heat in the kitchen

November 16th, 2010 - 17 Comments

Of course you want the turkey to be done. You’d like the mashed potatoes to keep warm, the stuffing to stay moist and the gravy to taste homemade. You’re hoping the pies turn out, the guests turn up and the TV gets turned off. You’ll be grateful to have it over with, but can you take a week of hectic cooking and turn it into a mindfulness practice?

The sages did, and still do.

I have a new photo-post up at the Huffington Post this week, “7 Ways to Make Thanksgiving Mindful,” and it’s worth your while to notice. Follow these instructions step-by-step and see what comes of it:

1. Click on the link to read the post on Huffington.
2. Once you’re there, click on the blue thumb to “like” it.
3. Click on “Facebook Share” to share it on FB.
4. Click on the red “Retweet” to share it on Twitter.
5. If you don’t mind a few ruffled feathers, join the cackle of Huff Post commenters by adding your own.
6. Come back here and leave a comment on this post telling me anything and everything you’ve done. For each step taken you earn a point in my prize drawing.

You must know I would never tell you what to eat or how to make it. I’m simply illuminating the power of your own evenminded attention.

For each step you take, you’ll earn a point toward a drawing for a fabulous gift: an autographed copy of the organic cookbook Food to Live By, an inspiring and passionate 400-page cooking cornucopia by Myra Goodman, the co-founder of Earthbound Farms. The winner will be drawn this Sunday.

Good luck and good appetite!

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what mom didn’t get

May 11th, 2010 - 13 Comments

When my sisters and I used to ask my mom what she wanted for Mother’s Day, her birthday or Christmas, she would say something like, “panty hose.” Or, she’d ask for stationery, stamps, measuring spoons or Tupperware lids. (Not needing the bowls, you see, but the lids that always came up missing.) These answers were ridiculous to us. We cracked jokes about them. We cracked jokes about her. We didn’t believe anyone could be so unimaginative, so uninspired by the opportunity to improve herself. She was only interested in the trifling, mundane things. We assumed that she just didn’t get the concept of getting, and that she lacked a grand vision for her life that could only be realized by seizing every opportunity to procure shiny, new things.

Mothers can be a mystery to us in so many ways. It took me more than 40 years to comprehend a fraction of my mother’s life. But I’ve been coming around on this front. My mother wasn’t what I thought she was. She never stopped improving things or keeping things going. She took every opportunity to make things better. She knew all along what I’ve only learned lately. Once you put yourself into the effort – your whole heart, your undying love – there’s really nothing else you need.

When Mother’s Day comes around, and even more on every day after, I remember the things my mother asked me for most often. And then I do them. In doing these five little things, I’m giving my mother her heart’s desire: I’m taking good care of myself, so she can finally sit back and rest easy. read more

5 tips for meaning in cleaning

March 16th, 2010 - 17 Comments

When Amy Maclin, executive editor of Body + Soul magazine, contacted me a month or so ago, she was stuck in a chore she couldn’t see herself finishing. Assigned to write a story about mindful housework, she hadn’t yet found that spiritual glow. No matter what anyone told her, she wasn’t inspired by the soap scum in her sink. I told her the magic meaning was in her own hands.

Her funny, wonderful article isn’t online, and so you’ll just have to buy the April issue when you go to the store for more Windex. In the meantime, here are my 5 Tips for Finding Meaning in Cleaning:

1. Make it meditative. Focus on the doing, not the getting done. The motion of simple, repetitive tasks can make you more attentive and calm – the back and forth of the vacuum cleaner or dust rag, the concentrated effort of spot cleaning, the methodical sorting of laundry – chores are meditative, as long as you’re not thinking about how much you hate them. The key to mindfulness is not thinking something lofty, but thinking nothing at all, and it doesn’t take any thinking to clean the sink. Throw open the windows and doors! Spring cleaning is spring break for your brain.

2. Find what you’ve been missing. We spend most of our lives ignoring what’s in front of us and looking instead for something more. The life we already have doesn’t seem like it’s worth our time or effort. The life right now is the only life we have, and when we don’t take care of it, we reinforce our feelings of inadequacy. Seeing things clearly is the foundation of wisdom and the path to genuine fulfillment. Plus, you’ll find your car keys faster.

