On Food Culture, Balls of Beliefs, Paradox, Music, and Menopause
Yesterday my daughter found a recipe for a Sushi Bake1, and I was immediately skeptical.
Who wants to eat an oxymoron?
But determined, and a very good cook, she found a way to procure all of the ingredients (practicing permit driving and talking with her first fishmonger), cook up some salmon, trim some Nori, soften some under-cooked rice, and pull the thing together, substituting Korean Gochujang for Sriracha and adding fresh sliced cucumbers and avocado across the top after the baking.
And it was awesome. I mean really, really good.
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Everyday occurrences like this, especially those that swell my heart with happiness and awe, and are touched by a long-brewed barrel of “let’s see how this goes,” have been one way I’ve been re-forming a workable world view. You know, paying attention to delights in real life.
Because up until this moment, I’d been self-identifying as a woman birthing my post-menopausal self. See what I mean? Paradox baked right in.
Oh yeah, and the labor has gone on a bit long.
And this new set of beliefs I’m choosing (or at least experimenting with) is chock full of oxymorons, paradoxes, and mystery. And they remain founded in love, love of nature, love of family and friends, and a decided love of life.
I don’t know about you, but watching one’s mind try to re-form a new and improved2 ball of beliefs after something many call “spiritual awakening” or “midlife crisis” or “breakdown” is a revelation.
Of course, a girl’s gotta eat, so I’m sharing my process and real life delights in hopes you find some sense of community, or at least discover you are not so alone, even if you’ve traveled your own ‘dark night of the soul’ (or maybe a lighter ‘dark night of sorts3.’ )
To the point of eating well, it doesn’t hurt for me to have paying subscribers either. Thank you for your support.
And beliefs can be developed to work in concert; creating deep, complex and soaring songs with thousands of parts and large movements replete with pauses – like a symphony.
Or beliefs can work very plainly like a spear of follower/disciple path aiming at a single and shared glorious end. Most religious belief systems offer a sense of safety, backup, and authoritative controlled mystery (which is super helpful at times), and gather us into communities of friends that can support one another and get good things done in the world too.
So please know, I’m not knocking religion.
And in my experience, and (perhaps) a stubborn cultivation of personal wonder – beliefs that cultivate a touch of mystery, and everyday delightful oxymorons – bring about the most amazing revelations I could ever wish for4.
How about you?
FOOTNOTES & SUB-SUBTEXT ;)
- I have no idea which recipe she used, but in keeping with giving google search a bit of acknowledgement, click here for some iterations: https://www.google.com/search?q=sushi+bake ↩︎
- Still thinking in a web-marketing-centric manner because of my profession, I can’t help but use these pop culture phrases many of us can see and hear with exclamation points and tone. ↩︎
- Because I worked for 25 years in web tech + marketing, I find all terms related to spreadsheet operations, bandwidth, downloading and online telling. It’s amazing our language has evolved to utilize computer words to describe human experience. “I don’t have the bandwidth for that,” as a perfect example.
↩︎ - Making a big deal about dinner IS food culture. And as far as I can see, a huge part of nearly all Mediterranean cultures too. If you can speak to it, you can speak to it. ↩︎