I totally forgot to post this yesterday, but I was over at Passionate Homemaking writing as usual, about Focusing On The Essentials. Please visit! It’s my most commented post ever!
I’m also declaring an early weekend for this blog, so until next Monday….
May You Be Nourished Well and Whole!
I’m a minimalist at heart. The walls in our home are white and bare. Our house is sparsely decorated and furnished only with essentials. And my minimalist philosophy is most evident in the kitchen. I tend to be drawn towards doing the bare minimum especially in things that I am NOT good at, cooking being one of them. My approach has been to eat for health and frugality, and if we are able to, for sustainability and justice. Because these are what I have deemed to be of utmost importance.
But lately, I’m slowly coming to a different conclusion. That mindful eating is not enough. There’s something MAJOR that is missing from the picture. And that something major is pleasure.
Consider this:
The Italians certainly know the Art of Soulful Eating. This is part of what the author Elizabeth Gilbert of the book, Eat, Pray and Love discovered went she went to Italy after her divorce (haven’t seen the movie but have read the book awhile back!). They take time to prepare elaborate meals, with antipasti, insalata, primo, secondi and dolci. They eat a meal for a long time with others, enjoying not just the food but the entire experience as well. They welcome wine and laughter and most of all, pleasure to grace their time at the table. An everyday feast to look forward to.
So here’s my desire: that I can truly be a nourishing cook, that I can learn how to make really delicious food that smells great, looks great, and tastes great without compromising the health, frugality, sustainability and justice issues that I try to consider.
How’s a culinary-challenged mama supposed to do that? Move to a countryside in Italy (or France)?
Maybe. Maybe.
I’ve talked often about not wanting balance in my life a countless times. And how I would rather learn how to live gracefully with the Tension. (And by tension, I don’t mean stress and chaos. But the kind of tension required on a string of an instrument to make a pitch-perfect note. The right kind and the right amount of pressure applied at the right time.) And one of those Tensions I’m discovering these days is the Tension between growing up and keeping childlike.
Growing Up
To become a parent is to grow up like a million times over. We plunge into this world of Caring For Another Human Being all the while learning to keep our sanity and joy intact. If THIS does not mature us, I don’t know what else will. But often, we get so hung up in being responsible and taking care of our children and protecting them and teaching them all sorts of wonderful things that we forget the other side of the Tension.
Keeping Childlike
In which we reconnect with our curiosity and playfulness and wonder. In which we see the world through our children. In which we slow down considerably and honor our little people by learning from them and becoming like them sometimes. In which messiness and exploration and monotonous repetition are the awesome stuff that life is made of. In which we learn to go back to the simple and the true: that time holds still when you are fully present and in the moment, as your child experiences life this way every single minute of the day.
The ability to know which to way to go and when is an art I want to master. Some days I keep childlike when I ought to be growing up and vice versa. But oh, this is the real challenge of motherhood, isn’t it? May we persist and learn through it well.
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By ItyDesigns
(I am over at Passionate Homemaking Today! Head on over.)
When I was working as a recruiter for an international mission agency, one of things we emphasize in our training is the ability to go with the flow. To accept the unfamiliar for what it is, to let go of things beyond our control and to accept, no, to embrace the sometimes messy and often chaotic situations that one will inevitably find herself in.
Some call it tolerance. I call it, flexibility: the awesome ability to bend back and forth without breaking. Click here to continue.
Photo By Slimmer Jimmer
(My apologies for being away for several days without warning! My family took a four-day weekend vacation and spent a good portion of that in the beautiful city of Vancouver, BC. I spontaneously took the opportunity to ignore my blog for the entire time in hopes of preparing for the Sorta Unplug Challenge, which I’ll be tweaking a bit more so there’s room to participate, for those of you who are interested. We’ll be focusing on the slow life as a prelude to the Sorta Unplug Challenge.)