3. Enfold your life in dignity. Carry out the garbage and it carries over into every part of your life. A cluttered closet reflects the distraction and disorder between your ears. The state of your bed is the state of your head. The daily rituals of housecleaning enfold your life in dignity, because they are nothing other than the way you care for yourself. read more

Your mind on Tide

January 17th, 2010 - 5 Comments

My mother taught me many things, but she didn’t teach me much about homemaking. To learn how to keep house, I had to study under the tutelage of an eighth century Chinese enlightened master.

I’m so pleased to see my new article “Do Dishes, Rake Leaves” in the March issue of Shambhala Sun magazine, and I’m especially pleased to see it under my full name. If you haven’t yet read it, put it on your list of things to do this weekend. If heaven forbid you don’t subscribe to the magazine, put that on your list, too.

And if you don’t have a list, here’s a handy one to start with.

My new practice robe

January 3rd, 2010 - 10 Comments

I hung up my priestly things and came home after a week’s retreat.
Inside the door, I said my hellos, reached into the closet and put on my practice robe.
I said, “This is no reflection on you, but this is what I must do.”
He said, “I know. So I did a little bit and then left the rest for you.”
I sorted the laundry to calm the eye.
Ran the vacuum to clear the mind.
Mopped the kitchen free of stubborn stickiness.
Freshened the fish tank. Changed the towels. Emptied the trash.
Tomorrow I think I’ll clean out the rain gutters.
I know my place.
I know the way.
I am home and happy.
Having the good life is simple when you practice the one you have.

I want to run away from these people

August 16th, 2009 - 11 Comments

Sometimes.
Just so you know.

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The world needs a homemaker

August 4th, 2009 - 28 Comments

Forgive the double posting from The Laundry Line, but this is so very important to see everywhere we look:

Last week I attended a retreat and came home infused with quiet calm and well-being. Then I glanced at the headlines in the newspaper and was shocked anew at the unimaginable depth of pain in this world. The scope of suffering is inconceivable. How can we respond in the face of this? Where do we begin to do good? I will tell you the only way I know to begin.

Empty the full hampers, sort and wash the laundry without resentment or commentary.

Sweep the floor of dust, mud and crumbs at your feet.

Don’t ask who made the mess.

At the grocery store, give your place in line to the person behind you.

Ask the checker how her day is going, and mean it.

On the way out, give your pocket money to the solicitor at the card table no matter what the cause.

Buy a cup of lemonade from the kids on the sidewalk stand. Tell them to keep the change.

Roll down your car window when you see the homeless man on the corner with the sign. Give him money. Have no concern over what he will do with it.

Smile at him. It will be the first smile he has seen in a very long time.

Write a thank you letter. Yes, a letter. If you do not have a reason to write one, do it without a reason.

Do not fight with your partner, your roommate, your spouse, or your children. If that seems impossible, just do not engage in the next fight, and don’t worry about the one that comes after. It might not come.

Do not try to convince anyone else of your point of view. That’s why they call it “point” of view. The point is just you.

If you feel yourself tensing in frustration, no matter what the circumstance, say, “I’m sorry.”

Do not indulge in despair over the futility of your impact or question the outcome.

Make yourself at home and take care of it as your own. It’s the only one there is.

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Breakfast homily

July 7th, 2009 - 9 Comments

We do-gooders think quite a bit about compassion. We want to have it, feel it and share it. There is so very much we think we need to do to make the world a better place. But compassion doesn’t need doing. It exists already in the harmony of things just the way they are. Discord comes from our doing; compassion comes from undoing. It greets us when we undo our boundaries and erase the lines we said we’d never cross. Compassion waits in the space between us, the space that only seems to separate us; a gapless gap we close by reaching an arm’s length in front of us to wipe a tear or wash a bowl.

We can only love the world we wake up to.

Good morning.

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Daily bread

May 24th, 2009 - 9 Comments

My grandmother set her bread to rise each day before the sun yet dared to dawn, wresting two loaves into the oven before a shadow had stirred. She saved a handful of the dough to roll into the morning’s coffee cake and topped it high with buttery struesel. By the time I tramped into her ancient kitchen on summer mornings, the air bloomed with the sweetly sour greeting of yeast. It was breakfast time, and no one needed to ask.

Her house is now flattened, ground into the dust of the earth’s eternal crust. She is gone and the time has passed. But what she fed still ferments on my tongue, and I recognize my place and lineage.

I made pancakes today.

karen maezen miller

making peace with the laundry, the kitchen, and the yard

the laundry

the kitchen

the yard

Posts Tagged ‘Kitchen Wisdom’