The Work of Our Hands

We live in the city - I mean a major metropolitan center.  Yes, we live on a residential street, and the diversity of our neighborhood may be a bit limited, but still this is urban living.  We walk to the grocery store and the drug store and the coffee shop and occasionally Dick's drive-in for a $1.40 cheeseburger.  We have four bus routes within easy walking distance that can get us downtown, to the suburbs, or to the university.

Now the thing about living in the city with all these local perks is that it's easy to disconnect from the country.  Even the farmer's market here has high quality and high cost organic produce.  There are no Ford pick-ups backed up to the gate selling greens or potatoes by the bushel.  From our mother-in-law apartment the only gardening we can do is a few plants in planters rearranged to catch some sun.  Opportunities to hike, swim, and cycle are abundant, but it is a different world from that place where I grew up where the abundant things were space and dirt, and opportunities for physical labor.

Knowing me, you'll not be surprised to learn that in my small urban kitchen, I set out to create ways to work with my hands.  Saturday was salsa canning day.  Jamie and I walked to a local produce market where tomatoes not good enough to make it to the produce section of the grocery store were selling for $.79 a pound, less than half the price at our local Safeway.  We brought out the canner and here's what happened:

These six jars join a couple jars of tomato sauce, several jars of strawberry-rhubarb jelly, and a batch of raspberry blueberry jelly, all sitting atop our kitchen cabinets (in the absence of the ever-coveted kitchen pantry). 

And, so you know, this whole project wasn't just to fulfill my nostalgic country cravings.  There are at least four reasons for such activity in my life.  First, Jamie and I got to do something together.  We embodied our relationship with our shared preparation of our food.  What better way to nourish our relationship that spending time together in the nourishment of our bodies?  Second, it's just plain cheaper to can our own salsa.  Even if we buy (instead of grow) the tomatoes, minus the one-time investment in the canner and jars, we are saving money on salsa for the next three months or so: six pints for less than $15 (plus that tomato sauce).   Third, our homemade salsa tastes better than the store brand.  Maybe next year we'll try for more fancy recipes in our continuously expanding repertoire.  And fourth, doing this meaningful, enjoyable work connects us to our food.  Eating is more than a filler activity three times a day, more than a chance to satisfy this or that craving.  Food is one basic need, a building block of our very existence.  When we attend to our food with intentionality and care, we acknowledge this connection.  Canning is a chance to slow down and appreciate this often overlooked fact, to say with our actions that we notice what this life is all about.

Goodbye August

Another August 31 has come, this year bringing my 26th birthday.  It's a good day in Seattle - sunny and upper 60s with a light breeze, no major tragedies reported by this morning's Times, a day off work and thus a good solid run under my belt, continuing engagement with the John Nash biography A Beautiful Mind.  The stuff of ordinary for sure. 

On the other hand, goodbyes for me are more about nostalgic remembrance than ordinary, and so this goodbye August day, there are a few things I miss despite the nice weather and free time well spent in Seattle. 

In Kansas in late summer the sunflowers grow wild.  They take over the ditches.  Their deep, bright, brilliant yellow is the signal of autumn and football and the turn toward winter.

In southwest Missouri in late summer the evenings cicadas sing in the plentiful trees.  The evenings are warm enough that a walk in just shorts and a t-shirt is quite pleasant. 

In central Tennessee in late summer the trees are full of green leaves.  Vanderbilt's campus is an arboretum, and late summer hints at what always promises to be a gorgeous fall.   Deciduous trees are everywhere, and so autumn stretches long and colorful on toward Thanksgiving. 

Today I can't quite capture in words how much I miss these things.  Perhaps late summer in Seattle will someday have its own charm and energy.  My hunch is that instead I'll just need to plan a vacation back east for next late summer. 

Time for a Change

Last spring one of the professors at the divinity school offered this nugget to a person who was about to go on an interview visit to a congregation. The professor said, "The only question you really need to be asking yourself is, 'Can I love these people?'" It was the simple wisdom, so simple that only an experienced minister could have come up with it. Can I love these people?

It's tempting to respond too quickly - of course I can love everyone. Each person no matter status, culture, or disposition is beautifully and wonderfully created. But that simple question is much deeper than a quick response. The answer only comes with time and intuition. First impressions are not likely enough to fully answer. It takes second and third impressions, or an evening spent in community. It takes knowing oneself, knowing one is not just faking it.

I've been deciding this for a couple weeks now, since about a week into my job. Tonight sealed the deal. Yes, I can love these people. I can love these busy, suburban, good, confident, sometimes sheltered people.

This decision / intuition under way (for it will always be ongoing, I'm sure), I decided also tonight that it's time for a change. Thus, my blog has new colors, almost the colors of the peridot, my birthday month's gemstone. They are lighter shades than the bold black and more comfortable. They are also more suitable should I link this blog to the new church web site, coming soon. It's a small change, but it works.