Did you know that Stress is the #1 killer in the United States? Even though we have more money, more (perceived) time due to time-saving high-technology devices, more opportunities to pursue what makes us “happy,” we are one extremely-stressed out nation on the verge of death by anxiety.
No wonder Buddhism is gaining steady popularity, homesteading is finding its way back even in urban spaces, people are downsizing big time, homeschooling is on the rise, and the slow food movement is making inroads in transforming how we eat. Many of us are searching for ways to slow down as a way to heal ourselves and actually, well, live. And we find the pathway to peace by looking not only deep inside for Truth but to Ancient Wisdom that is often lost in our fast-forward progressive culture.
So do we all have to be Buddhist, raise chickens, live in shacks and grow our foods?
Not necessarily. I’m not a Buddhist (though I embrace some of their practices) nor a homesteader wanna-be. I live in a 3-br townhome that is considered spacious enough for 3 families in other countries, and can only boast of six containers of vegetables growing in our small yard (snap peas are ready for harvest!). But I’m committed to the slow life. Or at least to the intentions of doing so. I often get sucked into fast and mindless living until I realize that my life and my family suffer because of it.
I actually stumbled onto Slow Living when I became a mom. And a stay-at-home mom at that. Because children have a way of calling us back into a Nourishing Life. Becoming a mom is the second greatest thing that has ever happened to me (next to marrying my husband!) because I’m learning that love is patient, and that patient happens only when we slow down.
Why Slowing Down Is Essential As Breathing
You only need to look at our current culture to know that something is terribly wrong about the way we live. Slowing down is not about being nostalgic nor is it about trying to relive the past. Slowing down is not about being anti-progressive nor is it about shunning technology. While there are unifying similarities in lifestyle among Slow Lifers, it’s more of a mindset that will vary in expression. For me, it boils down to two things:
So how do we even get started on slowing down? What does it mean to slow down in our everyday> In our parenting? In our career? In our spending? In our pursuit of well-being and happiness? In serving others and the world? I’d love to hear your thoughts as usual!! Please don’t be shy!!! Have you embraced the Slow Life? How are you adopting it into your way of life? Has it changed you for the better?
Photo By Graela
I’m taking a break from the Nourishing Family Philosophy Series. I need a little breather. And summer is the perfect time. Why? Keep reading.
I am feeling light-hearted and fun these days. I just want to be outdoors all.day.long. The day starts early and fades out ever so slowly into night. Children are wrapping up school, farmers markets are everywhere, the deliciousness of fresh produce fills the air. (Only the sun is still playing hide and seek with us Seattle-lites but I don’t really care.) Summer is almost officially here.
So I want to propose something outrageous. I want to propose something many would consider the ultimate blogger suicide. I want to propose The Un-Plug Challenge. No blogging, no Facebooking, no Tweeting for the rest of the summer. Gasp. OMG. She’s lost her mind. She’s going down. Good-Bye. It sounds utterly irresponsible doesn’t it? To take a whole freakin’ month off? But stay with me for a few minutes while I explain myself (and alter my original proposal to something more palatable.
Honoring Longer Days and Shorter Nights
My daughter now sleeps when the sun is out (9 pm!) and is up and perky before I’d like her to be (7 am!) Nothing I do changes this (thank Goodness she naps for a really long time!). We even have those light blocking curtains in our room but she seems to just sense that the day is supposed to be longer. It is summer after all. And so because for those of us who live in regions where rain pours more often than we’d like, summer is a welcome invitation to embrace fully the season of play and leisure. Reading blogs, commenting on posts, updating FB status, tweeting about something mostly mean our attention is away from all that summer has to offer. It seems to me that there is a time and season for everything, and summer is the time to unplug, naturally.
