on being empty

Not being much of a planner, I began to think this morning about what practice, if anything, I’d like to give up or adopt for Lent* this year.

In the past I’ve given up a variety of things, and have even decided to instead adopt something positive (though technically, Lent is not about adding, but about subtracting). But to be honest, I’m not sure it has been all that significant or meaningful, other than being a hassle to go out to eat when everyone else is eating meat or drinking beer or having chocolate cake for dessert.

But this morning as I began to think about today being Ash Wednesday, and whether or not I might do anything to acknowledge the season of Lent, the thought popped into my head—why not give up being full? I know what you’re thinking—fantastic cop-out and way to still get to eat whatever you want! Which, perhaps, it is.

But it strikes me that in our society of excessiveness, of having everything we could ever want or need almost immediately accessible, giving up being full is something that can have personal implications, but also potentially ‘be the change you wish to see in the world’ type implications.

What also strikes me is that ‘empty’ in our culture, is pretty much a negative word. Empty is what your fuel tank is when you are looking frantically for gas station. Empty is what a party is when it isn’t all that fun. Empty is what the milk is when you go to make your morning oatmeal (okay, maybe that one’s not all that mainstream). Empty is what you call the glass half full of—and that makes you into a pessimist.

Empty is a disappointment. Empty is lack. Empty is failure. Right? The practice of giving up something for Lent is overly focused on self-denial, puritanical (which is religiously ironic, Lent being a more Catholic emphasized practice), or simply pointless—why bother giving up anything, when you can have it so easily? Why go without?

But, it seems to me, full can become a burden. Full can become crowded. Full can become addictive. Full can become consumed (pun intended) with its own gratification.

So I began to wonder, this Lent, what giving up full might look like.

Might empty be room to breathe? Might empty be a beach that you have all to yourself—with miles of sand and crashing waves?  Might empty be a space in which to relax, contemplate, or meditate?

As I sit here, still full from last night’s carne asada tacos on the way home from Carnival in Ensenada (not to mention the fish tacos on the way to Carnival), it is not hard to imagine empty as a good thing. That was hours ago and I am still full. Don’t get me wrong—they were delicious. And I also realize that there are those for whom this struggle, about empty and full, can become so intense as to lead to a disorder, whether that be one of eating or hoarding or…

But what my full from Carnival stomach is helping me realize, on a more metaphorical level, is that though there is a time to feast, there is also a time to refrain from feasting.

So, that’s that then. A lenten practice. Giving up being full—a fairly ambiguous and undefined one (which, of course, is my preference) but a practice nonetheless. Let the cuaresma begin.

 

 

 

*Lent, cuaresma in Spanish, the season that begins today, Ash Wednesday, and carries on until Easter Sunday—this year April 8.

of blindness and dishwater (a reflection on lent and privilege)

Do you ever have something that you notice, sort of make a mental note of, and then move on with life, not exactly forgetting, but not really understanding either?

down a dirt road in the DR...

For example: I distinctly remember being in the Dominican Republic where I had been working for the summer with a mission organization called Students International. One of my friends, also working with SI, was from a village a few hours from where we were there in Jarabacoa and so one weekend we went for a visit, to stay with her family.

Their house was spotless, despite the dirt floors and lack of what, growing up in suburbia, I would have considered essential modern conveniences. Like hot water, or even a shower that worked by turning on the knob, rather than filling a bucket overhead. The family’s hospitality was warm and inviting, and it was a fantastic weekend all the way around. But randomly, one thing stuck in my head—the washing of the dishes. The family’s house was really more like part of a compound of extended family, each house surrounding a sort of outdoor common area, where the ‘kitchen’ was. That was where the washing up of the dishes happened as well.

What I noticed was, rather than fill up a large tub with soapy water and proceed to clean, the women in the family, for they were the ones washing the dishes, cleaned each dish individually, using a small amount of water and then rinsing it, using that water to wash the next dish. I noticed it because it was so different from the only way I had ever experienced hand-washing dishes—either at my paternal grandmother’s house in Mexico, or at my maternal grandparents’ summer cottage (does that sound pretentious? If you saw the ‘cottage’ which is beautiful, but built in 1900, it is a bit less so than you might imagine) in Upstate New York—which began with the filling up of, typically two big tubs, one with soapy water and one with rinse water. My cousins and I always tried to get to be the ‘rinser’ because that was clearly the easiest job, when compared with washing or drying.

Malawian women cooking 'nseema'

A few years after that trip to the Dominican Republic I had the opportunity to be in Malawi, in Africa, as a photographer with another group of short term missionaries who were visiting various sites working with AIDS orphans as well as micro-finance and development projects.

