there's a kind of hush

Rabbi Ted said tonight that there are many levels of silence, nesting within each other. And one of those levels is called "blessing."

I had time to come home for lunch today, and as I was rushing out the door to go back to work, I realized that I hadn't caught a morning glimpse of the hummingbird that flits and zzzzes to the feeder outside our dining room window. As soon as I stood still and accidentally entered the unfamiliar silence of no-thought, the hummingbird's sturdy little "chip chip chip" sound popped out from its perch on a tiny twig of the dogwood, a bright note in the continuous wild music that makes this world.

(From Louis Schwartzberg's fantastic Wings of Life)

jook

My dad, Bob "Lippi" Lee, didn't cook that many different things, but he always made delicious homefries, and delicious day-after-Thanksgiving jook. Jook is the Cantonese name for congee or rice porridge, similar to what's called okayu in Japanese (that would be my mom's side of the family). Robert and I are both 3rd-generation Americans, and we haven't passed down any of our grandparents' languages to the kids, since I don't speak any Cantonese and only a little bit of Japanese, and he doesn't speak any Yiddish--but we are doing a good job of introducing our boys to their lineage of foods!


Jook is considered to be very digestible and a good food for sick people. It can be an easier way to take the less nasty-tasting medicinal herbs, by adding them to the stock. This is how my dad made day-after-Thanksgiving jook:
1. Make a soup stock from the leftover turkey bones (you could use any stock, of course--chicken or duck are also delicious, or mushroom, and this is where you'd add the medicinal herbs if appropriate), strain the broth. (A short-cut - that my dad probably would have pooh-poohed, but it's pretty good - just use 2 turkey wings, a spoonful of salt, and 9 cups of water instead of making stock)
2. Add 1 cup of short-grain rice per 9-11 cups of soup stock (4-6 big servings), bring to a simmer, then turn the heat down to a very low simmer (or use a flame-tamer under the pot). Cover it and let simmer, stirring often, till very thick (like oatmeal). It will take 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 hours so put it on after breakfast and have it for lunch (and leftovers for breakfast the next day!)
3. Hard boil some eggs for garnish (I like 1/2 egg per serving)
3. That's it for the cooking! Serve it with garnishes on the table for everyone to add their own (or not, as they like): some soy sauce, thinly sliced scallions, sliced hard-boiled eggs, diced daikon radish pickle ("takuan", which is Japanese--I like it better than the Chinese pickled radish), some sliced Chinese red pickled ginger (not the pink sushi ginger) or a little peeled, grated, fresh ginger, and some cut-up leftover turkey meat. If we remember to get some cilantro we mince that up too. I think that a little torn-up Thai basil might also be good, but I haven't tried it yet. In Chinese restaurants they give you fried bread sticks ("deep-fired devils"), which are delicious! Like crullers but not sweet.
That's what we had for lunch--and for dinner, pre-Hanukkah latkes! That recipe another time...

you're song

Last night as I was reading in bed, I heard our 9-year old singing from his room across the hall, so I got up to see why he was still awake so late (and to find out what he was singing, since I didn't quite catch what it was). He was lying in his cozy bed, all tucked in, softly snoring. He'd been singing in his sleep!
When I told him about it this morning, he laughed with delight, but he couldn't remember what song it was.

lev shalom

Rabbi Ted suggested the other night, at a dinner meeting of our group that is going with him to Israel for 2 weeks, in 2 weeks, that it's time to begin clarifying and setting our kavannah (intention) for the trip. Our intentions always help to determine the kinds of energy that will be available to us, especially important in times or places of concentrated power.

My usual, automatic, responses to such suggestions are quick and without much thought--I pick the first thing that occurs to me and run with that. In this case, my first choice of intention is to be open, receptive, to connect and then let go. But in taking some time to go beyond my habitual response, and finding a comment from Ashley rolling and swimming in my mind, I think about the laser counterpoint to that wide-angle, let-it-all-in, swallow-the-ocean way of being...and that is, to really pay clear and focused attention, to notice and appreciate and remember details, one at a time. 

So, as I write this, a kavannah begins to form that is a sort of combination: to pay full and open bodymind attention to singular, particular, details; to move slowly enough that I can dive in a little more deeply past the surface of a place or thing or person.

From Chris W i'm reminded of a little quote by deena metzger that i have over my desk at work (i need to have it taped to the inside of my head):

there is time only to work slowly.

there is no time not to love.

And, this passage from a favorite book by philosophy professor and naturalist

Kathleen Dean Moore, called Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World

...the philosopher Zeno explained why it was a mistake to think of time as a straight line that can be divided. If a given distance is infinitely divisible, he said, then anyone who wants to travel that length will first have to traverse half its distance. Because you can't get anywhere without first getting halfway there, and because you can't get halfway there without going halfway to that point, and so on and so on, nobody can get anywhere at all. And--this is the good part--the same must be true of time: To pass from one time to the next time, you would have to pass through an infinitude of smaller and smaller pieces of time, and that would take forever.

