Sorry I have been incommunicado for a while. Life does have a way of messing with you and you just have to learn to roll with the punches sometimes.

Virginia Woolf famously named a book "A Room of One's Own" and extolled the need for privacy. And of course Jesus talked about entering your "private room" in ordered to pray. Well, for the first time in my life I do have a room of my own...or rather three rooms. At the age of 52 I'm living on my own for the first time. I had roommates in college...then my relationship with my first partner for 22 years...then roommates again in Brooklyn. I think it is long past time to try living by myself.

This is an exercise in faith for me. The rent is reasonable for a one bedroom in NYC but it is still a stretch for me. I will need to keep a very strict budget. I am hoping the discipline I've developed in my prayer life and diabetes life will help me to live within my means and not need to rely on family to make my bills. I have hope that this can happen with some thought and the help of an app on my phone.

This morning I am grateful for quiet, sunshine, hot coffee and cheap and plentiful berries (three pints of blueberries for 5 bucks at the local grocery...3 quarts of strawberries for the same price.)

Last nights dinner was a chicken cassoullet...will post the recipe tonight. It was delicious and very diabetes friendly.

A Matter of Fish

I found it a little hard this year to think about "giving up" in the food department when Lent rolled around this year. It's been my habit for a long while now to try to simplify my life during Lent. I give up most all television, including the news, usually take on some extra discipline like Daily Office or Rosary or some such thing in addition to my Centering Prayer practice. And I try a pretty serious abstinence fast...I give up meat or some such thing. Often I'm pretty purely vegetarian during the season, as "fish on Friday" seems a bit of a cheat to me.

But with all that I've had to modify this year I was a little reluctant to go extreme vegetarian this year. I'm still not sure of the ins and outs of my blood sugar profile; whether the staples of vegetarian protein might be too starchy for my system. And my partner, who's been trying to eat healthy with me, is not to keen on the totally meatless diet. So this year we decided that pescatarianism (or what my friend Lorienne Schwenk calls vegaquarianism) might be the way to go. I've never been much of a home cook for seafood so it's been a grand experiment. While I have not yet ventured into shellfish, I have found cooking fin fish delightful and much easier than I thought. And it's got me thinking about the matter of fish in a biblical sense.

Fish is extremely prevalent in New Testament biblical texts. (It may be more prevalent than I think in the OT but no examples are readily jumping to mind.) There is of course the "loaves and fishes" miracles which appear in all four gospels and are particularly stressed in John. Jesus repeatedly tells his adversaries and even his disciples that if they understood the miracle correctly, so much more would be clear to them. The major disciples where themselves fishermen and fish miracles figure in the call stories of some of them. Then of course, Jesus cooks fish and even eats it for his disciples in one of the resurrection stories. And the icthus, the fish symbol, was the symbol adopted by early Christians during the Roman persecutions. Clearly there is something in the symbolism that is essential.

So I'm thinking about fish...cold, slimy, barely alive seeming and yet a fairly steady staple for people who live near water. Graceful in their habitat but floppy and awkward outside of it. Fish was a major source of protein for poorer people in Palestine, as it remains to this day. Not everyone could afford to kill a lamb, even at Passover, but fish was plentiful, cheap, and nutritious.

So this wonderful everyday quality I think has something to do with the symbolism of fish. Much like bread, which is even more commonly mentioned in the Gospels, fish is an ordinary food item which is life giving. Perhaps Christ is saying that like the fish, he is life giving and abundant. I'm not sure the total connection yet, but I think it's an interesting thing to meditate on.

So fish...yeah...it's delicious. And prepared correctly it's kind of a perfectly made GL meal. The plates above are my dinner from tonight...oven fried bass, oven fried sweet potatoes (much better alternative to white potatoes and more delicious) and curried scented veggies. I'm going to share the recipe in my usual fashion; i.e I approximate measurements and tend to eyeball rather than truly measure. I think it makes are more satisfying result because the food is better suited to my own palette. So here it goes.

Whole Wheat Flour (or any other fine flour such as spelt) enough to cover a plate, seasoned with salt and pepper

A bowl with two eggs, two tablespoons of flour, a table spoon of lowfat mayo (I use smart balance) and some cayenne to taste.

panko breadcrumbs (whole wheat if you can find em...or some other crunchy whole grain...cornmeal works well too) mixed with parsley.

Fish fillets such as cod, perch, tilapia, bass or even catfish

Dredge the fish in the flour mixture, coat it in the egg mixture and then pat it in the bread crumbs. Put it on a baking rack over a baking sheet. Put it in the oven at 425 until done...about 20 minutes...less if the fish is thinner than cod. Serve with sweet potato fries (sweet potatoes cut into wedges and tossed with olive oil, salt pepper and paprika...cinnamon too if you want. They can be baked along with the fish).

Fish recipe found in the American Diabetes Association Comfort Food Cookbook.