Smells Like Life to Me

I had been waiting for the day when I would run out of free lotion and thus be comfortable purchasing a new bottle of the Suave pump variety. That day arrived last week, and I picked up my 18 fluid ounces at Fred Meyer on Saturday. For three days now I have enjoyed the comforting, subtle aroma of Suave Advanced Therapy Moisturizer. This product is clinically proven to relieve dry skin.

But even better, this product is proven to evoke the memory of the era in which it was last used. My last Suave Advanced Therapy experience was my senior year of college, and so even from here in Seattle, this lotion smells like a college basketball season unleashing into December. It smells like the Pussycat Dolls song "Stickwitu" (Stick With You for those not familiar with such colloquialisms). Even more it smells like that brief window of my life when I used to listen to that kind of music.

Suave Advanced Therapy lotion smells like me and twelve of my closest friends getting ready for a Christmas tournament in Cancun, Mexico. In these aromatic breaths I remember a little less faintly what it feels like to win and lose deeply and to drive around a big town like Springfield, Missouri - before these major cities got ahold of me. It didn't take so long to get out into the open country in those days, up to a small town on Highway 65, or headed west for the farm. There was that triplex I shared with Buzz when rent was less than $200 a piece, and that beloved religious studies department that provided space for me to chase my wildest ideas. There was that beautiful trip down to Silver Dollar City to see the Christmas lights, and heart-to-hearts with my two precious senior teammates in whose eyes I could do no wrong and toward whom I expressed the same loyalty. A lotion is a powerful thing.

And now it's time to make a new smell memory.

Today I was riding home from work. The sun was shining - a perfect northwest day: mid-seventies and blue sky visible. On 1st Avenue's gradual downhill I sped by a small home construction site. The saw was whirring to a stop and the smell of sawdust caught me for a short moment. Suddenly I was there in the basement shop of Grandpa Varden, jig saw, radial arm saw, lathe, and all. I wished I could be there in Moundridge, Kansas, taking a carpentry lesson from the grandest perfectionist I know. Then I thought of the lotion and wished I could be a senior in college again too, the vocational absurdities flying about. The hurts of the world didn't seem so big back then. Then again, neither did the possibilities.

But now it's time to make a new memory. On the way home today I also smelled saltwater as I wound along 15th Ave NW in Shoreline. The sun reflected off the Puget Sound and the mountains stood beyond in the distance. This smell is current, and I often catch it as I ride down into Richmond Beach. It reminds me of the girl I love and her Florida love of this smell. It reminds me of now and this present beauty I would scarcely have imagined the last time Suave Advanced Therapy lotion was current.

And all this leads me to wonder, in four more years when this bottle is long gone and I happen upon my next one, what will I remember? Maybe those months when my job was beginning to feel just a touch more like mine, awkward transition into congregational ministry and all. Maybe I'll remember when I met these brilliant, stubborn, innovative, mysterious, talented youth. Maybe this apartment will come to mind - how small it was but how much like home. Or maybe in four years the lotion will remind me of that time I used to live in Seattle, in that none zone of geographical grandeur that lights my adventurous spirit in ways like nowhere else.

Indeed, it is time to make these new memories.

Heat Wave

Seattle's 1941 record of 100 degrees farenheit was broken today. The official reading out at the airport was 102 and possibly rising this afternoon. The overnight lows are warm as well, in the low 70s. Last night it got down to only 71, the first time in 64 years that the night temperature hasn't dropped below 70. And all of this when the average high temperature here is in the mid to upper 70s this time of year. Needless to say the weather has been headline news.

Now before those of you in the Midwest and South laugh at us wimpy northwesterners, you should know that because we're liable to go a whole summer and not hit 90, most people here don't have air conditioning. In fact, only 13 percent of households in Seattle do have air conditioning. This mother-in-law apartment above the garage is most certainly not one of them.

I can deal with this climatic inconvenience. I try not to exert myself - I do a lot of reading, catch up on emails and the like. The cats are the ones I worry about. In fact someone we know had her cats boarded because of the temperature. Betsy and Wyatt have received no such privileges.
However, I have taken other measures. That's right - I've been doing some internet research about cats in the heat. As one web site recommended, I periodically drop ice in their water to 1) cool it down and 2) interest them in their own water bowls. This technique has been somewhat successful though as the afternoon lethargy sets in, I'm beginning to think the suggestion about dropping water into their mouths with an ear dropper might be a necessary next step.

I also moved food and water to the coolest part of the apartment, the downstairs entry way. (Up here we're solid confirmation of the fact that heat rises.) I forcibly carried Betsy down, even taking her favorite rug, but she immediately walked right upstairs again. She has also spurned my attempts to have her lie on a towel wrapped around ice (see picture). Unfortunately (as we've always suspected), while gifted with unique emotional intelligence, Betsy's practical reasoning capacities are severely limited.

Wyatt, meanwhile, has found a cool spot under the bed from which he has rarely emerged. He seems to be doing well, bolstered by his youthful bodily strength. If things get really bad here, my next plan is to run some cold water and dip their little paws in it - also an internet suggestion.