On one of those days in Malawi we were at an ‘after school center’ which was more like a concrete slab with a roof over it—a definite improvement over the alternative of open air and dirt floor. As we were singing and playing with the kids, I watched the women (yes, again women) who were cooking the lunch—nseema, a corn porridge type meal that is common in Malawi. I also noticed that, again, as they were cleaning up, there was no large tub, but each dish was washed individually, using the water to wash the next dish.

I’m embarrassed to say that there was part of me that thought that they clearly did not know how to wash dishes. Everyone knows that you have to fill up a big soapy tub, to really get them clean…right? Thus thought the girl who grew up with a dishwasher, the machine kind, in the house…

It was not that I was pondering this issue of the dishes in my day to day life, but somehow both experiences stuck with me and sort of just sat there, somewhere lodged in my memory. Like a seed, dormant, waiting for the right set of conditions in which to germinate.

It was not until a few years later, as I was spending more and more time in my grandmother’s house in Baja, and as that summer had been a particularly dry one, with frequent water outages, that it occurred to me what was going on.

On that particular day we had been without water for a few days, and so the little that I did have, I was trying to conserve. I couldn’t wait any longer though to wash the dirty dishes in the sink, so I began with just a bit of water, in each dish, using it to then wash the next dish. Perhaps it was something in the act of that ritual that triggered it, but all of a sudden I had an epiphany, of sorts, as though finding the last piece of a puzzle that you’ve been working on for a long time. So that is why they washed the dishes the way they do…

The thing is, growing up, my limited hand-washing dish washing experiences had been in places of plenty, of abundance. No one had to carry the water we used—we just turned on the tap. No one had to light a fire to heat it—we just turned on the tap. There was no wondering if there would be enough water to last until we could get more—we just turned on the tap.

That ability to turn on the tap, of course, makes it so easy to use as much water as we please—something I’ve come to call the ‘ease of waste.’

But, even more than that, the ability to turn on the tap is what kept me blind to the reality of my friends there in the Dominican Republic, and of those women in that village in Malawi.

It’s not that running water is bad. Or that washing dishes in the two tub manner is inherently evil. What I find troubling is the way that my own privilege could have kept me from seeing—and not only that, it actually determined what I was able to see. The lens through which I viewed the world led me to assume that this other way was not simply different, but was, in fact, inferior. Ouch.

That, it seems to me, is the danger of such privilege. The underlying assumption that someone else is not just different, but is wrong, without a deeper understanding of why that difference exists. Were it not for my own experience of ‘drought’ it’s likely that I would have continued on in my blindness.

We are, as it happens, approaching the season of Lent. Lent, the time between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday (often spoken of as 40 days in duration), is a season of preparation—a preparation that is typically seen as involving some form of self-denial. This can take the form of giving up chocolate, or sugar, or alcohol or some other chosen ‘vice’ or ‘indulgence’ as a way of dedicating oneself to God. Many are critical of the practice—seen as an excuse to go on a diet, or a denial of that which is pleasurable simply for denial’s sake.

But I wonder, and I’m pondering, as I consider Lent this year, if there might not be another way to approach this season. Might Lent, instead of simply being a time to ‘give up’ something, be a time to enter into something more deeply? Might there be a way to allow Lent to help open our eyes, to shed light on the blindness that a life of privilege can bring?

Might Lent offer an opportunity to pause, to reflect, and to stop filling those tubs of water all the way full…?

(She ponders, as she types it out on her MacBook Pro…)

I love me some…order?

I happened to be talking to myself. Out loud. In the presence of a friend. Who totally busted me.

“What did you just say?!” she asked, laughing and incredulous at the same time. I was in the midst of cleaning up the kitchen, having just done the dishes. “Um, I love me some order,” I confessed, somewhat sheepish, based on her response to hearing it. Was it that I had said it out loud, talking to myself, or was it the content of my phrase that seemed to be giving her such entertainment, I wondered.

“That’s what I thought you said!” she rather exclaimed, still laughing. “Uh, what’s wrong with that?” I finally ventured to ask. ‘I love me some’, she proceeded to explain, is a phrase that is, of course, commonly used. But usually followed by something more along the lines of the decadent–or at least something like ‘french fries’ or ‘chocolate’ or ‘mud pie.’ But order?!

For the past few weeks I’ve been more regular in my yoga practice, heading to La Fonda two days a week for class. This week as we were moving through the poses I realized that something was a bit off. I couldn’t really place it, other than the fact that I felt as though I was out of sync. Normally Cindy, the teacher, moves through the same sequence of poses, so that once you’ve been a few times you can begin to pick up the rhythm of it. For whatever reason, I didn’t seem to be following as well. “I just realized–we didn’t do the balance poses during that sequence,” said Cindy.