 

A Little About Me and This Blog

I have always been a great lover of food. And I've always been attracted to a contemplative lifestyle. I often had an idea that the two should go together...usually because I am a bit of a medievalist at heart and part of my loves the idea of recreating feasts and banquets. But I think also the Benedictine ideals of simplicity and balance play into this. I have tons of recipe books from monasteries...western, eastern, even Zen monasteries. Something about the simplicity of the monastic diet, along with its natural ingredients and proto-sustainability has always appealed to me. As a child of the natural foods movement who has had a love hate relationship with such diets framing it in a monastic context seems to help.

I'm also a long time meditator. I've been pulled to meditation since I was a very young child. I remember my father, a UCC minister, doing a confirmation class series on meditation styles from the world's religions. Most of my classmates squirmed during the Zen section, but I was hooked. In fact the two things that stuck with me during that class were Zen meditation and a proto-Lectio Divina using the Psalms. As I got older this interest in the spiritual developed. I flirted with Zen in college, agnosticism in my twenties (who didn't), New Age ideas, Tibetan Buddhism...and a serious time of study in an esoteric School called the Fourth Way as taught by Armenian spiritual master G. I. Gurdjieff. All of these, especially the Fourth Way, have made a great impact on my spirit. But I found I was longing for a grounding in my home tradition. I had read the Dalai Lama say that if you were not too damaged by the spiritual tradition of your birth, that you should return to it because it is most deeply rooted in your soul. And all of the traditions I'd tried were missing something for me. Perhaps it was this deep rootedness.

Around that time I discovered the method of Centering Prayer, a modern repackaging of Western Monastic spirituality and meditation developed by several Trappist monks in the 1970s. While the methodology was modern, the experience to me was timeless. Developed from several chapters in the medieval Cloud of Unknowing, the method allows me to reach a state of deep, wordless prayer which often approaches contemplation if God wills it. This movement is ecumenical but has been particularly embraced by the Catholic Church (on the parish level...the hierarchy is still not sure what it thinks about it) and by the Episcopal Church. In fact, it was centering prayer that led me to the Episcopal Church, which I formally joined in 2001. Since that time I've made this church my spiritual home, grown in faith and trust in God, and even toyed with Benedictine spirituality. The riches of this tradition have kept me in a constant state of discovery.

In my earlier spiritual years I never really embraced holistic health or other such movements as they came up. I have been vegetarian at times, and certainly had bouts of natural foods mania, but this aspect of things never really hit me. Until now that is...

Two months ago I got the diagnosis that I was pretty sure was coming, but it was a shock nonetheless. There is type 2 diabetes in both sides of my family. Both my grandfathers had it, and my Dad is also diabetic. So it was no great surprise when I found out I had it. It still shook me though. I spent a weekend fuming like an angry child. Then I picked myself up off the floor and got serious. After all, I knew this was coming. So I read all I could about the disease...Diabetes for Dummies...the website of the ADA...Diabetic Self-Management Blog...whatever I could find. And I made immediate changes. I cut out sugar ruthlessly as well as refined carbs. I embraced vegetables, which I had previously avoided except as an auxiliary ingredient in a stew. I embraced whole grains, which was less hard as I have always preferred them anyway. Fruit became my dessert...I made friends with stevia...started trying to be more active, at least walking more to work and trying to ask for less help in physical tasks, pushing myself to do more.

And most of all I've decided to make diabetes a spiritual as well as physical challenge. I've always thought of myself as an undisciplined person...and I have been when it comes to food. But my life long devotion to mediation, as well as my dedication to music (I'm a musician as you can see in my bio) prove that I have it in me to be disciplined when I want. too. And now I want too...and need to. This disease is no laughing matter or something to be brushed off. I want to preserve my eyesight and my fingers and feet. I don't want to be toothless or debilitated by heart disease. So this is no longer a matter of choice. It is a lifestyle that God has thrust on me. My only choice is to embrace it, or face the consequences, which are pretty dire.

The good news is that it isn't the end of the world. I'm eating as well as ever. Most of my meals have been really delicious and much more nutritious than before. I get up from the table satisfied, not bloated. And I have more energy than I've had in years. The time factor is a challenge...I'm still not confident enough to eat out...so I make almost everything myself. But I have figured out the best days to cook and the best days for leftovers. And cooking and cleaning the kitchen are more an more an extension of my meditation. Put on the Bach Cello Suites and really anything becomes more contemplative.

So I've started this blog as a way of documenting this new phase in my life. I will talk about physical and spiritual challenges I've faced...share recipes...share some of the joys of this new life. I hope to be a forum for discussion to anyone who wants to marry their health and their spirituality together, regardless of their path. I would welcome hearing from others, especially diabetics, but anyone trying for a more healthy lifestyle is welcome. And though my own path is specifically Christian, I welcome seekers of all faiths or none...as long as a basic respect is maintained. I'm not interested in this blog in either theological or political debate. There are many other places on the web for such things and I frequent them myself. It's just not the purpose here.

So if you find this interesting I invite you to come along on the journey...make sure to take Bread for the Journey...and make it whole grain!