Walking, wrinkles and a little lavender bliss

Hiking in Grandview State Park, Grandview, WV

     There's something I love about a walk in the woods, particularly in autumn with the leaves thick beneath my feet and the air chilly and sharp around me.  Shining through the high branches, the sunlight is softer, more forgiving of imperfections. My steps are slow but steady and I can feel the rush and stress of everyday falling away.  I notice fungus on a tree, quick rustles up high, rich green ferns tucked behind gray rocks. It is quiet here, but alive with small things - ants, brown chipmunks, butterflies - and more rarely with larger ones - a deer startled from the rhododendron and  a hawk launched from a cliff.   The earth is rich and pungent and somehow smells more like home than any other place I know. I am present and centered without even trying.  This walking becomes my meditation, my best prayer of the day.

AF

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     "Botox could really help that 11 between your eyebrows." So said a lady at the salon to me the other day. I'm sure she's right, and I didn't need her to tell me that those two little lines are getting deeper with each passing year. It's no mystery why it's happening either. My brow gets a lot of work in a day, moving to varying degrees to show that I am confused, angry, sad, compassionate, worried. Now in my mid 30s, I'm also developing "parentheses" around my mouth from smiling, and "laugh lines" at the corners of my eyes. A few injections could take care of all that, I suppose, and help me look years younger. But here's the thing -- I don't want to lose any of that. Those lines on my face are evidence of a life lived and deeply felt. My emotions have always been an easy read, since I have no "poker face." With Botox or plastic surgery, I could get one. In my 20s, I used to fantasize about liposuction, rhinoplasty, cheek implants, but not anymore. Now I just want to be healthy, to take care of what I have and make the most of it, with no needles or scalpels involved. This is my face, and one of the gifts of getting older is that I've finally grown to love every line, freckle, mole, and blemish because they are mine. If I ever have daughters, I hope I can help them get to that place of self-acceptance much earlier. It's taken me 35 years to realize that I don't want to look like anyone but me.

SS

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Lavender Bliss

     Not to miss an opportunity, a coworker and I tagged on a few days to a work conference in San Francisco to see the sights of Mill and Sonoma valleys.  We particularly enjoyed touring Benzinger winery, which takes an environmental ‘biodynamic’ approach to its farming. Part of that involves elaborate gardens or insectaries or bug cities as they are called, chocked full of plants pleasing to healthful insects and birds. We meandered through the pathways, ducking at the darting hummingbirds, their whir of wings creating a throaty purring. 

     We watched the sun set on the rolling farmlands as we drove back, reliving our repeat visit to the restaurant ‘the girl and the fig,’ where we feasted on three types of goat cheese, one drizzled in lavender honey, a taste sensation I can only describe as decadently delightful. We sucked down lavender creme brulees that were too good to split. As we headed back to the city and neared the Golden Gate Bridge, the traffic slowed to a crawl. We noticed how people here rarely honk their horns. They are polite drivers, respectful of pedestrians. What is it about a region that creates such a culture? 

     All I can figure is all the Innovative taste sensations keep everyone sated. Though stuck in traffic, I can't even work up a good ill temper. It's as if the rich textures of the land and sun-baked hills of the valley run in my veins like wine.  What are a few backed up cars when you've had the likes of lavender honey?

DB

Just Fresh

      Our fridge is overrun with green things - the good kind! Don and I signed up for the CSA at Boone Hall Farms just down the road from us.  In a CSA (community supported agriculture), a farmer offers a certain number of shares to the public.  We bought our share (planted our crops, as it were) in November.  Now, we receive a share of whatever has just been picked at the farm in an overflowing green tub  - vegetables, fruits and even local free range eggs.  For the past few weeks, we’ve been feasting on strawberries, plantation onions, cabbage, romaine lettuce, and a mess of greens -  turnips and turnip greens, mustard greens, collard greens.  Yes, we’re really eating green this spring.

     I usually grow a few veggies and herbs in a tiny corner in the backyard but I love this bounty of local food.  The CSA is a reminder that food really is seasonal - that just because I can buy apples or peaches year round at the grocery store  - they’re not in season locally.  It’s a reminder of times before big boxes when the evening dinner came from the morning picking.   It’s a reminder that there are farmers in our community working hard to keep food fresh and local.  It’s a reminder that weather matters and that we are truly connected to the earth we live on.   Last week, as I picked up my collards, cabbage, onions and strawberries, the farm worker commented.  “Yeah, we thought the squash would be in by now - but that cold snap last week slowed everything down.”   

     And I love the surprise factor.  What will we get this week?  What new recipe can I try with mustard greens?  It's a lot like life.  What will I find in my basket this week and what will I do with it? 
     And the most important question, what will I do with all this romaine lettuce?  You can only eat so much romaine.

AF

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       There are those moments in time when your perception of yourself changes. You hit 18. You land your first professional job. You become a mom. You have a store clerk tell you that the reason the fancy shoes don’t fit is because you have short, stubby toes.

     I was shocked.

     Not that I aspire to be a toe model, but I always thought I had lovely, feminine feet. Short and stubby sounds rather masculine. As an exercise instructor, I well know people’s subjective perception of themselves differs from reality. I’ll tell them to straighten their backs, and they nod from their hunched-back turtle poses as if I’m talking to others in the class. 

     I try to keep an open mind on the filters on my perceptions that may be keeping me from making changes for the good. But short and stubby? There are other body parts she could have attacked, and I would have agreed. I noticed a week after the shocking revelation, I was avoiding looking at my toes. I had to laugh at myself.

     Short and stubby or long and elegant, what did it matter? They help me walk, run and hold yoga poses. They have character and toenails that grow straight up on some toes. They bring me joy to wiggle.

     All I need is a little paint for the piggies.

DB

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     Last weekend, I had the chance to attend A [Baptist] Conference on Sexuality and Covenant, held in Decatur, GA. I could write a whole book about it, I think -- how it wildly exceeded my hopes, how it was a remarkable example of the way Christians should be able to approach difficult subjects, how there was (at least in my hearing) no name calling or questioning of anyone's faith, how both the Bible and the Spirit who inspired it were engaged thoughtfully and prayerfully by the speakers, how respect was the guiding principle in our small group discussions even when there was disagreement.               
     But the most powerful moment for me was the worship service that closed the conference on Saturday. When it was time for communion, we formed a line to the front of the sanctuary where ministers held out the elements of bread and juice. Instead of the presiding ministers serving everyone, however, we served one another. After I took the bread and juice from the person in front of me, I then took the elements and offered them to the next person in line with the words we'd been told to say: "Accept these symbols of Christ's body and life, our oneness." At one moment I realized that most of the people there were strangers to me, and I didn't know how to fit them into many of the categories that so often determine how we treat one another -- liberal or conservative, gay or straight, clergy or layperson, rich or poor, educated or uneducated. And I was glad to be able to see them not in those terms, but as my sisters and brothers. 
     It must have been something like what Paul meant when he wrote in Galatians 3:28 that there is "neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." As I left the conference, my prayer was that we could all focus on that rather than the things that divide us.

SS