Call and Response

Always the world is calling to us with beauty, with love. Are you there? it asks. Are you alive? Do we take time to see, hear, taste, touch, smell what the world offers? If we are at least a little sentient and awake, how do we respond? We need to share our stories: Yes, I'm here. Yes, I'm alive.

My body is still resonant from a recent kirtan led by Jai Uttal and friends. We friends and strangers gather to sing and chant Hindu devotional songs. The meaning of all the songs is the same: I love Creation, Creation loves me; YAY Universe; thanks to the Gods/Goddesses. And because it is call and response, you just listen and receive this passionate music and respond with the purity of your heart. The room was alive with all kinds of voices. From afar the meditation hall must have pulsed like a giant heart.

Each round builds in energy, and the group entrains. The full-bodied ecstatic waves of energy are so wonderful to feel as air and sound travel throughout my cells. One cannot sit still. We are literally moved. The silence is full and delicious during meditation between songs. And the frogs outside harmonize with us throughout.

Yes, I'm here. Yes, I'm alive. Yes, I'm grateful. Yes, it's wonderful to be together. Out loud and in silence. Yes, this is my body. Yes, this is us.

Q is for Quality, not Quantity

I splurge in little ways to stay open and abundant. By choosing quality over quantity and taking time to savor, I give myself a greater experience of being alive and connected and present. Sometimes just a taste can open up a world.

Each step of creating an organic heirloom tomato salad can be savored. Selecting the ingredients, I can feel sense the water, earth, and sun dense in the flesh. I can smell the vines, almost feel the pricklies. At the check out counter I chat amiably with the cashier with the faded Maori chin tattoo and am grateful we have money in the bank for this and that she’s here being of kind service. In my kitchen, preparing and arranging the food I lose track of time, move efficiently and with the forehead numbness of pure intuition. In the thrall of everyday creativity.

Eating, slowly taking in this delicious fruit, is a whole mindfulness meditation. I so enjoy the natural sweetness set off by just enough salt. The golden yellow, the green stripes, and the shadowy red fill my eyes. And I laugh with my man at how outrageously good something so simple can be. How lucky we are.

A little luxury is good. Once I paid $3 for one fragrant, softball size peach in Tokyo. Totally worth the memory of peach juice in August running down my face. It didn’t cure my homesickness, but gave me a much-needed connection to the earth there.

Experimenting is good. I brought home the exotic dragonfruit to try, because I’ve never been to the dry tropical places it grows. The magenta fleshed fruit is definitely something to be eaten in appreciative company. I had the pleasure of oohing and ahhing over it with friends who’d come for Sunday brunch.

Receiving is good. The time we went housepainting up the coast, the art teacher had brought one precious truffle from her home in the south of France. Shaved finely over an angel hair pasta appetizer, it was earthy sublime.

Opt for quality over quantity and connect - to the earth and her bounty, to deep nourishment, to each other, and to the seasons. All this lived experience expands out of the relatively brief clock time needed to prepare and eat a side dish together. And that's the key, time shared. I'm convinced it is our most precious resource, how we show up awake and alive to this moment with each other. Here I’m talking about food, but for you it could be something else. Where do you choose quality over quantity?