In 2006 I picked up a paperback book titled Julie & Julia – My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell. I was intrigued by the title, partly because I enjoy cooking and, let’s be honest, who could resist Dan Akroyd’s SNL spoof on Julia Child boning a chicken? I was hoping it would be funny and the ‘light read’ I was looking for at the time (it was). I consumed it quickly, then was so intrigued I immediately went on to read Julia Child’s My Life in France. Once I finished that I went on to read Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I read it, folks. I didn’t skim it or browse through the recipes. I read the book – cover to cover.
I was fascinated by all of it - the stories, the recipes, the cooking, New York, and Paris. I’ve always had an interest in Paris and, truth be told, most things French. I’ve studied the language at various times in my life, once even achieving a certain level of conversational ability, though never fluency. I traveled to France in 2003, spending 5 weeks there, and have plans to return in May of 2010. Recently, I went to see the movie starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. Unlike some reviewers – I loved it – and I’ve been thinking about certain elements of it ever since.
One of the things that the movie captures beautifully is Julia’s passion for life. It bubbles out of her memoir – joy in exploring Paris, joy in her marriage to her husband, joy in her sister and her friendships, joy in shopping for pears or mushrooms and, of course, joy in cooking. She was a woman who approached cooking, and life, with abandon – drinking it in – in essence, eating of it.
As the movie played it, Julia’s passion for cooking started, in part, with needing something to do. She had no children and, therefore, had plenty of time on her hands. I think that her memoir bears that out to a certain extent, though the memoir doesn’t support the idea that she was quite the rube in the kitchen when she starts at Le Cordon Bleu that the movie portrays her to be.
The movie makes two obvious references to Julia’s lack of children. In My Life in France, she writes about her desire for children this way. “We had tried. But for some reason our efforts didn’t take. It was sad, but we didn’t spend too much time thinking about it and never considered adoption. It was just one of those things…So it was.”
I find this fascinating. It is certainly not the approach we so often hear of today. When people today are denied something that they want, we do not simply sit back and accept it. We fight. We are, after all, the captains of our own ships – masters of our fates. In the example of children, we see people spending tens of thousands of dollars, flying thousands of miles, wading through piles of bureaucratic paperwork to adopt children. Or, we see months and years and tens of thousands of dollars worth of medical procedures and drugs to procure biological children of their own. I acknowledge the changes in culture and medical advances and would never deny people the right to pursue what they desire. In the end, we must all follow our own hearts and I wish people joy with their children, no matter how they acquire them. But it makes me wonder.
Julia’s response then makes me wonder about our response now. What might have happened differently had she pursued the ‘having children’ piece of life that she clearly wanted? How would her life have been different? Would she have pursued cooking? Would she have attended Le Cordon Bleu? Would she have written books and produced television shows? I imagine - Not. I imagine, given the culture of the time, her life would have been – a diplomat’s wife, raising her children and keeping house for her husband. There would have been nothing wrong with those things at all. But we would probably not have seen the Julia Child that we did if for no other reason than she probably wouldn’t have had the energy to pursue it. Our world would be different.
This is just one example. How many times have I pursued my ‘desires,’ no matter what, when the universe seems to have been saying ‘no’ to me at the time? How many times have you? We’ve been raised with the notion that it is almost our obligation to do everything in our power to get what we want. So we strive and pursue and work and worry and we get what we want. And I wonder. I wonder how the world might be different. I wonder what ‘might have been’ had I or you let the universe have its way – and chosen to respond as Julia did. She accepted the hand life dealt her, and she made the absolute most of it in every way possible. She became.
I’ve recently finished painting my kitchen. I didn’t intend to do this now (my bedroom was supposed to come first.) But, I was trying to decide on colors and so bought a sample, was given a few more by a friend, and once I had several different shades up on the wall trying to determine which was best, it seemed a good idea to just keep going.
It always amazes me how such a simple act, changing color, transforms a room. I had preconceived ideas about what the change would be. I was relatively certain that going from a very light yellow to a very intense red would make my kitchen seem smaller and, truth be told, I was preparing myself to paint right over it with a lighter color. But, strangely enough (probably not so strange to my more artistic friends) the color makes the room seem larger, more expansive, more open. I love it!
But one change, sometimes irritatingly so, leads to another. Once the kitchen is painted a new color, the hallway and stairwell call out for a new and fresh look. And then, that new color leads to a new color for the guest room, and on we go. Not to mention that rugs and chair pads that go with one color don’t necessarily work so well with another color, and this item or that, suddenly looks old and tired. When does it end?
