Latkes and the Foods that Connect

Latkes are such a simple food- potato, onion, a bit of egg, and oil. All ordinary ingredients from a winter pantry in our part of the world. It takes some know-how, though, to make good ones, made easier if you had a grandparent or parent who could help you get the knack of it. Loved by generations, the thought of potato pancakes sets mouths watering, and memories of years past swirling to mind.

In my husband’s family one of the key recipes is Paprikash. This perfect comfort food, a traditional Croatian soup with dumplings, is another of those

Paprikash

recipes that is simple, with ordinary ingredients, but no recipe can help you get those dumplings just right; you need to stand next to one who is practiced to get the knack of it. This soup is so evocative, that my eyes get a bit moist just thinking of times past sharing it with family.

All the great traditional foods were born out of necessity, the ingredients on hand in season, perhaps foods that can be made inexpensively in large batches for holiday gatherings of the extended family. Joaquin told the story aft er church last week about the tamales his family traditionally ate during the holidays, and the whole family put to work beforehand -- all hands on deck to form and wrap enough tamales to feed the family through the holidays. He described the holiday stew made from the only foods available to working people. The warm cinnamon chocolate drink his grandmother served with tamales when they came to see her for the Christmas holiday.

Reading a poem by Mary Wellemeyer the phrase “preparing the ceremonial dishes of my tribe” caught my imagination and has been resonating in my mind and heart. What are the ceremonial dishes of your tribe? Perhaps it is latkes, or Christmas cookies or tamales, or maybe there’s not an easy answer for that question. One of the reason the holidays can be hard is because so many of us have lost touch with our ancestral tribes. I know my grandfather was raised Jewish, but when he came to America he wanted to assimilate, as many immigrants do, and did not pass on any of his ancestral traditions. So much has been lost, or taken from us, like those of us whose ancestors were enslaved, or indigenous peoples whose culture was made illegal by their colonizers.
In her poem "The Shamash is the Tall One", Lori Rottenberg encourages us:

But even if you have no memories
of beloved elders chanting a guttural holy tongue
while holding the shamash aloft at dusk,
the menorah compels us all to consider
how centuries change stories,
how celebrations reflect as much as preserve,
and how we shape consecration of our own rituals.

So if you had no elder to pass on recipes and stories, to show you how to form the dumplings, I invite you to shape your own rituals, your own legacy. All those great traditional dishes were made first by someone, from whatever was in the pantry, for whomever needed to be fed. Think of the great sourdough starter wave of 2020 that grew out of an abundance of time at home and a shortage of yeast. I wonder if children who were little in 2020 will make sourdough for their families? Will the smell of yeast call back memories of a hard time we got through together with small comforts?

This fall our Soul Matters group spent an evening with this assignment: “The invitation is to think of a food or recipe that takes us back to a memory of deep belonging.. Most of the foods people shared were quite simple, those ordinary foods that light up the eyes of those who know and love them, kindling memories of meals past. My memory was of Gramma’s Chex mix. She used to make tins of it for Christmas, it was one of those recipes from the back of a cereal box designed to sell more product, as simple mix of 3 kinds of check, butter, Worcestershire sauce, and seasoning. I think it is the only holiday food our whole family enjoys. My mom, who makes it the classical way my gramma made, showed up one Christmas with tins of it for gifts, and was a bit deflated to see that my husband had made it as well, his own simpler and ever-evolving recipe, - “there can never be too much Chex mix!” he reassured her. Unlike the latkes and Paprikash, this recipe only goes back 3 generations, and has no special tie to the sacred stories, nor to a distant homeland, -- I’ll never know what foods Gramma Marie loved during the winter holidays when she was little, what dishes her tribe taught her. So Chex mix is what we have, and it reminds us of Gramma, and of each other—those who grew up eating gramma’s treats, those we married, and great grandchildren who never met her. Even so, that’s a story, isn’t it? It’s our story, our tribe.

