today's lunch

Was tomato, red leaf lettuce and winterpostulein (a german salad green) salad, with sour cream, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and tons of salt and pepper. and then a spelt pretzel with butter, mustard, and schinken (thinly sliced, smoked, cured pork).

picture forthcoming

And breakfast was a pear with slices of goat brie and then fennel and blood orange slices with olive oil and salt.

We have rainbows all over our house from the crystals hanging in every window and the SUN that is shining! all morning through our windows. Hooray! Oh, and my little cilantro seeds have sprouted. But the dill is still sleeping.

picture forthcoming

It seems as if this has been a really hard week for some folks- two couples I know have contacted me and told me they were either divorced or separating, one of my bosses is having not only real financial trouble, but one of my coworkers quite this morning. And the other boss is having to work way too much because one of my coworkers in that store is having such mental challenges that she cannot be flexible about much of anything at the moment. She needs stability somewhere in her life as she is not living the life that she wants to be living and is filled with anxiety and fear and depression and is easily overwhelmed. I have been very happy the last days and I have been thinking about how all of this works.

Part of it is that looking around I see how blessed I am, how lucky I am. And I am filled with such gratitude and joy and thankfulness and compassion and ok-ness. It is this funny thing that somehow makes me feel humbler rather than superior to the folks around me and keeps me really rooted in trusting the universe. And it motivates me to offer what I can within my resources of time and energy and money. I feel inspired and creative and filled with the joy of ordinariness. And this wants to overflow and connect with other hearts. I am not interested in "helping people" or, as some have said, "being a good Bodhisattva". I think I am rather the opposite of all the dogma I learned for so many years. I have finally freed myself from some Buddhist idea of how i am supposed to act and behave that was based on my self hatred and fear and clutching at something to show me how to make up for whatever badness I felt filled with. Now, I have a genuine love for myself and for life and I want only to connect, heart to heart with beings, and share love and togetherness, even through difficulty.

I am practicing with Nic, for example, how to turn towards each other when things are stressful and difficult. So often and so easily, we actually turn away form each other in these moments and get angry or sarcastic or cold or whatever with each other, when it is really grief and sadness and frustration and fear about a situation. Instead we could stand next to each other and look at the problem together and then act. It i slow going to change such an ingrained habit.

Cooking helps, as it always has, to bring up the stuff and transform it. And serving customers in the shop helps. But what helps most is gratitude to All for this life and remembering the holy. Like when I unpack the lettuce at the shop and am so moved by the beauty of the life of the plant I hold in my hands that I bring it home and eat it for lunch, eat that beauty and life into my belly. And then I can go out into the world and give it to others, not because it is a good idea to do so, but because I am so nourished by beauty that I simply have it within me to give.