Cooking, Cleaning, and Getting Religion

Last night I embarked on a culinary adventure.

It was all very epic, chopping up watermelon and Valbreso French sheep feta, then rolling leaves of fresh basil together like an illegal drug and chopping them up into herbal confetti. Then mashing up overripe bananas with Palestinian olive oil and cutting in bittersweet chocolate and creamy almond meal, a laborious process all for the love of "Wholesome Breakfast Bars" (of course a Parisian woman invented this recipe), which cleverly combine the very familiar scent of dark chocolate with the rather mysterious aroma of olive oil. THEN simmering blueberries and lime juice on the stove for a berry compote for to accompany the angel food cake.

I did not have a nervous breakdown. But I did not enjoy myself very much.

First of all, I don't own one mixing bowl. So all the mixing was executed in a frying pan.

A frying pan.

Second, my kitchen pipe is clogged.

That made things fun. Not.

Third, my Swiffer Wet-Jet needs batteries, which explains why my floor is still a mess of banana strands and bits of lime-soaked feta.

Sometimes drinking three glasses of wine before you do the dishes is a really fantastic idea.

I escaped my kitchen headed over to the lake after the blueberries had calmed down into thick sweet sauce and I could leave them on the countertop to share their purple juices with one another in privacy.

I walked along the shallow part of the water which was so refreshingly crisp in contrast to the air heavy with heat. The water, to my added delight, looked all deep and black—exotic in its mystery--under the sky now devoid of any remainders of evening sun.

And there was this great moon--one of those really good moons that looked like a giant orange heirloom tomato creeping up over the horizon. Kristina swears that when you see the horizon you are actually seeing a thin strip of Michigan coast, so maybe it was creeping up over Michigan, in which case I hope that the moon was as striking for those cordial Michiganders as it was for us Chicagoans because I would not want them to miss out.

There were kids playing catch with a glow-in-the-dark ball and a group of people setting off fireworks--not just dinky lame firecrackers but WORKS, shooting up in the sky and swirling around like little dragons dancing in celebration.

I have yet to see a really beautiful painting of the beach, and I think it's because being at the beach is one of those experiences so entirely and wholly sensual that a painting can capture only one dimension of it--the visual--which does not begin to even touch what the beach is about. The beach is about the end of a wave floating up to the top of the slushiest sand and the strange feel of this deep crazy texture all around your feet so unlike anything we normally experience in day-to-day sidewalk gallivanting, and the sound of water which is something so sacred and calming that you can buy recordings of it on iTunes marketed to help you sleep. I'm serious, you can.

Were you to see a painting of the beach, it would probably be in a doctor's office waiting room--one of those really depressing pastel prints with the seagulls and offensively fluffy clouds.

One time my grandpa bought this very unattractive painting of a Russian church covered in snow that he insisted on hanging in the den where he did nothing but watch "60 Minutes" every night. The painting was objectively horrible and had a strange mauve veneer to it, but upon hearing the story of why he chose to schlep this unfortunate piece all the way home from Eastern Europe I developed greater respect for his artistic proclivities which I had previously called into serious question. I believe he was in Moscow when he was walking along one chilly morning, and was stunned to spot a very elegant church, its dome covered in snow. But in the bright early light, the snow looked like a million tiny sparkling diamonds, and apparently it was an overwhelming image full of all sorts of spectacular hues of shine, and he just had to buy this crappy painting because it reminded him of this sight that moved him so.

I fancy the image of my grandfather so desperate to hold onto whatever feeling was conjured in response to this Moscow Fantasy that he aggressively stuffed his last Ruble in the artist's face and snatched the painting before a grey-uniform-clad KGB member, also ravished by the sight of sun-lit snow, could fist-fight him for it.

It probably didn’t actually happen that way.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the earthiness, the physicality of religion. Unlike ethereal, breathy spirituality, religion is tangible, tough, thirsty, hungry, sweaty, fat, delicious, sensual, sexual, hearty, so human. Religion, with all its heavy creeds, liturgy, fasting, feasting, oil and wine, stone pillars and pointed archways and ancient crumbling manuscripts written in languages that look like elegant scribbles on paper—religion is for humans and their bodies.