Rethinking Our Virtual Community
Now granted, some of you may depend on plugging into the Mother Matrix of the Internet for livelihood or supplemental income or sanity. If that’s you, disregard everything I have to say. Or maybe if that’s you, regard highly everything I have to say. It’s a matter of perspective. I’m a blogger so obliviously I value social media. But I also sometimes detest it. Once your livelihood or your sanity is intimately tied to a virtual community, it suddenly feels like an essential part of life. But is it? I mean, what would happen if we didn’t have our virtual community anymore? What would happen if people quit Facebooking or tweeting or blogging? The world would be a quieter place. Yes, less information being exchanged at a much slower pace, but is that a bad thing? I’m not proposing trying to pretend the virtual world isn’t there. Or denying its value. I’m just suggesting that maybe it’s less important than we think it is. (And yet I value each one of you who stops by to read and even so for saying hello!)
Mindful Living and Blogging
So here I am blogging about un-blogging. The hypocrisy, eh? Let’s call it a paradox instead. Often, we find it really difficult to hold two truths that seem to contradict each other as simultaneously true. But when we do, then we don’t need to figure out a way to reconcile things in our heads. Or maybe I’m just justifying how I am using this platform to call people to unplug. Oh the mysteries of our motivations.
Blogging is awesome, but unblogging is also awesome. Let’s be honest, how many of us moms have a harder time being present to our children (or just being present) because of the constant plug in factor? Sure, it has given us an outlet for our stories, a platform for our passions, a connection to the outside world. But what would we give for a more present way to live? Or do we even know how to? Are you just as valuable without your Tweet followers or faithful subscribers? Do you really need a new recipe week after week after week ? Or tips on living more naturally every single day? Maybe you do, I’m just asking, that is all.
The Sorta Un-Plug Challenge
So here is my proposal. It would be ridiculous to blog the way I’ve been blogging and going UnPlugged. So with my heart trusting (that you won’t totally unsubscribe or quit visiting) and my fingers crossed, I’m going off the grid for the entire months of July and August except on Mondays. That way, if you decide to unplug as well, then I won’t be contributing to your virtual noise as much. What I promise to do: I’ll check in, write a post, tweet and do a FB status update weekly on Mondays. (I mean, do people really care?) I’ll still be at Passionate Homemaking once a month. I’ll read my blog subscriptions on my Google Reader only on Mondays. And then take a good rest of the week off to relish the goodness of summer and do a little bit of Internet Detox the rest of the week. I dream of one day going totally virtual-free, but the heck, I’m a blogger and a voracious e-reader so this will be a compromise of sorts for now. Baby steps, baby. One day, I’ll get there somehow. And I’ll make sure I blog and tweet about it.
Oops, I forgot! Please come by and check out my post at Passionate Homemaking onHow To Be Well Travelled Without Leaving Home.
Hope you are all having a much better weather than our Seattle Gloom.
~ Vina
Photo By Krystn Palmer
I suspect I might have some readers who might be put off by my title and I had to think long and hard about this post. I almost feel like I’m risking losing about half of my subscribers if not more. (Maybe I’m just paranoid!) But I trust in your graciousness and open minds as I work through this one. Since this blog is primarily about two things: (1) simplicity, or embracing the essentials and doing away with the rest, and (2) authenticity, or embracing the Truth of who you are, I am hoping that you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt that self-love falls within these two categories. And that my ability to nourish my family well is in intimate proportion to my ability to love myself. For I can only truly and generously love others to the extent that I love me.
The Struggle To Love Me
I’ve been writing a lot recently about authenticity, and doing a lot of soul searching as to what this means for my life. My pastor today spoke on supernatural forgiveness, and he shared a quote by C.S. Lewis that stayed with me longer than I wanted it to:
I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.
There is nothing in me that rebels against that statement. I know it to be absolutely true, and I’m not sure that I have a big issue with forgiveness. What I undeniably and painfully struggle with is loving myself. Even saying that chokes me up and makes me feel really uncomfortable. What? Love myself? That sounds so narcissistic, so un-Godly, so selfish. I grew up repressing my God-given needs and desires and was taught that I ought to put people before myself always. Constantly deferring to other people’s wishes and never having a voice of my own. Becoming extremely adept at listening to other people all the while never asserting my need to be listened to. As a result, I grew up into an adult tragically disconnected from what truly makes me come Alive. Even the decision of what I want to eat for dinner was potentially paralyzing. I was THAT clueless of who I am.
