A Blessing for Your Day

Some fragmented thoughts about blessing, bleeding, planning for the coming growing season, and baking bread

Lent II
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Hello, friendly reader.

I couldn’t even muster an exclamation point to greet you with this week. I don’t have an essay for you. I don’t have any fresh reporting. I don’t have any fresh anything. Honestly, I’m tired.

When I’m tired, I tend to overcomplicate things. I’m basically back to my cranky five-year-old self—frustrated, whiny, exhausted, incessantly asking “Why?” yet unable to accept the answer and unwilling to do the basic things that would probably be best for me, like sleep.

So today I went back to the beginning, to the very first thing that, according to the first creation story in Genesis, God does after God makes the first birds and fish and again after God makes humanity: “And God blessed them.” God blessed them. God spoke words of life and flourishing over them.

“Bless” is such an odd word. Obviously it has a tinge of the holy to it. In that way, it goes beyond mere good wishes. When I looked up its etymology, I learned that it’s a cousin of an Old English word that means “to bleed.” I suppose that opening yourself up to blessing can also mean making yourself vulnerable. Certainly, it speaks to the human need for a helping hand, assistance beyond my frail and fallible self and aid beyond anything that any of us can muster, alone or together.

All I have is a blessing for you today. I hope something in these words will meet you where you are and accompany you where you need to go.

You who are tired:
May you find rest.

You who feel embattled:
May you stumble into sanctuary.

You who are sleepless:
May slumber embrace you like it does Fozzie.

The morning sun was shining through my study window, which made this perfect—except that it highlighted just how much hair this little creature sheds.

You who are struggling and restless:
May stillness and peace find you and hold you tight.

You who are toxically positive:
May you have the courage to perceive things as they are.

You who are toxically negative:
May you have the courage to perceive things as they are.

You who are overworked:
May grace surprise you.

You who are underappreciated:
May you be reminded that you matter.

You who despair:
May hope startle you.

You who are your own harshest critic:
May you be outshouted by the gentle encouragements of those who love you.

You who feel alone:
May unexpected compassion and unforeseen companionship greet you—and may you greet others with the same.

You whose shoulders slump and whose head is bowed:
May you lift up your face to the sky and the sun and the moon and the stars, remembering their beauty—as well as your own.

You who are at peace:
May you store this memory in your heart, that it might comfort you when trouble comes.

You who are angry and enraged at injustice and evil:
May the fire of your fury bring creativity and cleansing.

You who feel bruised and battered by the hard things of this world:
May you fall into the softness of the fluffiest duvet.

You who have gotten into the unfortunate habit of doomscrolling:
May the great mercy of the “off” button be yours.

You who are exhausted by Twitter and Facebook:
May you energize yourself and others by writing a better story.

You who feel unseen, unknown, even unloved:
May your heart feel the tenderness of a God who knows you better than you’ll ever know yourself—and who loves you more than you’ll ever be able to love yourself.

You who fear being seen, known, even loved:
May your soul be filled with reassurance and courage, rooted in the perfect love of the God who already sees and knows all.

You who just wanted things to be different:
May your being remain open to the One who is the master storyteller.

You who are ready for Coronatide to be over:
May you draw strength and solidarity from the worldwide chorus of Amens rising in response to your faithful lament.

You who are done with winter:
May you be stunned by wonder. 

You who think you might just have reached the end of your rope:
May you discover that my rope is also yours—and we’ll do this together.

Whatever you’re going through, wherever you are right now in body, soul, and spirit:
May God bless you, reminding you of beauty and joy, of the presence of goodness and of the promise of redemption.

Amen.

What I’m Growing: I was reading a piece from Civil Eats the other day about why there has been a recent run on seeds and a boom in gardening. Someone quoted in this story says that we grow things because we want a sense of control. Hahahahahahaha.

