Stove as Sacrament

I’m sitting in the kitchen at 151. I’m not working. I’m not resting from working. I’m not planning the next thing I’ll be working on. I’m baking. I’m baking in the new stove.

In its belly is a baking dish holding a marinated mix of tofu and vegetables, to go with a bed of steamed asparagus Theresa is preparing at the Homestead. There is also a loaf of bread baking at 475°F at the Homestead, which made that oven too hot for the dish I’m baking, which became the excuse to bring it down here. But really, who needs an excuse to try out a new oven for the first time.

I set the stove in place on Friday so we could get a sense of things when Misha brought the cabinets. I wired the cable into the panel on Saturday afternoon and saw that everything was working. But now I was relishing having this cooking moment. Somehow it changes the kitchen space. I like the smell of something cooking in the kitchen. I even like the sound of it, for it is much quieter than our stove at the Homestead.

To step out a bit further, I’d say it feels like a sacramental moment—what was hidden is being revealed. The mystery at the heart of this creating process at 151, which I’ve been chipping away at for two and a half years, is being cooked to the surface along with the tofu dish. What has been an intention held through all these months of tearing out and building afresh in the kitchen is now becoming a visible sign of the kitchen giving back.

Theresa’s yoga space upstairs has been in use for over a year now. That beginning was certainly the frontloading of purpose and mission at 151. Things coming together now in the kitchen feels more like a heart opening, for we’ve always dreamed of this kitchen being about community. The kitchen and the porch outside are for gathering people together to share in food and conversation.

Much of the work in the yoga flow or on retreat is individual. Everyone is seeking to find their own way into their own body and spirit, into their own life. Thomas Merton said in his last talk to a gathering of monastics, “From now on, everyone stands on their own two feet.” We all are invited to take responsibility for our own life. No institution can do that for us. But it is also true, that everyone has to find their way in relationship. There is finally no life apart from relationship. Everyone has to recognize their place in the family of things, as Mary Oliver said in “Wild Geese.”

...Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
--Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese,” Dream Work, 1986

We are imagining this kitchen to be that family space, that place where we come again to face to face presence around the table, friends and strangers alike, finding our way into the heart of being family. Learning again to see the finely woven threads that hold us together, that form a tapestry offering the assurance that we are never really alone. Any experience of retreat and renewal will reveal a way back into our joined life.

This space, committed to all of that, is starting to warm up, is, in the moment, full of the smell of promise.

Love and Peace, Glenn