But lately, I’ve been coming to grips with how ridiculously self-righteous this is.
The Self-Righteousness of Not Loving Yourself
Back to C.S. Lewis quote, changed up a bit:
I think that if God loves us we must love ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him
If the Great I am, who has an exceptional record of Perfection, thinks I’m worthy of Love, how I can deem myself unworthy of it? By refusing to love myself, I’m essentially saying that the standards I have to meet to be worthy of Love is much much higher than God’s. And if my standards are higher than Perfection himself, what does that make me? Way Better Than Perfect? See how ridiculous self-righteous it is?
My theory is that when we grow up only accepted and affirmed when we do right and behave right, rightness becomes our obsession. Because truth be told, we want nothing else but to be accepted and embraced and celebrated and valued. We want nothing else but to be loved. And so when the feeling of being loved hinges on meeting certain standards and conditions, we will do everything in our power to keep meeting those standards and conditions. To Hell With Everything. We are created for Love and we will fight to the end to get that. Even if it’s just an illusion of the Genuine Thing.
Moving From Self-Righteousness to Self-Love
The second greatest commandment that Jesus taught in the Sacred Texts is to Love Your Neighbor as You Love Yourself. We also have the Golden Rule which goes,” Treat Others As You Would Like To Be Treated.” If you love yourself crap, how can you love above that? If you treat yourself crap, how can you treat others beyond that? Loving others become a way to get love back, which never works. We can sure fake our way into loving others better than we love ourselves and deny the growing disconnect by distracting ourselves with food, TV and all sorts of addictions, or do it with sheer will power while stuffing our feelings in, only to one day blow up and tell everyone in your life to piss off. I did the latter about several years ago. I can 100% say that this is not the route you want to go.
So how do we move from self-righteousness to self-love? I quote one of my favorite authors, Brennan Manning. He is deeply authentic and his raw honesty often strip me uncomfortably naked, with nowhere to go to but the Truth.
If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others.”
To know that we are deeply Loved infinitely, unconditionally, eternally. To base our worth in our identity as Beloved whatever our past, however our present and wherever our future. Great. I’m sold. But how?
Paying Attention To The Evidence
For so long, I thought this meant simply to tell myself that God loves me, and that he has proven this by sending Jesus to the cross and dying for me. I get that. And I believe that it is true. Sometime in college, this healed me and liberated me to momentarily let go of my self-righteousness and trust in my Belovedness that I boldly went on a crazy adventure in China. But this journey called Life is never linear and progressively perfect. Instead it is unpredictable and messy. And for each new season in our lives, we might need a new way to see our Belovedness, a new kind of evidence that speaks to us in our now to tell us strongly and boldly that yes, we are Beloved.
We just have to pay attention.
These days, I find the Fierce Love of God outside the walls of church, outside the faith community that I had looked to for support all these years, and outside the traditions of the faith I’ve grown up in. I’m finding this Belovedness in being completely and utterly human: in birthing and mothering the child my husband and I bore out of Love, in moments of deep intimate connections with my husband, in turning flour into bread and an assortment of stuff into sustenance on the table, in rediscovering the delight of drawing with my fingers on the sand or watching ants on the sidewalk an infinite number of times with wonder and amazement as my child does, in the beauty of Others who are pursuing authentic Joy in radical ways, in seeing seeds push their way out of the ground into a hunkering giant of a vine, in letting my body move freely and mindfully to music. I’m finding my Belovedness in being mindful of what gives me joy and delight, what energizes me and makes me come alive. When I pay attention to these cues that tell me how wonderfully and mindfully unique this world was created, when I make space to honor these cues that tell me how wonderfully and mindfully unique I was created, then I feel a little bit closer to loving myself authentically, a bit more closer to the way God loves us all: truthfully aware, yet fully accepting.
