An Easy Recipe

Photo courtesy of Anna Andersen

You know how sometimes your friend tells you, “I’ll send you the recipe. It’s so easy!” and then you open it up and think: liar, liar, kitchen on fire.

I’ve dished it as many times as I’ve been served it. In fact this week I had lunch with a new French friend who I’d met at a mutual friend’s birthday brunch, over one of my raspberry breakfast crumble bars. Where there are groups of women and good china out, we do like to put our best fork forward. The fruity bars were no Coq au vin, but anytime there is a food processor and two part baking process you won’t be whipping it up during a commercial break. You’ll be calendaring it for your next assignment.

In our email exchange before getting together, I forwarded the recipe with the “easy” disclaimer. I wanted to sound hopeful and competent. As we parted after a lovely lunch, she said: “Oh, and thanks for the recipe. I was going to make it but ….that was involved, no? I should send you some French cake recipes. They are very simple.”

Well, that was Tuesday. Today is Friday and I have a new outlook on easy.

This morning I was in my kitchen at 6:50am. By 7:07am, there were biscuits. Not just any biscuit but the lightest, tenderest, tastiest golden biscuits ever to grace an Ikea plate. In places where measuring precision and light touch is required (“don’t overwork the dough” may be the most open to interpretation baking instruction ever), I have a very uneven and sometimes inedible past.

But these biscuits. These biscuits were CHAMPION’S LEAGUE. My audience swooned. I briefly played the kitchen martyr. There was none left by 7:27am.

The secret? Two ingredients. That’s right – two ingredients. No butter. No pastry cutter. Definitely no Bisquick for 3,000 miles. Only a wooden spoon and two ingredients: self-rising flour and heavy cream. A recipe where anyone can be a hero.

I wouldn’t have believed it either except if you’ve ever made a recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt from Serious Eats.com, you know this guy is serious about the science of good food. The recipe, the truly easy recipe, is called, “Two Ingredient Never-Fail Cream Biscuits.” It's not a new idea. Kenji even admitted: "But not everything worth making is brand new."

After I polished off the last biscuit I hid this morning, it got me to thinking about how Jesus summed up what we needed to know by telling us to do two things: love the Lord our God *with everything* and love our neighbor *as ourselves*. That these two things Never-Fail. It seems like as we get more comfortable in our own kitchens of faith or where there is an audience to impress, we often try to add in more ingredients and over complicate the recipe. But I wonder if we tried to stick to the basics, these two ingredients, would we be lighter and more tender?

One might argue that heavy cream can stand on its own. Flour, like love for your God, definitely cannot. It is an important ingredient but it can’t rise – do what it was meant to do- all by itself. It needs to be worked into the fat of relationships, the ones you choose and the ones you don’t. Then when the flour is coated in the richness of risking love, showing mercy and overthrowing self for the sake of our neighbors (here I must mention the ones we can’t find any little thing to agree about), does it finally come together into dough. It’s sticky and must be handled with care. But once the two loves are mixed in roughly the right proportions, it now has the potential to withstand the heat and produce something very, very tasty.

It’s that easy, no?

Fall Hiking in Switzerland

With so many places to see and limited time, you need travel short cuts.   Person to person recommendations are often the best.  We asked our Swiss friends Christian and Iris for their favorite day hiking destination in the Swiss Alps.  Avid hikers both before and after kids, their favorite spot is LENK IN SIMMENTAL which offers easy valley hiking, more challenging and varied mountain paths, and higher more technical alpine climbs.

GSTAAD is a destination in the Berner Oberland with an international reputation but nearby Lenk in Simmental has the Swiss reputation.  It has been awarded as one of the best Swiss holiday family resorts for both its winter and summer activities.  Like Gstaad it has a charming, picturesque village but it trades the designer label shops for more outdoor stores and a working population.  While it caters to the outdoor enthusiast, it feels like a more authentic Swiss village.  For those of you familiar with recreational areas in Idaho, Lenk is the Hailey to Sun Valley’s Ketchum.

Sitting at an altitude of just over 1000 meters, Lenk is in the Simmental valley about 65km southwest of Interlaken.  The valley has 600km of walking trails and 290 km of mountain bike trails for all levels, so plenty to keep busy for a long weekend.  One of the attractions is the compactness of the outdoor activity which means no time is wasted in getting to your activity.  It's a great destination for both families and older people.