I sometimes think of this when I am engaging in an ordinary physical activity, such as eating, which people have done for bazillions of years and will continue to do until 2012 when we all die.

I love that the crux of our Christian Mass is a shared meal.

In Christianity, it is not ideas that arouse us into praise; it is not detachment that frees us. Rather, it is all very physical, and there is no apologizing for our attachments: it is the stirring of our insides over the physical beauty of the night beach that compel our hearts to leap into rhythms of alleluias; it is the desperate attachment to a pretty morning that make us spend large amounts of foreign money on bad paintings.

My special guest star today is Dostoevsky. Take it away, Fyodor:

Alyosha, my boy, so I want to live and go on living even if it's contrary to the rules of logic, even if I do not believe in the divine order of things. The sticky young leaves emerging from their buds in the spring are dear to my heart, so is the blue sky, and so are some human beings, even though I often don't know why I like them. I'll get drunk on my own emotion. I love these sticky little leaves and the blue sky. That's what, you don't love those things with reason, with logic. You love them with your innards, with your belly.

The irony of this passage from Ivan Karamazov is that the speaker here is a staunch atheist, but in a few words he has lovingly articulated exactly what the Christian life is meant to be.

Joe recently told me about this play in which a woman recites a monologue about her love for a painting she sees in a museum. She was so filled with wonder over this painting with all its delightful colors and textures that she had to return—this time armed with a tube of bright red lipstick. She applied it to her lips, charged over to the painting, and kissed it—leaving her mark of adoration and devotion right on the canvas.

This is something I learned way back in Medieval Philosophy during my Religious Crisis '05, and I was freaking out that I didn't think I had ever been moved by God. I didn't believe, in my entire 18 years of being an Evangelical Christian that I'd had those experiences friends talked about--the ones where God speaks to them, or they can feel God during worship. I had never felt compelled to raise my hands in praise or close my eyes, and God sure as hell had never come to me in a dream.

"What's wrong with me?" I asked Dr. Snell in that terrifying office with all its dark wood, icons, books which weigh more than small children. "I don't think I've ever felt God."

And then Dr. Snell, who always sort of looks like Cary Grant in my memory of him, replied with his characteristic assertiveness, "Today is beautiful. It's our first very spring-ish day this year in Chicago, and I'll bet that you felt pretty good today as I walked to my office. Did you delight in the warmth of the air, or the sound of the North Branch, or the contagious smiles that can't be stopped on a day like today?"

"Uh, yup."

"Then you've felt God. I doubt many people have been moved by God's voice. But are you moved by trees, people, music, art? This is all God."

"Oh, well, alrighty then. All done. Oh and also can you tell me if I should be Catholic, Orthodox, or Anglican?"

And that's a story for another day.

Moshe Cordovero was a scholar of Juadaism's Kabbalah, but don't worry, he came along a few centuries before Madonna. He wrote: The essence of divinity is found in every single thing—nothing but It exists. Do not say, ‘This is a stone and not God.’ God forbid! Rather, all existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity.

Lovely, no?

I think we have all had some sort of crazy impulse to kiss something inanimate because we were so moved by it (for me, Kopi's carrot cake), or possess a certain part of a memory--a photograph, a painting--because it was so striking we felt a desperate need to always have its reminder at hand, or to cut up basil into slivers for the sake of a beautiful salad, which, by the way, did not turn out to be very beautiful.

And I guess that's why we have these ancient prayers which sound like porn but are actually very normal responses to very normal, human, physical experiences:
Beloved of my soul, compassionate parent, draw Your servant to Your will. Let your servant run like a gazelle to bow down before Your splendor. Let Your affection be sweeter than honeycomb or any other taste. Splendorous one, most beautiful radiance of the world, my soul is sick with love for you.

I like to believe that the author of this prayer had just eaten Ben & Jerry's Half Baked for the first time.

Hokay, back to my cleaning. All existence may be God, but I'm telling you right now: there is NO Jesus in my dirty dishes.