faced the encroaching tide of Eastern mysticism so at odds with Western sensibilities—a philosophical corrective for our era, many would say, that allows the circular flow of “balance” to trump the linear march of propositional “truth” as the source of peace. All religions are the same, they declare; all cultural viewpoints carry equal validity for seekers of harmony.

Everyone is looking for inner peace, striving to find rest for the soul.

This is the message behind my next novel, which in my drafting has now hit the noteworthy word count of 80,000 (only 20K to go). I’m grappling with a character who believes—like the massage therapist yesterday—that she can chase down peace and the fullness of life if only she tries hard enough to let the organic fullness of The Universe speak into her existence.

In my story, Libby (a 50-ish, single salesclerk in Minneapolis who loves cooking soup and hates apartment living) is on the verge of her first house purchase after years of caring for her only real family—her recently deceased grandmother who is speaking to her from beyond the grave through a letter and the bequest of an antique child’s ring. But Libby’s younger friend Sybil (zany owner of Amulets Alternative Apothecary) is begging her instead to blow her budget on traveling with her to sacred places around the world—a monastery in Japan, a mountaintop in Africa, a mosque in Istanbul. They compromise with a road trip to North Dakota, up near the Canadian border, to take in a tour through a mansion museum led by the newly wed and very pregnant historian-curator Paige (who speaks on behalf of the town’s founder and builder of the mansion). In that old house Libby discovers her cultural heritage and the true meaning of “home,” to enter her personal rest.

Wish me luck (or, perhaps I should say, pray for providence) as I push on to the end of my theological exploration. Like any piece of fiction, my novel is just a little story—but I know how influential story can be to potential readers who are treading out their own walk of life.

          THAI CHICKEN SOUP

I found a lovely looking recipe on Pinterest and modified it to my taste. I think I’m going to include it in my novel, having my main character brew it up. Check it out!

First, I diced and browned in olive oil in my cast iron soup kettle:

• 2 large chicken breasts

Then I lightly sautéed in olive oil these veggies:

• 1 large onion, chopped (1 cup)
• 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons grated ginger root

I added these, and the chicken, to the pot:

• 1 cup diagonally sliced carrots
• 2 tablespoons Thai sweet red chili sauce
• 1 tablespoon dried lemongrass
• 4 cups chicken broth

After simmering for about half an hour, I added till tender:

• 1 medium red bell pepper, cut into strips
• 2 cups quartered mushrooms
• ¼ cup chopped fresh basil leaves
• 1 can (14 oz) coconut milk

I finished with:

• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

 Delicious!

          COMFORT          

I think I’ve had it wrong. The word comfortable has always sparked mental pictures for me of down bedding or a steaming bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup.

But a recent reading educated me.

Our English word comes from the Old French verb conforter (to comfort). It is made up of two Latin words meaning “with” (used as an intensive to infer a great degree) and “strengthen” or “embolden.” That is, to comfort means to strongly reassure, to fortify, to make strong. It wasn’t until the middle of the 17th century that the word took on the idea of comfort as something that produced physical ease.

Add to this the Greek for paraklesis (such as we see in the biblical “God of all comfort” and several other applications to Father, Son, and Spirit), and my picture of a cozy bed or soothing soup loses force.

If I want to get or give comfort, I guess I need to learn about something more than linens and food!

         THE DOLDRUMS

I’m a bit under the weather today. Not sick, exactly—just slight chills and dizziness and, mostly, a feeling of lethargy.

If I worked for someone else, I couldn’t quite justify taking the day off. As a writer-at-home, I was so looking forward to picking up drafting on my novel, set aside during a recent family vacation. But now I find myself with so much to do and no will to do it, leaving me discontent—as though my day is wasted while it’s only early afternoon, as though I’ve lost confidence in my life vocation that usually keeps me motivated and productive.

I’ve been reading today; it helps me justify my down time. This morning I cracked open a book about the afterlife, started in on my first volume of a new subscription to an academic literary journal, and wiled away some time on the ’Net.

My surfing led me to a lovely post by a blogger who advised that, though:

“The world is broken and we are subject to fear, discouragement and loss of confidence,”

I need only (in the words of Oswald Chambers) to:

“Never let the sense of past failure defeat [my] next step [but instead] . . . Get up, and do the next thing.”