With a recent dusting of snow on the highest peaks and idyllic late September weather, the only challenge was choosing which of the hiking and mountain trails to do.  (We weren't looking to do any of the more advanced alpine or overnight trails, much to my husband's dismay.)  There too we had help from the owner of the hotel that was also recommended to us by Christian and Iris.  (see below in “Where to Stay.”)

On the first day, we took the gondola up to LEITERLI above Lenk.  There is an easy 3km loop hike on the top with beautiful vista views and interesting sign posts (in Swiss) about Lenk’s history.   There are several additional trails to do from the top which, if the weather is good, we’d recommend over hiking back down to Lenk.  From Leiterli back down to Lenk there is a discovery Marmot Trail (3 km) and Lynx Trail (6 km) aimed at kids but its ankle breaking steep and not quite as interesting for older kids.  There is another themed trail called the Alpine Flower Trail with 95 plant species that would have been lovely to do when the wildflowers are in season.

On the second day, we took the bus to IFFIGENALP (which is not accessible by gondola.)  From there we did an up and net down hike past several beautiful waterfalls and lots of cows.  One of the treats of hiking in Switzerland are all the old chalets en route where you can usually stop for a drink and buy some locally made cheese.    We extended what would have been a 3.5 hour mountain hike finishing in Simmenfalle into a leisurely 5 hour stroll.  Had it just been Brett and Lawton on the hike, they would have traded the stroll for a 600 meter add on climb to Flueseehutte.  The two of them are already plotting their return.

Getting there:

It’s a 5.5 hour drive to Lenk in Simmental from Luxembourg without traffic.  Expect some delays near Strasbourg and a few tolls in France.  The last hour of drive is on windy two lane road so it’s advisable to drive in daylight.  You will need to stop and buy the Swiss autobahn toll sticker (cost of 40 Swiss francs for one calendar year) when crossing into Switzerland.  If you fly, nearest airport is in Bern which is 1.5 hours by car or 2.5 hours by train.   From Zurich Airport it is 2.5 hours by car and 3.5 hours by train.

Getting around:

It is nice to have a car but if you are staying in the town center of Lenk, you can easily manage without one.  The Lenk bus leaves regularly from the train station in the town center to many of the trail heads and in some cases (where roads are only open one direction on an hourly schedule) is a better option than driving.  

Where to Stay:

At our friend’s recommendation, we stayed at HOTEL SIMMENHOF, Lenkstrasse 43 | 3775 Lenk Im Simmental, Lenk-Simmental 3775, Switzerland; +41 33 736 34 34; Family-run hotel 1km from the center of Lenk; large spacious family rooms available; indoor pool with smaller outdoor pool; free and excellent WiFi; exceptionally kid friendly; hearty breakfast offering included; onsite restaurant for dinner; free parking and shuttle service into Lenk; owners are as helpful and good as any tourist office.  90% of guests are Swiss.

If you have a few more francs to rub together or you want to be in town, LENKERHOF GOURMENT SPA RESORT is the highest rated hotel in the area and looked to be a special spot, Badstrasse 20 | Postfach 241, Lenk-Simmental 3775, Switzerland; :+41 33 736 36 36.

There are numerous other hotels in the town as well as a number of rental properties.  Because it is mostly a skiing destination, you should have ample lodging options for hiking seasons.

Where to Eat:

One does not travel to Switzerland for the food, but a warm Rösti (elevated hashbrowns with cheese and often an egg on top) after a day of hiking goes down easy.   There are 27 restaurants listed on Trip Advisor in Lenk.  We asked around for recommendations, which landed us at these two spots for dinner both of which worked well.

Hirschen Lounge Bar, Oberriedstrasse 1, Lenk-Simmental 3775, Switzerland; don’t mistake the red and white table clothes for pizza; interesting menu with excellent Rösti and very good vegetarian Spätzle with local chanterelles; average pasta dishes and make your own hamburgers; slightly slow service but the night was also quite busy.

Elk Bar & Restaurant, Oberriedstrasse 13, Lenk-Simmental CH-3775, Switzerland; large more modern than traditional Swiss restaurant with excellent terrace; aside from the parsnip soup and house salad nothing that floated above average but food is simple, service was good and there’s something for everyone on the menu. 

Mad-o-meter

It seems impossible your mad-o-meter can go from zenzero to wristlock in thirty seconds. In church. But they we were.

It started out flowers and fresh air. We had walked there. Everyone including the Conserve Water While Showering Zealot knew better than to suggest driving on a beautiful September morning. Conservation talk cuts both ways. I hadn’t even actively discouraged the scooter. Aside from my skinny-in-the-wrong-place jeans constricting round my legs like a permanent calf raise on dumbbell shoes, it had been a pleasant approach to the pew.