That phrase “a memory of deep belonging” evokes many kinds of belonging, not just for our family of origin. Here's another story- a new one. A few years back Chalice Circle was going to be held on my Birthday. Well Lois wanted to have a little something special, and knew I don’t eat dairy. Another member of the group couldn’t eat gluten, so Lois learned a brand-new chocolate chip cookie recipe with almond meal. They were delicious, and more than that, I was so touched to be the recipient of hand made food custom made for our time together. It was, no question, a memory of deep belonging.

What are the foods that connect you to your tribe? To memories of warmth and connection? What food tastes like belonging to you?

We don’t often think of these ordinary holiday traditions as important rituals, but I believe they are important because they are so ordinary, because they involve all our senses, and are woven into the fabric of ordinary life.

Sharon Parks, writes in her Essay “The Meaning of Eating and the Home as Ritual Space” “These meals celebrate the connections among things They symbolize bonds that transcend geography and generations. They mark the affirmation of a shared way of life – shared commitments and vocation. Each affirms ongoing continuity even in the midst of discontinuity and change.” [p. 184] “ A home where people share meals together easily becomes a ritual space. A home is the context in which food, meals and feasts repeatedly order the life of our everyday and transmit the stories and expectations of our lives across generations. We do not have to reflect very long upon the power of food to begin to see why it has such symbolic ritual power and why meals, whether ordinary or special, can function as complex symbols, keys to whole patterns of relationship between ourselves and other elements of our lives- persons , things and the source of all food, the earth itself.” [p. 185] 

Mom's Pumpkin Pie

My mom’s family was for some reason cut off from their roots -- there is little knowledge of ancestors, few heirlooms or traditions or recipes past from one generation to the rest, a gap my mom felt very keenly. So one year my mom made me a binder of the recipes she used for the holidays we celebrate, an intentional legacy. What recipes would you pass on through your web of connection? What legacy would you share from the celebratory meals of your tribe, from moments of belonging? These stories are ours to share, and our gift to one another.

Perhaps this could be a spiritual practice for the coming holidays -- whether you are celebrating Hanukkah, Solstice or Christmas or just need some comfort food to get through the cold grey winter -- to remember and share the foods that feel like belonging to you. I invite you to practice weaving those threads of connection- generation to generation and heart to heart. Make the food if you can and share it, and the stories that go with it. Perhaps they remind you of the holiday miracles, like in today’s story, or perhaps the simple but no less precious miracle of people connecting and nourishing one another -- heart, body and spirit.

 

Nonnie's Nut Roll

How Can We Know What to Believe?*

 *This title is a callback to the UU curriculum "How Can I Know What to Believe?" by Charlene Brotman & Barbara Marshman  

When I was 13, our minister Rev. Brad Greeley, announced that he would be offering the first ever “coming of age” program in our congregation. A lot of my classmates were doing their confirmation, or their Mitzvahs, and I was glad to have something of my own. Back in those days, we didn’t have big overnight trips or games, like we have in our congregations over the past decade or so, it was just a handful of teens, and our minister, who asked us those big questions about what we believe, and handed us clean fresh mini legal pads to write down our thoughts.

It will probably not surprise you to know that I thought this was great! It felt so grown up to sit talking to the minister about important things, to be asked what I believe like it mattered. I had been the kind of kid who always thought about such things, who wanted to know “why” -- who wanted to know “is there a God? Is there a heaven? What happens after we die?” and sometimes it was really hard not having clear answers to those questions. Our minister told us, much as my mom had, that sometimes it was challenging being UU, because no one could tell you for sure what to believe, BUT, the gift was that we could learn to hone our own skill for discerning what was true. We were taught from a very young age that even if an authority figure says something is true, it’s okay to question, it’s okay to notice when what “people are saying” contradicts your lived experience. Questioning and religion go together, if you are UU. It’s part of the “Free and responsible search for truth and meaning”

One of our core understandings about this (called epistemology if you like fancy words) all the way back to the beginning of our Unitarian roots, is a trust in our inner compass in this search for truth. A place of inner wisdom, conscience and integrity exists in all of us, and this is the place in ourselves where we go to discern what is true, and what is important. For theists, this is the place where we are connected with and listening to the divine. For humanists, this is an innate human capacity. This discernment, this consulting the inner compass is at the core of our spiritual practice, and can be strengthened and habituated.