So I think I will be good to myself and (in this order):

• Listen to my body whispering that all is not quite right, and so take a nap, and then
• Listen to my sister, who sagaciously messaged me this morning after I’d complained to her, recommending I take joy, and then
• Listen to my soul that longs to create something worthy, take up my pen (aka, my laptop), and get back to drafting.

          SLIPPER

The elegance of this richly embroidered silk slipper, looking like a cute doll’s shoe at three-and-a-half inches in length, belies its hideous history. More than a century old, it was worn by a bound-footed woman in Formosa (Taiwan) and now sits on our bedroom dresser mounted in a black shadow-box frame. The lady would have been fully grown and was possibly of noble birth, the bones of her feet crushed as a child with resulting infection because of a tradition that had been followed for a thousand years—effective in immobilizing women debilitated by pain. This shoe is a symbol of emancipation that came to our house through inheritance from a Canadian Presbyterian missionary, George Leslie Mackay—my husband’s mother’s aunt’s father-in-law. He was the subject of a 2006 televised Canadian documentary, The Black Bearded Barbarian of Taiwan.

Mackay was born in Ontario in 1844 and studied in Toronto, Princeton, and Edinburgh before leaving for the Orient in 1871. He so immersed himself in the culture of his chosen land that he even married a Formosan wife, who herself became an outspoken critic of foot-binding. He served the people for three decades as dentist, anthropologist, educator, evangelist, and author before he died in 1901. Mackay still retains a widespread reputation in that country as the founder of hospitals and schools, and is the subject of a significant Taiwanese opera production.

Why does this matter to me today? I am currently drafting a scene into my novel about a character whose backstory, though set in North America, is all about the sentiments shown by my husband’s shirttail relative. My fictional character faces cultural issues that are new to me, and I need a guide. Now, I didn’t know much about Mackay before we received this silk slipper—so lovely to look at but so horrendous to contemplate. Today our postmodern sensibilities reject the “damage” done to foreign cultures by turn-of-the-century missionaries, who despised practices of paganism that dehumanized people and destroyed the family unit through such brutality as physical mutilation, slavery, and polygamy. I don’t excuse the cultural sins committed by professing Christians who rejected the ethnicity of the ones they came to serve, but I laud the true social reforms made in the name of Christ. I rejoice that there have been and continue to be loving bearers of the Gospel who, although not perfect, devote their lives in going out to all the nations with the welcome news of salvation in Jesus—a salvation that makes a difference in the here and now.

          CHOCOLATE

I once made the mistake, when speaking to a French friend, of calling chocolate “junk food.” You’d have forgiven me at the time, I’m sure, as I was referring to the thick tablets of chocolate pasted on the top of baby teething biscuits I found in the department store in a small town (Aix-les-bains), where I was camped out with my two girls for several months back in the nineties. You’d have forgiven me, but my friend didn’t, and of course I have since seen the light: I’d been poisoned by North American trends to not realize chocolate is actually one of the basic food groups.

So when I learned recently that an old college buddy of mine had just embarked on a “bean-to-bar dark chocolate” operation in Minnesota, I promptly ordered a selection of his product—made from cocoa beans grown in Belize, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. The Meadowlands Chocolate bars arrived in my rural mailbox yesterday, and so this morning—before sullying my taste buds with my usual breakfast of oranges and yogurt—I tested them.

Unbelievable! This chocolate is the real stuff. The wrapping on each bar bears a description—like a wine bottle—of the influences and flavors to be found within, using words such as dark, earthy, rich, nutty, hints of rum, spice, mango, subtle wood aroma. Not fancy filled candies for delicate fingers, these bars are something to sink your teeth into. The winner for me (today at least, though I will change my mind as soon as I’ve consumed it and can eat the next) is the Belize bar, described thus: Bright, fruity overtones. Hints of sweet vanilla.

I was thinking of dieting. You know, after-Christmas bulge needing to be shaved down a bit. But now that I’ve ruined it for today anyway, maybe I should just forget about the yogurt and have another piece of heaven.

