Greenblade - creation - faith - justice

What does a cook look like?

Nothing major to report from Rhode Island this week. The farmer's market continues to sell mostly old root veggies, long-off-the-tree apples, and hydroponically-grown greens that I am more than willing to pay a fortune for. I am still not very good at praying before meals, but I am getting better at the after-meal prayer, the "Hey God, thanks for those things that I ate, and those people I ate them with, and for this day," which feels like a step in the right direction.

The one interesting, tangentially-Greenblade-related moment this week came last week over the lunch table. I was eating pasta with homemade marinara sauce, and homemade applesauce, and my coworkers were flabbergasted that I made these things, that I "really cooked." They could wrap their minds around me boiling the water for the pasta and opening the jar of sauce, but the idea of "really cooking," of making these things from scratch, surprised them. My coworkers couldn't ... MORE

Oh ravishing melon!

I am doing rather poorly at my Lenten practice to pray before I eat. I forget pretty much all the time.

In fact, I ate a bowl of sweet potatoes as I planned to write this blog and I forgot to pray before I ate them. This does not bode well for my overarching goal of adopting the saying of grace as an everyday practice.

Part of my prayer-problem, honestly, is that I have too much to be grateful for. When I do remember that I want to pray before I eat (or that I want to retroactively pray after I ate), I find myself thanking the farmer and the earth and the sky and the wind and the water and the organization that plans the farmer's market, and the electricity that powered the microwave and God... it's overwhelming to be that grateful and to eat one's lunch before it gets cold. So, I ... MORE

Prayer in practice

Every time I see an animal dead by the side of the road, I say a prayer.

This is a throwback to my early teens, when I was reading fantasy novels by the truckload (never doubt how much I was shaped by living across the street from a branch of the public library) and wanted to communicate with animals. I wanted to be able to shape-shift into an animal, to be able to hear their stories in my mind, to befriend them and go on adventures. It was a logical extension of those longings that I mourned the death of road-killed creatures. It made me deeply sad, and I got in the habit of sending a missive to God to look over that creature's soul.

In the decade-plus since I fell into this habit, I still say that prayer -- every time -- without thinking. I usually tag on an addendum about how sad I am for ... MORE