Have you ever had the experience of catching yourself not wanting to know something, or not wanting to face something internally? I sure have. Because we humans can also train ourselves not to look too closely at things that are uncomfortable, or things that might disrupt our relationships with other people. “Denial is not just a river in Egypt”, right? Coming to that place of integrity inside ourselves is not always easy, but that is the spot from which each of us can know what is true for us, the spot where we bring ourselves to discern.

Just as it takes our teens a full year to explore their beliefs in a comprehensive way, there are too many for us to consider deeply today. But I want to give us something specific to consider. I was thinking about all the angels that appear in the stories of this season, we had one in our story last week, and will undoubtedly sing about them at our candle light service. What do UUs believe about angels? It’s not something UUs talk about very much, it’s not really central to our shared theology, but it might be a helpful example as we explore this question of “how can I know what to believe?”

UUs are also big on evidence; the unitarian part of our tradition was inspired by people who bravely insisted that their beliefs must be compatible with the witness of their senses, and the learnings of science. But this means different things to different people. Some UUs take the strict stance that because angels have never been proven to exist using the scientific method, and because they themselves have never seen the angels described in the sacred texts, therefore they cannot believe in angels. When they ask their inner compass about angels, they get a hard no.

Some UUs believe the ordinary IS miraculous, and so when you ask “do you believe in angels” they might recall powerful moments of generosity and kindness they have witnessed in the midst of ordinary human relationships. Even a stranger on a bus can be an angel- providing direct evidence by their kindness.

But other UUs might offer another kind of evidence- a feeling they had one night at the sick bed of someone dear to them. A loving, comforting presence that radiated goodness. A vision, a voice. They consult that inner compass and feel the truth of that experience, the power of it to their lives, and maybe the word “angel” comes to their mind- and forever after when someone uses the word angel, it summons up that felt experience. 

Three different ways of thinking about angels, all coming out of our UU epistemology. This is because there are different kinds of truth, different kinds of knowing. For example I know that this week was the full moon because I saw it, and it was verified by all the calendars and apps in my house. I also know I love my husband, but that’s a different kind of knowing, harder to describe, harder to replicate, but true all the same. Myself, I tend to be agnostic about angels, but I do believe in the power of archetype and imagination. I know that something like angels have appeared in sacred stories and folk tales down through millennia. And I tend to believe that something which captures our collective imagination of that many generations must have some power for our psyches, whether it has any material reality.

The tricky bit for UUs is that on any given Sunday we might find someone for whom the whole idea of an angel sets off warning lights in that place of truth and integrity, might be sitting a few seats away from someone for whom angels play an important part of their spirituality, based on powerful experiences in their own lives. That is why respect is so important for us- because we don’t all have to believe the same thing, it’s okay to just listen with open mind and heart to the beliefs of each other, to notice how different our lived experience is, and the differences in how we have made meaning of our lives.

UUs try to keep our minds open to new understandings. The Dhali Lama once said “if science proves facts that conflict with Buddhist understanding, Buddhism must change accordingly. We should always adopt a view that accords with the facts.” He’s not a UU but that sure fits. Scientist Isaac Newton once said “What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean.” Who knows what we might still experience, and learn, who knows how our world might change? This is something I think all UUs would agree, that none of us can see the whole picture, and the picture is guaranteed to change over time. Perhaps that is why sometimes in our Sunday school clases we say “UUs are the people of the Open Minds, Helping Hands and Loving Hearts.”