Truth be told, we don’t actually have pews. We have red chairs.

We were even on time. Granted the service starts at 11:45am but getting a teenager, middle schooler, and a child with a lot of questions to church after Daddy’s been gone for 7 days and after an evening of wine tasting is something I think God notices.

The service starts with singing, my favorite part.

Within five minutes, two of my children had left their red chairs – past me on the end - in search of water. Within seven minutes, one of the water-bound children also wanted a sip of my tea, animating to everyone sitting behind us that it was too hot. Between minutes seven and eight, there was a minor sibling altercation that always looks MAJOR to a Mother mid-hymn followed by a much too vigorous refusal to switch seats because “he wanted to see what his brother was writing.” Who’s writing while we are supposed to be singing anyway?????

At minute eight my eyes were closed in worship. At minute eight thirty, we were in wristlock and making our way to the back for a conversation. Unfortunately the offering was being passed at the exact moment of exit but these things happen seem to happen without much warning when you cede control to people who have chosen to sit in the almost front row.

It’s probably worth noting that the “everyone sitting behind us” may have included a school teacher I have a tiny problem with for sending students- mine included -out of the class for what I can only conclude is misbehavior, asking a question or breathing too deeply.

It occurred to me somewhere between the “You can never sit next to your brother in church again” edict and the rope I was now trespassing to sit in the last row of red chairs that maybe I was overreacting a tiny bit. That perhaps my big movement to the back in wristlock was more noticeable than whatever altercation preceded it. That maybe I wanted my children to behave just a little more than I wanted to worship. That maybe I cared even more with an audience, especially when the audience includes people you have a tiny problem with.

Once safely in the last row, the mad-o-meter continued to register for a bit. I even tried to make eye contact with the almost front row who was carrying on writing until I realized – all too vigorous sign language confusion a clue- that maybe it was time to let it go. That maybe I should carry on letting God meet me in my red chair and my too tight jeans and ask for a change of attitude.

I know he listens when we ask him for that. I know that because instead of bolting out the door at the end of the service which would have been to plan, I stopped to introduce myself to a family I hadn’t seen before. They were in fact new to Luxembourg and new to the church. I got to be their welcome. Me, the one with tiny attitude issues, who had just been welcomed back herself.

Am I a Good Parent?

(whew 3 months is a long time between posts!)

I don’t much follow business news anymore but my 73 year old father-in-law turned me on to the Financial Times management columnist Lucy Kellway whose no nonsense approach to office life I continue to find insightful and entertaining. Because I don’t have a paid subscription to the Financial Times, I listen to Lucy’s weekly column as a 5 minute podcast (smartly called “Listen to Lucy”) on Stitcher (next to Facebook, my most well-touched iPhone app.)

This week Lucy had an engaging column “Am I a Good Parent?” which was the message of a recent UBS online banner ad campaign, the implication of course being that good parents provide financial stability for their children. If only it were that easy. Seeing the question as the minefield that it is with no universal standards for what makes a good parent and no independent arbiter to judge, Lucy posited the question to 40 of her work colleagues over email. None of the working women responded (:<) All of the men responded “Yes” and their whys were nicely bucketed into three categories: 1) They have been involved in the process through time and sacrifice, 2) The end result, treating child as product, has turned out well. 3) My kid, treating child as customer, tells me I’m doing a good job. Lucy counters each of these responses as incomplete answers finally concluding, “It’s a labor of love. Good and bad don’t come into it.”

While I agree with her in principle, I find the conclusion somewhat unsatisfying. As parents we want to know we are doing a good job. We appreciatively hear and file away the parenting attaboys we receive. We glory in the moments when our children think us cool or better yet, right. But more than affirmation, we want hard evidence that we are doing it well at least most of the time. Yes it’s a labor of love where the traditional x’s and o’s don’t apply but the “wait for launch and see” approach seems a reckless gamble with what UBS and we know is our biggest investment.

There are some places in life, car shopping for example, where comparisons are helpful. As much as we know comparison parenting is unreliable because it’s a moving target (your peers are not my peers), sometimes we can’t help ourselves. Sometimes a peer comparison makes us feel cheerfully normal but just as often it makes us feel smug or inferior. And even when it makes us feel normal we have this lurking feeling that each child and family culture is so unique that our momentary relief of being “on benchmark” is fleeting at best. Plus, unlike a car, you can’t get under the hood of another household to see how things really look on the inside when visitors aren’t allowed.