That was it. My body, over time and from doing the same series of poses, has begun to develop a ‘memory’ of what came next.  But ‘what came next’ had subtly shifted–not an entirely new pose, or else that would have triggered the ‘we are leaving the known sequence’ button somehow. It was that subtle shift that had caused me to feel out of sync, but not to be able to recognize why, or what exactly was going on.

Back to the ‘love me some order…’ This lent I have tried to make it my practice to ‘give up leaving Mexico’ (some people give up chocolate, some people give up coffee, why not give up leaving?). So, for going on four weeks I’ve actually (for the most part) been in one place long enough to be able to develop something of a routine (though the phrase ‘routine life’ may be something of an oxymoron in this case). It’s been in the range of 5 years since I’ve actually had anything in my life that might be called a ‘normal routine’ and to be honest I am thoroughly enjoying it.

Sure, ‘routine’ can be used as a synonym for ‘rut’ or for ‘boring,’ but it can also be something solid, grounding and life-giving. Like in yoga, having a normal series or sequence (a routine) that we follow allows us to, in many cases, act without having to think through every single step, every individual move, every particular detail. Having a routine can be comforting and provide a sense of stability.

Of course, there can be a danger in this. The word ‘fundamentalist’ (of whatever religious or political flavor) tends to have the connotation of someone who is rigidly and inflexibly tied to a particular structure, system or routine. In this case, not having to think through every step can is not so much in the service of freedom as it is in a desire to prevent the adherent from straying from a particular path.

The thing that becomes problematic, it seems, is if the routine is all there is. The routine is not meant to exist simply for itself, for its own sake. The life-giving grounded centering that the routine provides is meant for something beyond itself. The routine releases us from having to think through every little detail, so that we are free for something else.

A clean kitchen, though nice, doesn’t exist just to be a clean kitchen–the point of it, at some point, is to provide a space for cooking a meal, for enjoying that meal. A routine in yoga frees one up from having to think through each individual pose, and allows the body to learn the movements without necessarily having to think about them. In the case of yoga, this frees one to pay attention to the breath.

It occurs to me, as I’m writing this, that in theory, this is what liturgy does in a worship service as well. Ideally, having a series, or a sequence of prayers, recitations, or other ‘routine’ liturgy provides a basis that can then, potentially, free one from ‘thinking through the details’ to be open to an experience of God. There is something in the repetition and the ‘known-ness’ that both engages and releases.

Having a routine in life (I get up, meditate, drink coffee, read, write, etc.) is not only for itself, but to somehow provide a grounding that then allows for life to grow from it. Sure, “I love me some order” may be veering a bit too much to the OCD side of the spectrum (but, as a Presbyterian, I tend to lean towards the ‘orderly side of the spectrum anyway), but maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all. Perhaps it is in this groundedness that new life is able to take root.

it is finished (the 3 week cleanse, that is)

part of my new morning practice--a glass of green juice

So often, it seems, life is a lot like a mosaic. I was going to say ‘more like a mosaic than ____’ but I couldn’t figure out what to put in the blank.

What I mean is this. A few weeks back, while at the Monday market (in town, a cross between a farmers market and a flea market) I bought a Juiceman Jr juicer. Did I go searching for a Juiceman Jr? Did I need a Juiceman Jr? No. It was a Monday market impulse buy. (I’ve also got a great pair of converse shoes for $8, and the entire Chronicles of Naria for $2–other Monday market impulse buys–sort of like Cosco without the same quantity or price tag attached).  My friend Dave Kamena (who happens to own a great sportswear company called Plastic if you want to check them out) pointed out the Juiceman Jr to me. “Hey, do you need a juicer?” I went and asked how much. $8. “It’s $8,” I said to Dave. “Is that a good deal?” “Yeah, those things are $100 in the States,” was his response. So I got it. What a deal. A juicer for $8 instead of $100. I got it home and wondered what I would do with a juicer.

Around the same time another friend had told me about a book she was reading, and how she was changing her diet and her lifestyle around some of what she was learning in this book. The book was called Crazy Sexy Diet, by Kris Carr, a cancer survivor who attributes her health to this change in diet and lifestyle.  I decided to get the book.

Somewhere in this same timeframe I gave a friend a ride to the airport. During our drive up to San Diego from Baja he told me about ‘juice fasting,’ a practice of cleansing one’s system of toxins accumulated in our systems from the food that we eat– over dependence on animal products (many of which are raised with hormones, anti-biotics and other harmful, unnatural byproducts), processed foods, sugar, etc. “Hmm…” I pondered. Perhaps I could do some sort of fast during Lent, which at that time was still a few weeks away.