Universliasts are people who keep that inner compass in their loving hearts heart. Our whole Universalist tradition came into being through people who believed deeply in love. When they went to their inner compass with the teachings of the church tradition of the day, way back in the 17th century, which was big on souls suffering in eternal torment, these kind hearted people couldn’t reconcile themselves to that teaching. When they talked to one another about a God who loves everyone, their inner compass said “aha”. It would be hard to find much evidence for this belief, one could easily look at the evidence of the world and say “humans are terrible, and God is punishing us” but what makes a Universalist a Universalist is because their inner compass points towards love. In my own life, there was a moment when I chose to take the leap of faith and believe in love, even though my inner compass said “where’s the proof?” I thought I’d try a little experiment- try believing in love for a while and see if that made me happier and more loving, which turned out to be the case.

Because as near as I can tell, love creates a kind of feedback loop. When we bravely open our hearts to those around us, grounded in the belief that there is a love big enough to hold everyone, bigger even than the evils of the world, love grows -- in ourselves and in our communities. If we take a skeptical approach, if we close our hearts to the love, perhaps because we’ve had our hearts broken, and can’t risk being disappointed again, this can create a feedback loop of disconnection and even despair. The early Universalists noticed that people who believed in a judgmental punishing god became themselves punishing and judgmental, and those who believed in love tended to be loving.

The great 20th century UU teacher James Luther Adams talked about a “pragmatic theory of meaning.” The most important test of our beliefs is how they cause us to act in the world; do they inspire us to make the world a kinder more just place? As Sofia Lyon Fahs wrote in our hymnal “it matters what we believe” “Some beliefs are like walled gardens. They encourage exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged. Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper sympathies.”

Deeper sympathies, that’s a nice way to put it. Our compass must be attuned not only to our own wellbeing but to the whole interconnected web. That’s something that unites today’s UUs- the belief that we are accountable to one another, and to our ecosystem. That’s what we mean by a free and Responsible search for truth and meaning. When you hear someone say “UUs can believe anything they want” what’s missing from that idea is this accountability to our inner integrity, to one another, and to the web of life.

When attuning to your inner compass, it can be kind of like tuning those old radio dials. There are some frequencies that are indeed judging, and make us feel like we are no good. That’s not the one we UUs are looking for. The frequency that makes us feel like we alone have the true answer? Don’t settle there either. Keep refining your search until you begin to tune into the frequency where you are in harmony with yourself and with the wider web of life. We are looking for the frequency that helps us grow in Freedom, in awareness, in compassion, in engagement.

Back in our coming of age class, we went question by question through those big mysteries of life, and began to put into words the knowing we found inside ourselves. If I think back to what I wrote then, I can see that there have been some significant changes in my own answers, and some answers have become more subtle and nuanced as I grow in life experience. This work of discernment continues as long as we are alive and growing. I wonder sometimes if our adults wouldn’t like a time like that- to explore and re-explore what we believe, to notice how the things we used to believe are evolving along with us. So I will make this offer- if you have specific questions you’d like us to think about together, please let me know!

This is one reason why we come together, to hear one another, the deep listening that helps us know ourselves in a new way. What a relief it is sometimes to have a belief that is like an amorphous lump and hear someone put just the right language to it, or offer the image to it that helps it crystalize into clarity. When we listen deeply to one another, we might hear something that makes us say “aha! That’s it!” or we might have kind of a “negative aha” where our inner compass says, “not for me!” which can also be clarifying. There are also plenty of places for me personally where I just don’t know. My inner compass gives me a lot of “maybe” when I ask it. And as hard as it is not to know something for sure, “I don’t know” can be a good honest answer. This is our free and responsible search for truth and meaning, so glad we can be on the search together.