I get it on some level, but if there’s one thing that growing things has taught me, it’s about the need to relinquish control. Sure, I can plant and water and weed. But there are so many other factors over which I have no agency. It’s humbling.

I’m reminded, though, that there are things I can absolutely control. Last year, my crops languished because of my dearth of discipline and my lack of care. Though the community garden is three blocks away, I got lazy. I never developed a routine. I never found my rhythm, unless you mean my regular litany of excuses, which proved to be poor fertilizer.

This year will be different, I hope. I’ve started to map out where and when to plant. Possible perennials—ground cherry, lavender, lemon balm—will go outside our house. Early crops—spinach, carrot—too; the community garden won’t open till mid-May.

Having seed packets scattered across my desk even as snow persists on the ground outside my window—it gives me hope. Lent isn’t just a season of penitence; it’s also one of preparation. And both those things demand our awareness and our attention.

What I’m Cooking: I write so much about cooking in part because I want to strip it of its mystical aura. It’s something that everyone can learn to do, nobody should be afraid of it, and there’s no shame in trying and failing. I’m really not particularly gifted or disciplined (see above, obviously). I’ve lost count of how many sourdough starters have lost their lives to my neglect. I don’t have a very refined palate; I really like Cheetos and McDonald’s hash browns. I make grievous errors of judgment and execution all the time, and you know what? There’s always the next meal. 

Baking is probably my weakest kitchen skill. Neither of my grandmothers nor my mom had ovens in Hong Kong. While Chinese cuisine has had steamed buns for millennia, baked breads and pastries are, at least among the southern Chinese, a relative novelty. They arrived with the British. And though the recipes soon were adjusted for the Chinese palate—less sweet, less heavy, less dairy—these were treats that we almost always bought at the bakery.

Tristan loves bread—and I love anything that serves as a vehicle for butter delivery. So baked goods have had a more significant presence in our little household than they did in my childhood home. Lately, I’ve been baking with flour from the Tehachapi Heritage Grain Project in California, which seeks to use heirloom grains not just to make beautiful product but also to enrich the soil. Yesterday’s loaf was made with 50% Tehachapi Rouge de Bordeaux whole wheat, a French heirloom varietal long loved by bakers, and 50% King Arthur bread flour. I returned to Jim Lahey’s no-knead recipe from the New York Times, which I tried years and years ago. Except that I misread it, and instead of leaving the dough to rise on the kitchen counter as I was supposed to, I accidentally popped it into the refrigerator.

After its overnight in the fridge, I took the dough out and left it to rise atop the fridge for another 12 hours. Then I realized that there was no way I’d be able to pull off its final rise as well as the bake before I turned into a pumpkin. So I turned the dough over and put it back into the fridge for another night. Yesterday morning, I took it out as soon as we went downstairs to accompany Fozzie on his morning constitutional, and it rose at room temperature for about two hours before finally going into the oven.

One of my mantras in baking as in the rest of life is “high hopes, low expectations.” (It’s the expectations that always feed my disappointments.) After all the mistakes, I had virtually no expectations for this loaf—but it turned out beautifully. We made avocado toast for lunch, and pretended we were young hipsters, and we agreed that if we got a loaf like this at a bakery, we would not be mad.

Hipster-friendly avocado toast—and almost everything is better with a fried egg on top. We also had some leftover homemade hummus.

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Some of you might have seen the announcement from Sarah and me that there will not be an Evolving Faith gathering in 2021. We’re taking a little time to breathe, to work on other projects, and to attend to  other matters that need our time and energy right now. We don’t underestimate how much this gathering has come to matter to so many people, so if and when we do it again, we want to do it well.

What are you feeling? What’s on your heart? Where are you sensing some tenderness, and what might call for a blessing? Leave a comment, if you’re willing to share, and I’ll pop in from time to time to write some responses.

As ever, I’m so glad that we can stumble through all this together. Thank you for being on this journey with me! I’ll try to write again soon.

Yours,
Jeff