Cooking the Books

In the introduction to his dream-vision poem, The Parlement of Foules (The Parliament of Fowls), the great medieval author, Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343-1400,) wrote “The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne”, meaning, of course, that life is short and acquiring proficiency in any craft takes a very long time. In Chaucer’s case, he was reflecting particularly on the craft of writing. Writing IS a craft, and it IS hard work and I mention this because it’s been quite a while since I posted to this blog.

It’s not that I’d stopped writing. In fact, during my absence from the blog, I worked on my latest book, the creative non-fiction The Mystics Who Came to Dinner, and was thrilled to have it published by Orbis Books in April this year. And it’s that book that showed me exactly what Chaucer was talking about in his aphorism about the time required to attain competency in writing, or in any craft really.  For although I completed the book in under six months, I had wanted to write a generally accessible book on the medieval mystics for quite a long time. In fact, I had been asked to write such a book very soon after the completion of my PhD on medieval mystical texts back in 2001. There was no way, at that time, that I could envisage conveying the deep experiences of these mystics in more transparent terms without diminishing their messages. I tried but just couldn’t come up with something that seemed convincing to me, let alone anyone else.

Still, I did manage to produce an academic book on the subject in 2008, and I was content with that … for a while. But almost every time I gave a public talk or interview about the mystics someone would ask, “Is there an accessible book on the topic, not too heavy?” And, though there were, and are, many wonderful books, I knew that what the audience members were asking for was a book that delivered the deep insights of the mystics but in a lighter form, a form that encompassed their humanity, personalities, tribulations and triumphs, as well as honouring the deep spiritual experiences that had been theirs. A book that was more like a conversation than a lecture. And I knew that the books I would recommend in answer, though excellent, were not quite what they were asking for. So I continued to turn over in my mind the hope that, somehow, someday, I might write a more widely readable, more widely relatable book about the mystics.

And then Covid came along and I had time to turn over that hope even more concertedly. And one night I awoke at 3am with the ‘conversational’ component of my wonderings pushing itself to the fore and I suddenly knew that I’d invite six of my favourite mystics to dinner for an evening of conversation about their lives, loves and lessons. I would let them speak for themselves, basing their words on their own writings but updating and creatively elaborating their interactions, and reimagining their personalities, to highlight their relevance to 21st century readers.

How did Francis of Assisi, Hildegard of Bingen, The Cloud of Unknowing author, Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe communicate with each other, and with Annie, their host, you might ask, especially considering that their birth dates range from 1098 to 1373 (and those dates are a long way from 2022), and their places of birth (and, therefore, native languages) vary considerably. Perhaps I’ll answer by offering some extracts from the book in subsequent posts. But, for now, I’m thinking of Chaucer and his point that “the craft [is] so long to lerne”. Yes, The Mystics Who Came to Dinner took me less than six months to write, but it was really over 20 years in the reading, learning and planning stage, percolating in my imagination without me consciously realising it. I could not have written that book twenty years ago. Like bread, I had to mix and knead the idea, give it time to rise and bake before taking it from the oven to share with others.

Perhaps many of you are cooking the books, too, at this moment, even if you don’t know it.  

New York: Orbis Books, 2022

Covid, Forks in the Road (and other Cutlery)

We have been confined to our homes (or at least, very limited in our excursions) for so many months now that the idea of eating anywhere else but at home seems strange. I’ve come to see my fridge, and pantry, and saucepans and plates and even cutlery in a whole new light.

Western table cutlery settings today always feature a knife, fork and spoon, each one with its particular use. Spoons for the soups, sauces; knives for cutting food into manageable pieces; forks for moving the food from plate to mouth. But this organised (and well-mannered) approach is relatively new – at least in terms of human civilisation.

Knives were probably the first of the ‘cutlery set’ to appear. Evidence dates them right back to pre-historic times when sharpened flints, volcanic glass and bones were among the earliest cutting implements in use. With the advent of the Bronze and Iron Ages, knife blades became more sophisticated and, though still used primarily for hunting and as weapons, the knife’s utility was hard to ignore, and smaller versions of it became handy for assisting in eating and cutting in general.

Spoons have been around since the Stone Age too, with shaped stones, shells and hollowed-out animal horns being some of the discoveries that testify to their use.

Forks were known in Greek and Roman times but virtually disappeared from use during the Christian Middle Ages. Some historians have suggested that the fork’s shape was too reminiscent of the devil’s pitchfork but it is more likely that the knife’s versatility – it could be used for spearing food and bringing it to the mouth as well as cutting it – overrode the need to invest too much time and craftsmanship into the fork. And hands were, well, just as ‘handy’ for picking up food (and always ‘on hand’). It seems, however, that the fork did reappear in Western Europe in the 16th century when courtly society deemed that eating was more politely accomplished by digging forks rather than hands into food.