Open to Wonder

Several years ago and shortly after twilight our 3 1⁄2 year old
tried to gain his parents’ attention to a shining star.
The parents were busy with time and schedules, the
irritabilities of the day and other worthy pre-occupations. “Yes,
yes, we see the star – now I’m busy, don’t bother me.” On hearing
this the young one launched through the porch door, fixed us with
a fiery gaze and said, “You be glad at that star!”  -Clarke Dewey Wells

I opened my back door the other night and there, shining through the now-empty branches of the big old maple tree was a bright glowing quarter moon. It had been cloudy all day, so I hadn’t even looked for it but there it was, glowing so brightly you could pick out the craters on its surface, surrounded by a luminous halo and illuminating the fluffy clouds that drifted by. I took an intentional pause, trying to drink it in -- the glow, the beauty, the synchronicity of being in the right place at the right time to see such a sight. Perhaps these ordinary winter moments are why this season feels to me, more than any other, the season of wonder. The stars seem extra bright in the crisp winter air, the sky bigger now that that the trees have lost their leaves, the night long and dark.

When I started my sabbatical program at the University of Creation Spirituality, Matthew Fox spoke that opening night about the importance of awe and wonder as we embarked on our educational journey together. Beginning from a place of awe, he suggested, would be most fruitful for ourselves and for the larger world. Awe-based education, he called it. Consider the young child, how they naturally encounter the world. Each new thing they experience causes them to pause- their little faces and minds open, drinking in a new miracle, which to us adults seems everyday and ordinary. Toes, for example. I remember my son studying the miracle of his own toes for hours on end. Wonder is a frame of mind that allows us to open to new things. A wondering gaze is a curious gaze, open to new experiences and learning.

It is easy for those of us who have lived in this world for a while to become immune to these ordinary and wonderful miracles. That is why sometimes traveling helps us feel wonder. Our own beautiful waterfalls and lakes, our stunning green summer landscape and fall foliage can easily become ordinary, but when we travel someplace new we remember what it is to see something for the first time -- the aliveness and freshness of that new wonder.

But traveling is not necessary for awe and wonder. It can also be cultivated with intention and attention in our everyday places. That moon inspired me the other night precisely because I had taken up the practice way back in June of looking for the moon each day, tracking its changes day after day, month after month. It was precisely because I had been paying attention, search and often failing, that I could see that this moon was special, precious. This glowing winter moon just looked different, and I felt blessed to have caught it. It’s not just sky gazing that opens us to wonder, sometimes it is gazing at your lovely presence these days, those special moments between us when the connection feels alive and vital, the sharing and connection deep and rich.

Perhaps you have had such a moment, gazing deeply at something ordinary, like the moon, like the birds at your feeder, your garden, your family, and some precious unrepeatable moment finds you, and you are open to receive it. Perhaps, if you are like me, you call out to whoever is near- hey are you seeing this? Sometimes they politely look, yes I’ve seen the moon, but their hearts are not shot through with wonder as yours is in that moment. Or perhaps they do, like the dad in the story, stop and look and see with your wondering eyes.

In the Christian gospel Jesus says “until you become like a child, you will never receive the kingdom” [Matthew 18:3, Mark 10:15] Fox offered this scripture our first night as a suggestion that wonder is a doorway to the numinous, a way of looking at the world that allows us to see what is sacred, what is holy. The great scientist Albert Einstein put it this way: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Being open to wonder is one way of being open to the sacred, of connecting to the holy.

Wonder helps us remember our place in the family of things. It is easy for our world to get very small- easy to feel like the whole world is our work that must be done, our home, our desk, our kitchen sink, our phone, our do list. But the universe is unimaginably vast, which is, I suppose, a bit easier to see these days in the wide dark nights of winter. Trying to understand awe, a group of researchers invited one group of study participants, to draw pictures of themselves after having an awe experience. Participants “literally drew themselves smaller in size…Such an effect has been termed “unselfing.” …”[i] When we see our small self in the vastness of the universe, or of the ecosystem, or of our human community, our perspective is changed. perhaps this is why Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that “ Awe is the beginning of wisdom.” When our perspective is changed by awe, we are able to see what is truly important.