          DRAFTING

I’m in the mode. My desktop (okay, kitchen table) is stacked high with computer, binder of plot notes, reference books, sheafs of paper, pens, cups of cold coffee.  I’ll likely wear my housecoat till late afternoon, only dressing in order to walk on my elliptical while watching Dr. Phil. My suppers for hubby currently consist of holiday leftovers and I’m sort of relieved when he says he’ll eat out. I’m a bit of a mess and I don’t see it getting much better before spring–if “better” means I come back into the real world for most of the day.

I love writing! This is only my second novel, but I learned a lot while drafting my first. I learned that it takes much longer to get a book into readable form than I plan, and that pulsing purple passages will likely die of deletion, and that the storyline needs to keep moving along. I learned that I have about fifteen minutes of intense creativity upon first waking in the mornings, when “ah-has” come clear to me. I learned that if I hold onto a thought too long without scratching it down on paper, I lose it, but that if I make too many temporary notes, they hold me captive and freeze me up when I’m trying to maintain the flow.

I’m writing such a scene right now; I have something particular I’m trying to say (my viewpoint character in this segment is a dead “historical” character with a very specific message to pass along), but I’m struggling to condense the thought while keeping the pace and feel of the story.

At the end of the day, I don’t even know if this novel will sell. In fact, at this point I’m only trying to get a readable first draft to entice the agent I have been eyeing up for eighteen months. I’m impatient with myself; though I love to draft, I want to be able to write more more a day than actually happens. I’m torn between pushing myself anxiously to finish and ambling along with the joy of immersing myself in the fiction. That is, I’m not sure the pragmatism of expediency is worth losing the vibe.

And my friends are forgetting about me: out of sight, out of mind. I’m holed up in my cozy kitchen and so glad to be here! But my inner focus shuts down my extroversion when I’m drafting. I’m glad for the excuse of Canadian winter, when sensible people don’t quickly rush off to town on country roads but condone their antisocial behaviour by blaming it on the weather. It makes drafting forgivable.

        THE DOT

My fourth-grade teacher made a single, round mark on the board as he stood in front of the classroom. “A dot is the end point, like the hole in a garden hose,” he explained. “If you tip the dot sideways, it becomes a line that runs on a plane forever.”

Thus was my mind first opened to the notion of infinity.

For a graduate school project in 1999, I “curated” an art show by Elma Eidse Neufeld named AMATE:LOVE! and wrote the guidebook, which begins:

Unspoken, then pronounced by the First Speaker, the invisible Logos took on form, became seen. The seed of all symbols, the dot is the innermost essence of the visual, the contact point between Creator and created, the touch of the finger of God. It is the spot at which pencil meets paper, the genesis of art and the germination of the written word.  Like warm breath on a frosty windowpane, it creates an aperture onto the cryptic world of imagery.

This morning while reading a devotional commentary by the late Donald Grey Barnhouse, I contemplated the idea of a single word functioning like that dot on the chalkboard, that melted spot on the window–a written word acting as the visual cross-section of an idea that leads to eternity. The author’s point was that the concept behind the particular word he was considering (“righteousness,” appearing first in Genesis 15:6) continues on in “every page and in every line” of the Bible–from righteousness as an attribute of the Almighty, through the loss of righteousness in Lucifer and mankind and its manifestation and re-establishment through Christ, to its ultimate, yet-to-be-seen triumph in all creation. Of course, the author was describing what we call a theme or motif–something I’ve been writing about for a couple of years now (see MOTIFS).

A single word, as the written symbol of an idea, can thread its way from today all the way to forever. 

I’m currently drafting my second novel. It’s in pretty rough form right now as I’m concentrating on plot and character development; I’ll take time later to refine word choice. But one word that keeps popping out at me in this novel is home, which pings all sorts of emotions for me. It speaks of childhood comfort at the family table and coziness before the fireplace, of anticipation when I left for school, of joy in new life with my rancher husband, of great satisfaction as I watch my children establish their own homes. Mostly, it brings to my heart a sort of longing for the eternal.

What word threads its way through your life? Share it with me here, please!

          SOURDOUGH BREAD

A batch of sourdough starter lives in a glass container in my fridge. I mixed it up last month and used some to make delicious loaves of white and rye breads, but the joy of sourdough starter is that the leftover keeps ripening and increasing in flavour so long as it’s fed weekly (with a half-cup of water and a half-cup of flour). It’s almost time again for another baking session.