In the Middle Ages all travellers carried their own knife and spoon for eating when staying at an inn on the journey as the innkeeper did not provide guests with cutlery because such useful, well-crafted, and portable items were considered too ‘tempting’ and likely to be stolen by passing strangers: a different take on the “dish ran away with the spoon” in the Hey Diddle Diddle nursery rhyme (which, by the way, seems to date back in some form to medieval times).

One of my favourite ‘literary spoons’ is the runcible spoon in the final part of Edward Lear’s wonderful poem The Owl and the Pussycat:

They dined on mince and slices of quince

Which they ate with a runcible spoon

And hand in hand by the edge of the sand

They danced by the light of the moon, the moon

They danced by the light of the moon.

‘Runcible’ is today said to describe a sort of combination fork, spoon and knife; a fork with a curved section like a spoon, and with three broad prongs, one of which has a sharpened outer edge for cutting. In Australia we might call such an implement a ‘splayd’ or a ‘spork’. Actually, though, Edward Lear made up the word (along with others of his invention) as a whimsical addition to his poem. And cutlery to match the whimsy followed.

Enjoy your dinner!

The Passing Years, and How to Count Them

My posts are usually about ‘the past’ and in this lovely reflection from the “Empty Nest, Full Life” blog site (one of my favourites), there are some thoughts about how we hold and honour the past experiences in our own lives. I thought you might appreciate it as much as I did so I’m reblogging it, with thanks to the author ‘Momshieb’.

Empty Nest, Full Life

My family is enormously lucky because we live in a place that is green, and beautiful. Our house is surrounded by trees.

We’ve been in this house for 30 years. That seems so hard to believe. My husband Paul and I raised our three kids here. We’ve had two cats and five dogs at different times in this house.

Parts of the yard have been, at various times over the years, a baseball diamond, a hockey rink, a vegetable garden, a flower bed, a strawberry patch and a place to put the swings.

Now the kids are all grown up and on their own, and it’s time for us to start looking forward. In another ten or so years, we plan to sell this house and move someplace with less upkeep. It’s time.

With that thought in mind, we’re hiring someone to help clean up this huge yard and make…

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Raising Specks to the Spectacular

Our Milky Way, spiral-arm, galaxy

O the dignity of that small speck of human dust
Taken by the jewel of heavenly excellence
To raise us from the clay of earth to heaven’s heights
Gertrude the Great (1256-1302)

As of today, 17th June 2020, the United Nations Worldometer estimates the world’s population as 7.8 billion and growing at the rate of about 3 people per second. In the (population) scheme of things, a human individual is very insignificant indeed. And if that isn’t sobering enough, consider the fact that our Sun is only one of billions of stars in billions of galaxies in the universe. The total number of stars is calculated to be greater than all the grains of sand on Earth. Our Milky Way galaxy alone has about 400 billion stars. In effect, we’re a speck on a speck (Earth) in a spectacularly vast universe.

Julian of Norwich, the great 14th century English mystic was given a view of Earth’s smallness and insignificance in one of her ‘Revelations of Divine Love’. She explains that she was shown “a little thing, the size of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand”. As she looked at it, she wondered what it could be and she was answered that “It is all that is made”. Julian admits that she was amazed that all of creation was so inconsequential and she was anxious about having the responsibility of holding it in her hand because she thought that “it might suddenly have fallen into nothingness because it was so little”. Julian’s anxiety was soothed when she was told that creation endures, and will continue to endure, because the Divinity loves it. It is a simple statement and yet it’s possibly the only answer that makes any sense: love enables us to endure.

Gertrude the Great (1256-1302) was a nun in the great Benedictine abbey of Helfta in Saxony. There she was one of a group of medieval women who later came to be known as ‘the scholars of Helfta’ because of their extraordinary writings and mystical insights. In one of her poems (see excerpt above) Gertrude brought together two paradoxical aspects of our human existence: our insignificance in the grand scheme of things, and the dignity that is each and every person’s right, regardless of colour, creed, gender, or economic standing.

In the face and aftermath of Covid-19 and the social upheavals being played out as a result of inequality, 14th century Julian and 13th century Gertrude might just be onto something for 21st century earthlings.

Every Wind (with recording)

Not medieval, just something beautiful from poet Robert Okaji that I thought some of you might like.

O at the Edges


Every Wind

Every wind loses itself,
no matter where

it starts. I want
a little piece of you.