This act of transforming a space can happen in an incredibly short span of time. While most of us are not rich enough or fortunate enough to have a crew come in and redo our home while we’re off on a cushy vacation ala Extreme Home Makeovers, in a weekend we can have a seemingly ‘new’ space with relatively little financial output and a little elbow grease.
This space transformation causes me to think about life transformation. How many of us are the person we thought we would be when we were twelve? How many of us have the lives we thought we would have? How many of us are still the same as we were ten years ago or even five? Transformation is a byproduct of growth. Events that we did not anticipate - happen. Relationships that we depended upon go away. Jobs change.
If we look back at our lives and pay attention to things that may even seem insignificant, the answer to the question above becomes clear. It doesn’t end. Change is continuous. It is truly the only constant, the only thing on which we can depend. We breathe, we grow, we change. The challenge of change is in the transformation. Do we work with the changes and allow them to result in a transformation that moves us forward, makes us better, causes us to give out of that transformation in a positive way for the benefit of those with whom we share our lives.
We had our second Haiti Team meeting last night. I’m remembering why we have so many meetings in preparation for the trip. There’s much to do and decide before boarding the plane. What activities will we do with the kids at the House? What supplies and materials will we need to procure and transport to support those activities? What supplies can we take to minister to the staff of the house? How will we as a team choose to interact with one another as well as with those we will serve?In addition to these issues, there are the individual, mundane details of travel. Visit to the travel clinic – shots, malaria meds, an advance supply of Cipro. Starting the packing piles of the things you know you’ll need – all cotton clothing, sun screen with SPF 50, insect repellant with 30% DEET, as well as the things you hope you won’t need – Pepto Bismol, Immodium, Triple Antibiotic Ointment.My Support Letters have gone out – in some ways the most difficult part of the process for me. I hate asking others for financial support. It would be so much easier to write a check and be done with it. I suspect that’s why they make us do it. Going to serve others as part of a ‘mission’ trip could easily result in feelings of superiority or arrogance. After all, you’re the one who is giving out of your fullness – in this case, the material wealth that is part of being born American. It could be easy to forget that your wealth is transitory (a rude reminder many of us have faced during the recent economic downturn.) Putting yourself in a position of need – asking others to support you with their gifts – highlights your dependency, forces you to acknowledge that you are not as self-sufficient as you might like to believe, gives you some small idea of what others experience daily as they are the ones in need.
I watched friends pack up their belongings to move yesterday morning. Moving is probably the ONE activity that really makes you realize in no uncertain terms how much Stuff you have. And it certainly makes you wonder how much Stuff you actually need. I’ve been staying with a friend who lives just outside Washington, DC in a community in Virginia. The neighborhood she lives in is full of 1960’s era, ranch style houses like the one she lives in with her 3 children – 3 bedrooms, bath, kitchen, living room upstairs, and a basement with a family room, bedroom, laundry room, second bath. You know the type. Many of us grew up in houses just like these. They were serviceable, but certainly not fancy. But what’s interesting about this neighborhood, and many more that I’ve driven through while visiting here, is the changes that are taking place. A house goes on the market for sale, is purchased, but isn’t moved into. Instead, it is bulldozed and replaced with a much, much larger house – the clichéd McMansion. They stick out oddly in the neighborhoods. One or two in most blocks. Instead of the ranch you expect to see, it’s a 2, or even 3, story house whose footprint takes up almost the entire lot it sits on. Some imitate the style of the ranch on a larger scale; others go for the brick and pillar, imitation-plantation style. The families who live in these houses are no larger than the families that live in the original ranch houses, and more significantly, I suspect they are no happier.
It’s ironic that everywhere we turn we are encouraged to be ‘green,’ to reduce, reuse, recycle, be aware of our carbon footprint. Yet, here in our nation’s capitol at least, we still seem focused on having more and more space and acquiring more and more Stuff. It’s something to be conscious of as I go home to my own house and back to my own Stuff. How much Stuff do I really need? What Stuff do I need? Does my Stuff make my life better or does it cloud my vision and cause me to focus on things that lead me away from where I ultimately want to be?