Today, in response to several requests from Facebook friends, I’m here posting my recipes for the starter and the two types of bread I recently made (though keep an eye on my “engage” blog for further experimentation). Purists don’t use commercial yeast, but I do–it speeds the process and makes a lovely bread! Check online for many variations in recipes and methods.

SOURDOUGH STARTER: Soften 3 teaspoons active dry yeast in 2 cups warm water till bubbly (10 minutes). Stir in 2 cups all-purpose white flour (or you can use rye or other desired flour). Cover tightly and let stand at room temperature for at least 2 days, stirring occasionally. (You can forgo the yeast and let it stand on the counter for up to 10 days if you want a more authentic, extra-sour flavour, but first check this link for method). After this initial ripening, store loosely covered in fridge till needed (NOT in an airtight container) and “feed” every week with about 1 tablespoon of flour and 1.5 tablespoons of water. When removing some starter for baking, replace amount of starter taken out with equal amounts flour and water stirred back into the starter; let stand overnight on the counter covered lightly till again bubbly and then return to refrigerator for storing.     

SOURDOUGH WHITE BREAD: Mix 1 cup of sourdough starter with 1 cup water and 2 cups white flour in large bowl; let stand covered at room temperature overnight. Soften 3 teaspoons active dry yeast in 1 cup warm water till bubbly and stir into bread along with 1 tablespoon salt and about 4 cups white flour. Knead till elastic. Place in lightly floured bowl and sprinkle flour on top. Cover with cloth and let rise till double (2.5-3 hours). Punch down and knead lightly. Shape into two rounded loaves and let rise till double (1.5-2 hours). Brush with one egg beaten with 1 teaspoon water. Bake 25 minutes at 450° (For heavier crust, I place a pie tin of water on a lower rack during baking to create steam).

SOURDOUGH RYE BREAD: Mix 1 cup of sourdough starter with 1 cup water and 2 cups rye flour in large bowl; let stand covered at room temperature overnight. Soften 3 teaspoons active dry yeast in 1 cup warm water till bubbly and stir into bread along with 1 tablespoon salt, 1 tablespoon caraway seed, 1.5 teaspoons poppy seeds, and about 4 cups rye flour. Knead till elastic. Place in lightly floured bowl and sprinkle flour on top. Cover with cloth and let rise till double (3 hours). Punch down and knead lightly. Shape into two thinner, tapered loaves and let rise till double (1-1.5 hours). Brush with one egg beaten with 1 teaspoon water. Bake 25 minutes at 450°  (For heavier crust, I place a pie tin of water on a lower rack during baking to create steam).

Let me know how your bread turns out, and share your own recipes here!

     OUR HEARTS CAN REST AT HOME

“My grandmother,” I said in a low tone, “would have said that we were all in exile, and that no earthly house could cure the holy home-sickness that forbids us rest.”                                                                                              (G.K. Chesterton, Manalive)                                                                                                           

I just returned from a weekend of speaking at a women’s retreat in the wooded surroundings of Cypress Hills Park (Saskatchewan). Preparing and delivering the three presentations was a pleasure–and I continue to learn about how my heart can rest from its wanderings, spiritually at home. In this series, I considered the following definitions:

• HOMELINESS: The cozy, intimate sense of peaceful domesticity, where one is known and loved
• HOMELESS HOMESICKNESS: The rootless, ungrounded condition of the displaced wanderer gone astray, possessing no dwelling or place of security but only hopeless heartache and inner longing for a far-off household
• HOMECOMING: The joyous return to the hospitable haven of the hearth and home to which one belongs

My cheering section accompanied me (daughter, niece, sister-in-law) and sat in the front row of the roomful (40+) of ladies, laughing and nodding appropriately. On Sunday morning in the sharing time, one of the younger retreat attendees–a newlywed–mentioned that my talks had given her the words she needed to pass along encouragement to her husband. Another woman said that she’d had an aha! moment in the middle of my second session. This type of commentary confirms not that I speak well but that my point is getting across. I care about the message more than the method; that is, the content of my talks is much more important than the way I speak. But I know that, for me to make the content accessible, I must hone communication skills. It’s a fun challenge!