My friend who is a philosopher says that what Zeno makes her think is, Who cares if you get somewhere? Try instead to go infinitely deep into any piece of the distance. If there is eternal life, she says, it will not be in the length of your life, but in its depth.

Our group will be visiting Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Tsfat, and then going to a retreat center/dude ranch in the northern Galilee. The theme of our journey is "the kabbalah of creation," with meditations and explorations steeped in the particular flavour of each of the days of creation.

faint traces of a forgotten coherence

This lovely phrase, so full of wistful longing, comes from an essay by David Abram called The Eclipse of the Sensuous, and has felt just right to describe the scent of the trail I've been on all my life. (Rumi, again--hmm! can you tell this is the book that is currently next to my bed?)

A scholar loves, and lives on,

the marks of a pen. A sufi loves footprints!

He sees those and stalks his game. At first, he

sees the clues. After a time he can follow the scent.

To go guided by frangrance is a hundred times better

than following tracks. A person who is opening

to the divine is like a door to a sufi.

Seeking out those traces, peering into the space-between that at first connects the parts, until we re-member that the parts were never separate, after all.

My friend Jeff described a circle of friends coming together post-election, which sounded like my experience too:

Bruce (wise explorer friend), and Dan, (court jester and convener extraordinaire), and I have gotten to hang out together a lot lately in the context of three distinct, but overlapping, conversation groups: one is focused on sustainability and business; another, with our friend David, is totally wide-ranging around the pivot topic of relationship-centered care; and the third is just called the "fellowship of the circle." It has no particular agenda, and so is the widest-ranging of all. Bruce and Dan and I are being the "bumblebees," as they're called in Open Space Technology, visiting different flowers (conversations and projects) and cross-pollinating. 

Lucky us, that a meeting of the "fellowship" was pre-scheduled for the day after the election. We came, one or a few at a time, up the garden path to Michelle and Joel's sanctuary-home near Greenlake, past the quiet pond and the bamboo and the sweet peach tree and welcoming buddha figures, in the middle of the bright-blue-sky, slightly surreal, afternoon. Sitting around a low table laid like an altar with piles of oranges and nuts and cookies, we went round the circle passing a palm-sized, heart-shaped, stone and took turns speaking, then spoke as we were moved to, and then around again with the stone at the end. In three hours we moved back and forth in and through bewilderment and grief and curiosity and fatigue and appreciation and faith. Teresa read to us the fable and showed us the beautiful pictures from Old Turtle and the Broken Truth. 

Carolyn talked about how we are all flickering between worlds, between the current popular paradigm and the ones we feel emerging, and how tiring it is, and how important it is that we can lend each other strength and go together. Joel inspired us with his story of going through the door of experience long ago into unshakeable faith in deep reality. We talked about edges and bridges and personal and collective practice, and Rumi's field: 

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,/there is a field. I'll meet you there./When the soul lies down in that grass,/the world is too full to talk about./Ideas, language, even the phrase each other/doesn't make any sense.)

Michelle offered the image of "root shock"--a trauma to the roots that allows and encourages the production of blooms.

All of us felt deeply grateful for the good fortune to be able to come together, and left feeling connected at root and branch, and hopeful again.

darjeeling & lemon scones, and ice cream in the garden

My elf-friends Rowan and Karen gave me one of the best presents ever, last year, a smooth carved black buddha-esque face, like a solid mask, on a pedestal. As a reminder that our face, our presence, is so precious. That seeing & acknowledging one another is such a deep true part of love and friendship and community.

Rowan Hamilton's two years as Bastyr University Herbal Sciences core faculty--as well as resident Herbal Wizard and instigator of the Outlaw Curriculum--overlapped in the middle with my own two year stint as assistant dean for the Naturopathic Medicine program. I know a lot of masterful teachers (including my own matey!), and from Rowan what I am particularly learning about teaching is the way it is a powerful vehicle for making space to venture deeply into what matters most to us about being alive. Relevant to any course topic, whether it's herbal formulation, practice management, or physiology from a systems perspective.

Our most creative and productive curriculum-mapping sessions, seeing how all the pieces really are related, and concocting ways to give ourselves and our students opportunities to see & feel & know it, were of course never in our pleasant offices or conference rooms. We did our best work either over Darjeeling tea (don't steep too long!) and lemon scones at the teahouse down the highway, or basking in the university's medicinal herb garden, with plenty of paper and markers and chocolate praline ice cream bars on hand, or walking with our crony Dan Leahy on the grounds or on the trails in the woods next to campus.

Rowan's back in Vancouver full-time, and his teaching has taken a whole new form. He's asked if he could put some stuff up here to share, and I said, yes please!! So these few words are a little bit of introduction, and encouragement to come play, and soon.