Process or time put in seems a decent proxy for good work but that always feels like a call to arms between working and stay at home parents. I’ve lived on both sides of the divide and know there is good and bad in both camps. A parent may give impressive amounts of their time by coaching their kid and then bully them into better performance. Another parent may have fewer, less publicized hours to give but with greater intention and connection. Certainly there is a baseline of time investment in order to be an effective parent as well as healthy doses of expansive, unscripted time but the scale is different for each child. Not to mention the secondary benefit to children when they see their parent invested in and renewed by meaningful work. I stand with Lucy. We can’t agree on one process.

As children get older, the temptation to look at child as product is very compelling. We start laying claim to their physical appearance as soon as they are out of the womb and the land grab continues with each achievement they earn, particularly in areas we either had our own success or could be credited for helping them discover. It’s tempting because they are in some senses a product of us and their environment which we either carefully or haphazardly created but if they were merely a product we’d know how to recreate them to spec. Anyone with multiple children can tell you that is both impossible and hilarious. The idea of looking at child as consumer is even more problematic because we know the world won’t be so generous.

When I asked my own children the question “What makes a good parent?” the first thing one of them said was: “All parents make mistakes.” It’s always good to get that out of the way first. He then went on to say, “Kids who have good parents are respectful, obedient and operate within a set of values which may or may not be the same as their parents.” While that sounds mostly good (Judge Mom wished that he had said compassionate over obedient) and easy for kids with a predisposition towards compliance, the idea of “good parents have good kids and bad parents have bad kids” is wrought with so many problems and exceptions that it only took two minutes for my nine year old to remind us all about the story of Matilda – good kid, horrible parents.

The one thing that Lucy didn’t entertain was measuring ourselves as good parents by how purposefully we animate virtue to our children, or what David Brooks terms “eulogy virtues vs resume virtues.” During my discussion with my kids, one of them explained that he thought parents over focused on teaching life skills (resume virtues) like how to hold a fork or how to do laundry when “as humans, we can figure a lot of that stuff out on our own.” But eulogy virtues like joy, peace, patience, kindness, humility, generosity, gentleness, self-control need to be taught by people in proximity. It requires a combination of a few words, a lot of action, and dogged consistency. Who else would willingly sign up for that job?

“How To” teaching only requires that we know our subject, “How to Be” teaching demands a reflex of character that’s only there if you are actively committing to living out what doesn’t always come natural every day. It is easy to be kind when we aren’t irritated; it’s hard to show kindness in the middle of a shitstorm. It is easy to have oatmeal for breakfast; it is harder to have oatmeal at a breakfast buffet and not let the entire table know about our restraint. Our kids need to receive our gentleness when they make a horrible mess and extra doses of it when that mess embarrasses us. They need to see us activate our strengths and be vocally self-critical of our weaknesses. They need us to show them examples of how joy doesn’t erase suffering but sometimes springs from it. With intention around virtue, seeds are planted and blooms eventually spring but it's often slow and not always in the places you expected.

With this definition, the question of whether or not one is a good parent is no more measurable than any of the previous attempts but I sense it’s a better question we can answer for ourselves because we will find the answer somewhere deep in our bones. It’s an answer we aren’t obliged to share over email.

Amazing Grace

I am drawn to any article or essay about parenting like a dieter is to one square of dark chocolate. For good but mostly bad we crave benchmarking. I confess to reading the articles about the early parenting years with a mixture of relief and smug delight. When things aren’t going so well I like to remind myself that my children were rock star sleepers. In my memory I round up on how long they were breastfed.

On the other hand, I clip articles with titles like “How to Raise an Adult” and try hard to convince myself I'm not one of those parents involved in the college admissions mania. Inevitably a mini crisis will follow (my lie) like my 17 year old asking me if the laundry is done yet and by the way can I cut him a piece of bread. With that my mind wanders to me in his dorm room fixing him a cup of ramen noodles. I wonder if it's too late to become a family who camps or if a Swiss Army Knife would be a good 18th birthday present.

These moments of doubt are never fully rational. And they are often followed with a rant and then a new plan for making our dependent children more independent. We've had approximately 14 different plans on household chores none of which have been consistently applied. Twice daily teeth brushing continues to be a surprise.

At my kid’s school all Grade 2 students play the recorder. Some are into it, some understand it’s not a long term instrument. Having been deprived of any musical encouragement at home, my 2nd grader has taken this recorder business very seriously. Part of the drive is acquiring belts like in karate. Seven belts down, one to go and only a week left of school. The final belt of the year is for the piece “Amazing Grace.” It’s going to be close.