Have you experienced this in your own life? Can you think of a time that you have been struck by awe or wonder, and it changed your perspective? Just the other night I was outside again, for some mundane reason- perhaps to let the dogs out or take out the recycling, and stood rapt for a moment gazing at the stars and listening to the sounds of the night. When I came back in my husband asked if I was still upset, and I was surprised by the question. “I guess not” I said- “Sometimes staring at the sky makes you feel better” he replied, laughing. “It’s good medicine” I agreed

An article by Summer Allen, of the greater good science center, explored recent scientific studies of awe. They summarized the findings saying “Experiencing awe often puts people in a self-transcendent state where they focus less on themselves and feel more like a part of a larger whole.”[ii] That sounds about right. What surprised me, though, was learning that “Multiple studies have found evidence that experiencing awe makes people more kind and generous. For example, people who stood among awe-inspiring eucalyptus trees picked up more pens for an experimenter who had “accidentally” dropped them than did people who stared up at a not-so-inspiring large building.” How lovely that something like the beauty and majesty of a eucalyptus tree could help us be more kind and generous.

Perhaps this is why so many of us tell stories about finding those transcendent, healing moments in beautiful places in nature. But even though most majestic trees and brightest stars can’t always work their magic on us. One year I was off on retreat, and started my first day the way I often do, walking the grounds of the retreat center. I had waited and wanted and planned for this retreat, and was looking forward to the amazing vastness of the ocean I had not seen in years. But as I walked, and looked, my mind surveyed the things I knew should fill me with wonder, but I just felt grumpy. Naturally, I also began to judge myself for being ungrateful for these precious miracles, and unappreciative of the privilege of being on retreat in this beautiful spot. Sometimes the distance from where we are to wonder seems like a long way.

Perhaps you too identify with the parents in that story “busy with time and schedules, the irritabilities of the day and other worthy pre-occupations” a frame of mind that crowds out wonder and awe. Rev. Wells, the dad in that story, suggests that in such moments “if we cannot impel ourselves into a stellar gladness, we can at least clean the dust from our lens of perception.” If wonder is something we aspire to, a state we want to invite into our lives, what might be the dust on our lens, what might we have to lay down before we are ready to see the world through wondering eyes? We cannot will ourselves to wonder, we can only open ourselves to it. For me, that winter day by the shore, there was much to lay down, from the burdens of life and ministry, the defensive awkwardness of being in a new place, a new community, and the grief of recent losses. All that, it turned out, had to be experienced and released, had to be cleansed before my own lenses were clear enough to see what had been there all along, the stunning beauty of the ocean in all her moods, the vastness of the horizon, and even the wonder of the humble shrubs and grasses that now were revealed as wondrous once my perception had changed. The poet William Blake was speaking of such a feeling:

To see the world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wildflower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

As we turn now towards the winter solstice, for some the season of Advent, I encourage you to cultivate wonder. If the world does not seem wonderful and amazing right now, be kind to yourself— there’s a lot we are carrying. But the stars themselves are inviting us to a seasonal practice of being open to awe and wonder. As with any spiritual practice, we come back to it again and again, on good days and on bad, trusting that the practice will lead us someplace worthy- to wisdom, to kindness, to wonder. Let us be open to the everyday miracles, with compassion for dusty lenses of our ordinary, possibly grumpy selves, listening for that inner child who invites us “you be glad at that star”

---

[i] Article - Why You Need to Protect Your Sense of Wonder https://hbr.org/2021/08/why-you-need-to-protect-your-sense-of-wonder-especially-now

[ii] https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/images/uploads/GGSC-JTF_White_Paper-Awe_FINAL.pdf citing Bai, Y., Maruskin, L. A., Chen, S., Gordon, A. M., Stellar, J. E., McNeil, G. D., ... Keltner, D. J. (2017). Awe, the diminished self, and collective engagement: Universals and cultural variations in the small self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(2), 185–209. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000087
Benedek, M., & K