Cut to today. Day 21 of a 21 day ‘adventure cleanse‘ (I think that is supposed to make it sound more exciting) as described by Kris Carr in Crazy Sexy Diet.  Though I didn’t do the ‘juice fast,’ for the past 21 days I have consumed no sugar, no gluten (no bread, pasta, flour tortillas), no alcohol,  no ‘animal’ (no meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy, yogurt, milk, ice cream, etc.) and basically no processed foods. I’ve added ‘green juice’* to my morning ritual, thanks to my $8 Juiceman Jr from the Monday Market.

Being one with a tendency to ponder (for which I both thank and blame my dad, who was wont to answer when asked what are you doing “Oh, just pondering”) I’ve been doing my share of pondering over these three weeks.

Ponder #1: I feel great. I don’t think that’s just because I have to convince myself that giving up so many yummy food items was worth it. I really do feel healthy, awake, aware, present.

Ponder #2: My cravings have been a bit on the crazy side. It’s only 3 weeks. It’s not forever. What’s the big deal, right? I found that some days all I wanted was a shrimp burrito (a la plancha) and a Negro Modelo from Splash. Their willingness to accommodate my rather un-Mexican vegan diet by providing me with rice and steamed veggies was nice, but nothing comparable to the deliciousness of the shrimp burrito. I miss the shrimp burrito.

Ponder #3: It was a bit awkward socially. “Do you want to come over for Spaghetti and meatballs?” one friend asked, only to quickly follow it up with “Oh wait, you can’t eat any of that, can you?”

Ponder #4: Now that I can see the finish line, the cravings have pretty much subsided. I actually feel like I could do another 3 weeks (which would be the duration of Lent, for those who keep track of such things) and it would be no problem. Which leads me to…

Ponder #5: Are the cravings really cravings, or something more than just food? Augustine (as in St. Augustine) says, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God” (okay, that might be a bit of a stretch of an association, but go with me here). Lent, the 40 day season preceding Easter, is traditionally celebrated as a time of penitence, or of self-emptying, of making space and of learning to dwell in the present moment, to be open to God. Often fasting can be a part of Lent, from which has come the tendency to ‘give up chocolate’ or sugar or some other item.

Ponder #5: Is there something in the idea of persevering through our cravings that actually allows us to be more present, to ourselves and to the divine? I didn’t really intend that my 3 week cleanse was for Lent, though I did start it at the same time. And I wasn’t really planning on it being a ‘spiritual practice’ as much as a ‘healthy eating’ practice. But of course, the two are not always so easily separated from one another. Most of the time I stayed in my cravings “I really want ______” was what I thought, and didn’t go much further. Often I tried to fill the craving with something else. “I can’t have chocolate chip cookies, but I can have a spoonful of peanut butter with a bit of agave nectar.” But I kind of think that misses the point. What about the practice of not having exactly what you want, when you want it, and the precise moment that you want it? (I know, heresy in much of our American culture.)  What about allowing some emptiness, that we don’t immediately try to fill?

Ponder #6: Will I keep it up, or will I revert back to my pre-cleanse ways? Part of me says “You feel great, why in the world would you change that?” (Part of my asks why I’m talking to myself as well…) But I also enjoy and appreciate food, and sharing a meal with others. Living in Mexico the no-gluten (have you ever had freshly made, by hand, flour tortillas?!) and vegan (birria, carne asada, huevos Mexicanos, in addition to my favorite shrimp burrito) aspects are on the tricky side, socially. Sure, if I decided I wanted to stick to them, I could navigate it and it wouldn’t be the end of the world. And yes, I will probably stay fairly vegan, fairly no-sugar, and fairly no-gluten, with a responsible amount of alcohol in the mix. But I like food, and I like sharing meals together with friends. I’ve managed to come up with some pretty delicious and creative vegan concoctions (if I do say so myself) like veggie stacks and vegan chile rellenos so I may also try to ‘evangelize’ others into some of my new habits.

Ponder #7: The final ponder, as 7 is the number of completeness. Ponder #7? It remains to be written, or, more exactly, to be lived.

*Recipe for Green Juice

Using a juicer, juice:
-One broccoli stem
-A bunch of romaine, arugula, wild greens or whatever other ‘lettuce’ you’ve got
-One pear (entire)
-two small (or one large) cucumber (entire)
-two celery stalks
-one small piece of fresh ginger
-half a paddle of ‘nopal’ (Mexican cactus)–I added this one, based on local availability. The nopal (uncooked) gives a great consistency to the green juice)