Moving From Self-Righteousness to Self-Love is about letting go of judgments of ourselves and our need to prove ourselves worthy. It’s about unfolding, accepting, embracing, yielding to A Force Bigger Than Us, melting into A Love That Won’t Let Go. A Love that is grounded in knowing who we truly are, the good and the bad, the mundane and the important, and in trusting that all of that is Embraced wholly. And when we are able to love ourselves in this way, we are truly free to love others without fear or conditions.
The great paradox is this: Loving Ourselves becomes a Selfless Act.
Will you join me in this journey of learning to love ourselves radically so we can love each other wholly? I hope to meet more of you who are in a similar journey. Please share! And I leave you all with this quote from one of my favorite books, The Sacred Romance:
“Whatever form each of our own intimate adventures has taken in our fantasies, or in “real life,” this Sacred Romance is set within all our hearts and will not go away. It is the core of our spiritual journey. Any religion that ignores it survives only as a guilt induced legalism, a set of propositions to be memorized and rules to be obeyed.
Someone or something has romances us from the beginning with creek-side singers and pastel sunsets, with the austere majesty of snow capped mountains and the poignant flames of autumn colors telling us of something – or someone – leaving with a promise to return. These things can, in an unguarded moment, bring us to our knees with longing for this something or someone who is lost; someone or something only our hearts recognizes.
Photo by Brother Magneto
Who says you need to travel thousands of miles to make a difference? As mothers, right here right now is the best place to start.
1. Find Your Passion
Passionate people are driven to make their mark in this world. Find what is absolutely, certainly, righteously true for you and live it out like there is no tomorrow. What angers you about this world? What kind of wrong do you want to make right? What are you called to be and do? The best possible way you can serve the world is to own this passion without apology and offer it with abandon.
2. Slow Down
The world benefits greatly when we live light, and slowing down is a sure way to do that. On an individual level, slowing down helps us live more mindfully (see #4) and we are able to consciously make better decisions for ourselves and consequently for the world. It also helps us make more space for the kind of stuff in our lives that reduce our harmful impact on the environment while significantly increasing meaningful connections that give us Life.
3. Live simply.
Owning less stuff is not only a means to declutter our house, but it frees up our financial resources to give more (#6). Not only that but we also contribute to the revolution of the empty, which is the absolute way to turn this world around. Start with eliminating the unnecessary and focusing on the essential.
4. Eat mindfully.
Recently, I wrote about how fighting for real food is fighting for freedom. And when we slow down to eat mindfully, we are able to make choices that benefit the next generation. Not to mention identifying with the other side of the world that struggles not with obesity but with empty stomachs and parched throats. Good eating starts in the mind. Think before you eat.
5. Spend wisely.
If we see our spending money in terms of power (as in who does our money empower), would we be more mindful of the crap stuff we buy? Frugal is not necessarily cheap, so I say. Get out of debt, quit spending money you don’t have, be honest with your financial situation and live within your means. Or even better, live below your means so you can give more and buy fair trade.
6. Give generously.
I have nothing against sponsoring a child, but what about sponsoring an entire village? We like to have to faces to our causes, but thinking of transformation in terms of whole families and communities is a truly much more nourishing way to give. Invest your money in organizations that empower especially women, who are the shapers and nurturers of future change-makers (see #10). Give more hand-ups (like a Kiva loan or VIttana) than hand outs as much as possible. And above all, just give.
7. Practice radical hospitality.
We have many opportunities to practice hospitality beyond tea parties and formal dinner gatherings. In fact, raising children is a radical act of hospitality. As well as opening our homes to the aliens and strangers in our land. Consider communal living with other families or take in single folks. Host international students. Whatever is right for you. The question is, do you open your home to people who won’t be able to extend an invitation back? That’s tough.