After much practice the notes are all there but the rhythm is still off. As an insider I have been primed to listen for “Amazing Grace” but without the right cadence a new listener would be hard pressed to place the song. It’s not bad, it’s just not “Amazing Grace.” Yet.

As parents we work hard and try to hit all the right notes with our kids but sometimes you can’t make out the rhythm. We know if we’ve been successful at potty training. It’s a lot harder to know if we’ve been successful in raising a well-adjusted adult. It’s the culmination of hitting most of the right notes and hundreds of releases of the rope - many of which seem undetectable at the time. It doesn’t all come together right away.

This week I got a call from my 17 year old. Not a text but a call. He had some news. After not getting a response to his week old email to an administrative office in Luxembourg regarding critical information needed to write his extended essay this summer, he decided to go in person. Initiative that wasn’t even my idea. I did however wave the flag that we would only be in Luxembourg for 4 days this summer and noted that because it takes 10 days to get clean shirts, I was less than optimistic about him finding the *one* person in Luxembourg with information about hybrid buses and emissions before Christmas.

As we parents are primed to do I took the call ready to problem solve. Problem was he wasn’t calling for help. He was calling to tell me that after four offices, three bus rides, and relying on his broken French, my almost adult had found the *one* person in Luxembourg with the information he needed. There was a meeting on the spot and a promise for a follow up email by the end of the week which arrived in his inbox as we spoke. All of a sudden the laundry and bread cutting weren’t such a big deal.

Before I could even offer him a ride home (as we parents are primed to reward successes) he told me he’d be home in 45 minutes because he had to stop by the grocery store. ??? He needed to pick up some fruit for his science experiment. I wanted to say “I could have done that for you” but instead I said, “Ok, see you later.”

The truth is we all overparent in some things and underparent in others. With kids on the cusp of launching into the world it’s going to be close. This week I’ve rounded up. I’ve been reminded that if we hit enough of the right notes eventually it’s going to sound like “Amazing Grace.” Not only to me as an insider but to anyone with ears to hear.

Goodbyes

When I first moved to Europe, a French woman told me something I didn’t yet have the experience to understand. Having been an expat in the US for many years but now back on her home turf in Europe, she said many of her friends here are expats because “Once you’ve had an adventure, you find yourself drawn to other adventurers.” More than language or cultural similarities, her “people” have become those with the shared experience of having lived as a fish out of water.

I get it more now. There is the opportunity for the relational concentration of the college years mashed together with the vulnerability of the middle school years for those willing to genuinely forge new friendships while living abroad. Making new friends in a culture that applauds a slow lunch and frowns at a to-go cup of the coffee is valuable lubricant for conversation with the potential to go beyond the surface. And in the absence of nearby family and a network of long standing friendships, 1) “Sorry, I’m busy” is a well-known lie and 2) shallow swimming ain’t gonna satisfy for long.

The downside of friendships established over new peaks and unknown valleys are that the goodbyes hurt a little bit more. Next week I say goodbye to these two beautiful women, Holly and Heidi, who have seen me through the good, bad, ugly, confusing and humiliating for the past two years. They have also graciously kept me from gaining twenty pastry pounds because I am far more faithful with exercise when they are around.

My oh my have they both adventured well. Not only have they taken the tosses and turns of a new everything in stride, but they happily hit the pause buttons on their careers (as a scientist and a Ph.D., respectively) to anchor their families here in Luxembourg and literally pour themselves out as a blessing to so many. I am but one of those grateful recipients.

So for you in Seattle and Iowa that get them back, my heart does sing for you. They are ready to be back home with you, dare I say more deeply alive than even before, and I happen to know – fully equipped to make you an excellent cappuccino in a “for here” cup.

Travel Tip from Rome

For most, summer travel to Rome means a gelato-stained tick sheet of “must sees” a mile long.  My glossy travel guide claims you can see all the major highlights in four days, an ambitious proclamation for a city with ancient remains everywhere you step, over 900 churches and only two metro lines.

A long weekend and third trip to the Eternal City, sans children, means you can put the tick sheet down and (mostly) wing it.   Except if you are like me and you can’t help yourself from doing restaurant research.  If you’re going to commit to a pasta carbonara, you want to enjoy every calorie.  [I have recommendations on this front of course.]