No.

I want your atmosphere
bundled in a small rice paper packet
and labeled with strings of new rain
and stepping stones.

I want
the grace of silence
blowing in through the cracked
window, disturbing only
the shadows.

Everywhere I go, bits of me linger,
searching for you.

Grief ages one thread at a time,

lurking like an odor
among the lost
things,

or your breath,
still out there,

drifting.

* * *

Music: “Gymnopedie No. 1” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

“Every Wind” first appeared in The Lake in July 2016, and is included in my chapbook, From Every Moment a Second, available for order via Amazon.com and Finishing Line Press.

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Winter Laid Bare

Our winter garden is sombre and bare right now.  Looking at it, I find it hard to imagine the shock of vibrant blooms that will burst forth in spring, and then the lush green foliage that will completely cover the bareness in summer. The renowned early 20th century writer and researcher into mysticism and mystics, Evelyn Underhill, defines mysticism –  in its simplest terms – as “seeing things differently” and I often remember that little definition when I look at the winter garden. Beneath its nakedness the garden is full of life, full of potential, that will flower when the conditions are right.  Great thinkers throughout history have dared to see things differently. Sometimes, they have had to wait a long time to be vindicated. Galileo (1564-1642) is a good example. He dared to see the medieval cosmos in a very different way, going so far as asserting that, contrary to the firmly held view of the time, the Earth revolved around the Sun and not vice versa. Persecuted by the Inquisition for his views, he was finally exonerated in 1992 when Pope John Paul II officially declared that Galileo had been correct all along.

The medieval view of cosmology basically rested on the theories of Ptolemy and Aristotle.  In this view the Earth was at the centre and was surrounded by the seven progressively larger concentric spheres of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. (And, by the way, this is where we get our expression, ‘in 7th heaven’). Beyond the planetary spheres were, firstly, the stellatum – the area of fixed stars – and then the primum mobile which was the boundary of the physical universe. In the medieval, Christianised version of cosmology, beyond this outermost sphere (and thus, literally outside the universe) was the Empyrean or Heaven, the place of God.

Of course, we are very unlikely to have the visionary and intellectual insights of Galileo but we can at least try to be more open in our approach to life. We can strive to ‘see things differently’ by, in particular, accepting others’ points of view; we can try to step outside our comfort zones now and then; we can embrace some new ideas. We can choose to grow rather than to stagnate and, then, to let our potential flower when the time is right. And, with any luck, we won’t have to wait as long as Galileo to harvest the fruits of our ‘new view’.

Facing the Earth

Humility – take a bow. The words ‘humility’ and ‘humble’ both come from the Latin, ‘humilis’ meaning ‘on the ground’. In this lovely post about gardening, and the way that it calls our attention to the earth, the author, Audrey Driscoll, captures something of the way in which humility and reverence are bound together. And, as gardening is just as vital now as it has always been, I thought you would enjoy Audrey’s post.

Audrey Driscoll's Blog

Looking down is looked down upon, isn’t it? Happy, healthy people are supposed to stand tall and look toward the horizon. “Looking up” is a way of saying things are improving. A “downer” is a disappointment.

But gardeners, even the most optimistic ones, are almost always looking down.

If I ever become incapable of bending over, my gardening days will be over. Except in specially designed gardens for the disabled, it’s impossible to garden in an upright position or while seated.

Sometimes I’m appalled by how much of my time in the garden is spent in a bent-over position. I’ve even wondered if it’s harmful. (I suspect it makes face wrinkles worse. Gravity, you know.) On the other hand, I don’t have any back problems. Maybe I’ve naturally used the correct technique for bending over, called the “hip-hinge.”

Woman wearing hat working in plant nursery in a bent over position
Bending from the hips makes it possible to hold this position while…

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Isolation, Medieval Style

As we begin to emerge from the isolation that has been imposed in response to Covid-19, it might be timely to reflect on the fact that the world has faced immense social disruption due to pestilence many times in its history. And whilst now we have scientific knowledge and medical treatments that can help us minimise the terrible effects of such a contagion, the planet’s earlier populations were left largely to battle on in the darkness of ignorance. There are, however, similarities in the broad features of pandemics over the centuries. Take, for example, the plague (that we know as the ‘Black Death’) which swept across the western world in the mid-fourteenth century.