8. Share your gifts.
What are you fantastically good at? What are your greatest strengths? Offer it to the world. Are you good with numbers? Maybe your local food bank could use a hand with paperwork stuff. Are you the mentor type? Maybe some local kids could use some help with tutoring and mentoring all the same. Or go global. An old co-worker of mine volunteered her accounting services for free to a couple in Thailand running a community health program. Someone from my old church used to give free haircuts to the folks at a local mission. The possibilities are endless, if we only are willing.
9. Advocate for change.
Words are powerful. Send a letter to those in positions of powers, whether in government or big corporations. We can leverage our citizen and consumer status by advocating for change in government policies or corporate practices. I subscribe to Sojourner’s Action Alerts among others. There, I can join the campaign for a Comprehensive Immigration Reform, ask the President to consider a new approach in Afghanistan or urge Kroger to fair pay price to Tomato workers.
10. Raise a revolutionary.
Lastly, but certainly not the least, embrace with white hot fervor this most important life-transforming role of your life: motherhood. We’re not playing house here and blowing happy bubbles on our nicely manicured white picket fenced lawn anymore. No desperate housewives here. Just ordinary moms who are ravenous for a change in the world, so we start with ourselves and with how we do laundry in the house. We’re washing our cloth diapers to dry on the clothesline, raising vegetables, creating and modelling a life that is nourishing not just to ourselves and our little wee ones, but eventually the world. So go ahead, raise the next Gandhi. Mothering for world peace IS your job title.
Thoughts? Stuff to add? By the way, this post is first addressed to me. This is the way I want and strive to live, but do I fall short! And so I keep writing and reminding because I forget. Oh, if you liked this post, kindly spread it around. Feel free to repost, but please give credit where its due and link back! Have a restful nourishing weekend!
Lovely Photo By Gabriella Camerotti
I’ve always struggled getting up in the morning. I am a certified night owl and wrote before about how much I had to adjust after becoming mama to my toddler, who is an early riser. But my struggle with getting up in the morning has nothing to do with being a night owl. It has everything to do with my preconceived notions of what I should be doing first thing when morning arrives.
Some people recommend to do the thing you least like the most shortly after you wake up. Some people suggest to do your daily Bible reading, meditate and do some heavy duty thinking. Some say to journal and write your stream-of-consciousness thoughts to get your creative juices flowing right away. Some tell you to exercise, go for your 5-mile run or ommm, strike up a yoga pose. Some insist on virtually connecting with the world ASAP, get on with the news via IPad/IPhone/Droid/Email/Twitter/Facebook/Etc. I’ve tried all of these, and honestly, I end up burnt out even before the day has started.
I hereby declare:
Start your morning on the right side of your brain and simply do one thing: do what nourishes you.
What gets you going? What motivates you? What truly gets you ready to face the day? What nourishes you? What do you know to be true for you? Don’t think of what you ought to be doing. Picture yourself at peace. What gets you there?
The problem with giving specific advice to people about how to start our days “right” (or anything in life for that matter) is that what works for one person may be disastrous for another. We’re all created unique and each person will have a different answer. Your personality and approach to life will be the determining factor because in the end, it’s what will work for you.
For me, I like to linger in bed. I like taking my time, savoring the mercies of each new day by welcoming it unhurried. I wake up to my most favorite faces in the word – my little girl’s and my husband’s, and when I remember to give pause and give thanks for what I have, my day starts really well. When I rush to make breakfast and think of the chores left undone from the day before, or when I scurry to check my email and open up my mind right away to so much noise and chatter, I have already used up energy before taking time to nourish myself first.
I also find that when I start the day with nourishing thoughts – true and beautiful thoughts that speak to me and only me, I am more inclined to be inspired the rest of the day. My most favorite question I ask myself is this, “How can I make today lovely?” When my day is getting crazy, or when I am going crazy, remembering to ask this question helps me remember that I have the power to choose how the day will turn out, and that I have the power to make my day beautiful regardless of my circumstances. When I get caught up in the craziness and I forget to ask myself this question, well, I get caught up in the craziness.
So that’s what’s nourishing for me. What about you?