Regardless of your chosen pace, the truth is that you will get caught up in the whirl of a big city like Rome.  You will never see it all or find the best place to have a pair of shoes made.  You will be completely overwhelmed – not just by the size of the city – but the history it holds.

So, my travel tip for whatever new place you travel to this summer.  Find an hour on your busy itinerary where you can escape to a quiet corner of the city and just sit.  I found my spot at the SS Apostoli Church, a second tier tourist attraction not heavily circled on any map.  First time we passed there was a mass going on.  Second time there was a long line of people waiting to take a picture of the apostle James and Phillips tombs, a ridiculous photo really given that you are in a dark crypt.  Third time, it was early Monday morning and there were only two of us in the church.  Complete silence for 30 minutes. 

The travel writer Pico Iyer says, “The point of gathering stillness is not to enrich the sanctuary or the mountaintop, but to bring that calm into the motion, the commotion of the world.  [In stillness], a huge heaviness fell away from me, and the lens cap came off my eyes.”

I recommend you add that to your “must see” list.

---

Some Recommendations

Three dinners, three winners.  Armondo’s Al Pantheon, a well-known, family run at moderately priced traditional Roman trattoria, adjacent but not on the square near the Pantheon with excellent food and a kitchen staff all over the age of 50.  Recommend view of the kitchen for anyone with an Italian grandfather.  Giulio Passami l’olio, a moderately priced, casual but hip (late arriving bridal shower party confirmed) Mediterranean kitchen with a long wine list and helpful sommelier 600 meters from Piazza Navona recommended to us by a Roman friend of a friend.   Antico Arco, an upscale modern Italian restaurant in Monteverde (taxi required) with a twist on Roman classic dishes and attentive service.   For a glass of wine, research told us to check out Mime e Coco on busy Via del Governo Vecchio but we preferred the lively local vibe of Il Bar del Fico near Piazza Navona and the more quiet but comfortable, Kindle-friendly Etabli.    

No need to put the Pantheon on your tick sheet.  You will pass by it multiple times during your stay and at first you will wonder, “How on earth did they build that 2000 years ago?” then you will start to wander the streets around it for shopping.  Rome is all about leather, cashmere, shoes and other things to drain your travel budget.  There is good shopping for all these things around the Pantheon including Cosimo Colonna where you can dress your man in Euro duds without gasping at price tags or committing to a summer scarf if you don’t want to.  You should however make him get a pair of colorful Gallo socks.  When in Rome … black socks will not do.

The most enjoyable shopping however was in the Monti neighborhood which is behind Piazza Venezia and the Colosseum.  Via del Boschetto and Via Urbana are lined with designer shops of Italian made goods and vintage shops in a range of price points.   The most fun was being there on the weekend for the MercadoMonti, an indoor urban market we read about in the NY Times March 2015 “36 Hours in Rome.”  With about two dozen young designers selling their handcrafts, my Euro dude was able to pick up a snazzy jacket for under 100 euros.

Whatever

When we don’t really know

When sources cannot or will not be disclosed

Whatever comes to fill in the blank

The catch all for that elusive thing we sort of believe

_ it takes

_you want

_works

A wink to corners cut, people unseen

Its flimsiness further crippled when used all by its lonesome

Whatever.

For all its accommodation, an abandoned whatever reeks of indifference

A smack down to further thinking or conversation

The socially accepted shorthand for “I don’t care past here.”

But what if rather than the last bite, whatever was the first taste

A call to scan far and wide for

Whatever is true and lovely and excellent

Not only the obvious things but the hidden things too

Past right now into what is right and just

Past the edges of good enough

A continuous decision to gorge on so much lovely your thought bubbles could be jumbotroned                                                                                                                           

Probing what moves us one step closer to our humanity and two steps closer to understanding another’s dignity

Noticing what takes our breath away and allowing it to give it back with compound interest

A flywheel of virtuous thought and practice

Whatever re-imagined

To a wide open place with commas and exclamation marks and run-on sentences…

Root Bound

You do not have to be a prisoner in your own pot

A knotty mess of rules or lawlessness

What little soil remains hard and resistant to water

With roots like tired rhetoric poking out the bottom

Last flowers put up as a flag of desperation

Once upon a time you were a healthy seedling

Shotgunning new pathways all over the place

Before you thought you knew enough about the world

Before you replaced childlike wonder with presumed grownup wisdom                                                                                                                                      

It’s no treat to have your roots broken up

To risk a transplant to a new, unfamiliar pot

Where survival cannot be guaranteed

But how then to know how big you could have grown?

How parched you really were?