The word "sabbath" is derived from the Hebrew verb "shavat" meaning to rest or to cease. In the Christian tradition, it is understood to be the seventh day of the week, the day of rest, reflecting God's creation of the world in six days and his rest on the seventh (Genesis 2:2) Going to church, in theory then, would seem to be about taking time to rest and reflect upon the manner in which you live your life. I grew up attending a Protestant church and have been a member of a Protestant congregation in my city for the past 18 years. Going to service in a Protestant church is relatively simple. You stand up to sing songs; you sit down to listen to the sermon. You don't have to memorize anything or remember any complicated series of events. Stand, sit. Pretty simple. And, to make it even easier, someone even tells you "please stand," and "please be seated." Mass, however, is a completely different experience. There are responses to what the priest says that you're supposed to just 'know.' Eveyone suddenly stands or kneels without being told to do so. They sing or speak without any instruction. Kneel, sit, stand, sit, stand, kneel, stand, sit, stand. It's a lot of work and you have to really pay attention so that you don't sit when you should kneel or stand when you should sit or... You get the idea. When you are in such unfamiliar surroundings, it's easy to get so caught up in making sure you're not doing the wrong thing at the wrong time that you miss the message being shared. And, though the message of the Catholic homily is much shorter than the message of the Protestant sermon (about 30 minutes shorter than the messages of my Protestant pastor) it is no less instructive. In this case, the message was "to be a teacher, one must first be a learner, and to learn well you must sit at the feet of the master."This would seem to imply that a good teacher is a 'master' of their subject matter, certainly. But perhaps good teaching requires mastery of more than a subject. Perhaps it requires a mastery of one's emotions, attitudes, and biases. So, maybe, part of the purpose of a sabbatical year is to learn more about those unchallenged notions under which we often teach, notions about who our students actually are, and what it is they need. The challenge of this, and the challenge of finding a master, is sometimes a dificult thing.
True friendship is a curious thing. One of the things I like so much about traveling is the ability to maintain relationships with friends from the past. Admittedly, Facebook and email and cell phones have changed the way we maintain friendships in general, compared to when I was a kid or teen. And, I have to admit I even appreciate and use those technological tools. But all the on-line talking, posting, or texting you might do, just isn’t the same as looking into someone’s eyes as you are talking and listening. Traveling allows you to reconnect with people Face-to-Face and that is Such a different animal.
Yesterday, I had lunch with an old friend from theatre days in college. After college, we went our separate ways, reconnected while living in the same city for several years, then she moved out east here to live in DC. We email occasionally, and check out each others’ Facebook posts, but we don’t talk on the phone or send voluminous letters back and forth.
Yet, when we get together, it’s like we saw each other yesterday even if 2 solid years have passed. We do a little bit of filling each other in on life changes that we’ve both gone through and by the end of our lunch we’re up to speed. The conversation is as comfortable and deep as it has ever been - no awkwardness, no self-monitoring – just the same level of ease and closeness as we had when living in the same town and seeing each other weekly.
This is the kind of friendship that preserves parts of you that you’ve lost or left behind, provides you with the love and support to be who you think you can in the present, and nurtures your soul throughout.
The flight began, rather inauspiciously, at 7:00 am with screaming children – in stereo. It took several painful moments of frantically digging through my purse to remember where I had stashed those earplugs. However, once airborne, children calmed down and peace reigned (in the form of Oreos and sugared soda.) But who am I to look a gift snack food in the mouth?
I vaguely remember the days before 9/11, when airline travel did not require packing a lunch just to make it through the security checkpoints and when you could include a full size tube of toothpaste in your carry-on bag without anyone dragging you off to the side and asking you dozens of questions about your destination, your purpose, and your parentage in a suspicious tone of voice. Then there was the time when you could check 2 bags at no extra charge, eliminating the need to try to stuff 3 carry-on bags the size of Montana into the overhead bins and then arguing with the flight attendant when told that you were limited to 2 bags and would have to check one anyway. Travel used to be relatively simple – a time to explore new places and cultures and leave worries at home behind you. Now, travel is complex with long lines, mulitple questions, multiple searches and more long lines. At times, usually in the 5th long line of the day and the 8th version of the question “Did you pack your own bag and did anyone give you anything to carry on?” you begin to lose some of your patience and sense of humor. You begin to think that maybe all the hassle of travel just isn’t worth it anymore. That the time may be coming when you should just frame your passport and reminisce about all those places you’ve been instead of trying for one more stamp – one more Visa entry card. But then, the pilot announces that you are starting your descent, the weather at your destination is 80 degrees and sunny, and he wishes you an enjoyable stay, and you decide that maybe you can stand in one more line, answer one more question, plug your ears to one more screaming child.