The ‘Black Death’ is believed to have started in China in 1347 and to have swept rapidly west to engulf Europe (and Britain) in 1348-1349, and wiping out between 30% and 50% of the population in its wake. The great medieval author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) was a resident of Florence when that city was overtaken by plague and he wrote of the experience in his classic work, ‘The Decameron’. First, in a description that resonates with our own efforts to curtail the spread of Covid-19 Boccaccio explains that “despite all that human wisdom and forethought could devise to avert it, as the cleansing of the city from many impurities by officials appointed for the purpose, the refusal of entrance to all sick folk, and the adoption of many precautions for the preservation of health … the doleful effects of the pestilence began to be horribly apparent.”

He goes on to describe the contagious nature of the disease, observing that “… it was not merely propagated from man to man but … it was frequently observed that things which had belonged to one sick or dead of the disease, if touched by some other living creature, not of the human species …. [suffered] almost instantaneous death.” Florence was so overwhelmed by the number of deaths, Boccaccio says, that the normal reverent rituals associated with death and the traditional burial customs were discarded completely and, sadly, bodies piled up in the streets as there was few (or none) to remove them. And whilst many Florentine residents took the view that they might as well “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die” others choose isolation, removing themselves from the city if they were able to do so. This, of course, was Boccaccio’s choice and his great work “The Decameron” is actually the story of ten Florentines who fled the town and decided to share their own sad, funny and bawdy stories as a way of passing the time in their group seclusion.

Boccaccio also shares some grim details of the symptoms of the Plague but I’ll leave those for you to follow-up if you’re so inclined. Today, however, we know that the medieval plague presented in two interrelated forms:

  1. Bubonic – swellings (buboes) beginning on neck, armpits, groin. Infected fleas attached to rats spread this form. Death usually within a week
  2. Pneumonic – contracted by breathing exhaled air of someone with primary plague. Death within 1-2 days

Boccaccio offers no ideas on the treatment of the contagion, (beyond describing how many people walked about “carrying in their hands flowers or fragrant herbs or divers sorts of spices, which they frequently raised to their noses” but he regarded this more as a way of disguising the “stench of the dead and dying” rather than as any type of infection preventative. Other writers of the time, however, offered some (very dubious) suggestions on treating the plague, and here are a few examples:

  • The swellings associated with the Black Death should be cut open to allow the disease to leave the body. A mixture of tree resin, roots of white lilies and dried human excrement should be applied to the places where the body has been cut open.
  • Roast the shells of newly laid eggs. Ground the roasted shells into a powder. Chop up the leaves and petals of marigold flowers. Put the egg shells and marigolds into a pot of good ale. Add treacle and warm over a fire. The patient should drink this every morning and night.
  • Place a hen next to the swelling to draw out the pestilence from the body. To aid recovery, the patient should drink a glass of his own urine twice a day.

                                           All I can say is: DO NOT TRY THESE AT HOME

WeAreTheWorldBlogfest: A Good News Bushfire Story

My overseas readers may not know that the east coast of Australia has been experiencing unprecedented bush fires from the beginning of Spring. This story about the resilience of our koalas (and other fauna) is a positive one in the midst of so many negatives and I thank Kate (lighttravellerkate.blog for sharing this story so that, in turn, I can share it with you

lightravellerkate

Over 50 bushfires have been burning for the past three weeks along thecoast from Sydney tothe north of Noosa in Queensland.The news has been consistently stark and depressing to read and watch. People have lost their lives, homes, livelihoods. The devestation to the wildlife population is extreme and especially impacting the Koala habitat around Port Macquqrie.

So here’s a good news story about the resilience of our fauna and the wonderful humans of the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital who care for them

Koala and joey rescued from the Queensland bushfires to be released into the wild

Updated

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The Colour Purple

November jacarandas in our garden

November in Sydney is all about the colour purple. Overhead, the jacarandas are in full bloom and, when the wind gusts through, many of those blooms are blown to the ground to form a soft purple carpet underfoot.

In the ancient and early medieval world, the dye known as “royal purple” was prepared from the secretions of the predatory Murex snail. The snail is still found in the shallow, coastal waters of the Mediterranean and its harvesting for the dyers’ “palate” has been documented to at least as far back as the Phoenicians. However, as between 10,000 and 12,000 murex were needed to produce one gram of purple dye, it was an expensive process and the resulting product was very highly prized. Thus purple became limited in its use to the preparation of cloth for the garments of the wealthiest in society. And it was a very short step from there to purple’s association with royalty. By the Middle Ages the “royal purple” was being replaced by (dark) blue as the royal colour of choice because of the difficulties in securing regular supplies of the murex purple.

With all of this in mind, I quite like the irony of seeing common garden snails inching their way across my backyard’s purple jacaranda carpet: this time, the snails are “on” the colour purple, not “in” it.

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