stay bewildered

Stay bewildered in God and only that.
Those of you who are scattered,
simplify your worrying lives.
There is one righteousness.
Water the fruit trees and
don't water the thorns.
Be generous to what nurtures the spirit and
God's luminous reason-light.
Don't honor what causes dysentery and
knotted-up tumors.
Don't feed both sides of yourself equally.
The spirit and the body carry
different loads and
require different attentions.

-- Rumi

The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi
Krista Tippet's interview with Fatemeh Keshavarz

Yesterday, I entered into one of my favorite Sabbath rhythms. When I'm not traveling or out of town on the weekends, I love listening or even re-listening to my favorite Speaking of Faith sessions. Sometimes I read along with the transcript of the program, sometimes I sit still, sometimes I cut vegetables, and sometimes I think about how much I miss my art supplies, namely mod-podge and paint. I like being able use my hands while I soak up good words. But I try to listen, and I try to reflect... as well as learn how to stay bewildered.

the subject of mushrooms

Last summer when I returned from Europa, Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life both challenged and inspired me to live more local with more sustainable eating practices no matter where I may call home. [Note to prospective readers: at points you have to push yourself to keep reading, since Kingsolver can and does spend pages just describing asparagus, but the journey with her family to deliberately grow/eat locally for one year is absolutely worth it.]

Now, after living in Europa for the past six months, I've returned multiple times to a Speaking of Faith interview where Krista Tippett talks with Barbara Kingsolver about this year of food life. Such good stuff. Here's the full podcast, if you want to listen in for yourself: The Ethics of Eating

Below, taken from the podcast, describes a bit of what I love about Europa -- just one of the things I hope to glean from my time spent here...

Barbara Kingsolver: It's so interesting to me when I'm in Europe and spend time with my Spanish friends or Italian friends, and they are working people too. They're women who are working in offices or, you know, they're editors or are laboratory scientists. And as soon as they're out of work, they head straight for the market. And they go down to see what fish has come in or what greens do they have now at this season. And even at high-powered business lunches with editors in France — this has happened to me so many times — these women in their fashionable shoes and business suits will stray from post-colonial literature over to the subject of mushrooms. And, you know, there's no shame in their enthusiasm for cooking. They feel that cooking for their families is a really important part of who they are. This, I think, is that, at the heart of the problem for a lot of us, anyway, I think I belong to the generation of women who grew up thinking that walking away from the kitchen was walking away from some kind of slavery, you know? It's how we think about it.

Krista Tippett: Yes, you're right. If we thought of cooking as this great pleasure that we could look forward to at the end of the working day, I suppose that would change it.

Barbara Kingsolver: If we look at it as family time, as entertainment, as a spiritually enlightening even, you know, if we look at it as a destination rather than a rock in the road, I think we would do more of it. And not every day, maybe not on Monday nights, OK, but definitely on Saturday.

ruby blue

my favorite dance from this week's show (way to go wade robson!)
also. brandon and janette are true performers.
they commit to their characters all.the.way.
and. i like this roisin murphy song too. it's a good one.
another and. i love wade and amanda robson.
one of the cutest couples ever. ever.

dust jacket project

i've been meaning to put a link on here to joel p west's dust jacket project for nearly a year now. so now i finally am.

a very inspiring project. believe me, you'll thank yourself for looking into it and for participating in it yourself. share your art and receive some of joel's music. all for free. a brilliant exchange of created goods. beside's the album being wonderful, the blog is updated daily with each new submission, so that is always a treat to look through. enjoy friends.

we want you!

Look how cool our Eurasia Communications team is... don't you want to join the fun? We need more volunteers and soon. Steve is done, so we actually need more males at this point. I mean I love Amy and Simone with all my heart, but we could do with some added testosterone in the office. You feel me on that one?

Here's our new flier to recruit more volunteers. If you click it, it will get bigger and you can even distribute it around. Please do actually! Thanks, thanks. Seriously let me know if you, or someone you know, might be even slightly interested... Switzerland is calling your name. I can hear the cow bells ringing now.

i'm missing mj too.

with all of the memorable mj tributes that i could post (where to begin?!), i am thankful for this fellow stevie fan who recorded stevie just being himself at one of his concerts last week. mourning but also celebrating the brilliance that is michael jackson. this is the total essence of stevie live but taking a break to remember a friend.

on stevie's left is his daughter aisha (as in "isn't she lovely" -- love her!) and then my faaaaav stevie back-up singer is on his right: keith. he's rocking, as usual, the silver music note earring that i kept trying to convince cody to also rawk last year. but to no avail.

like the rest of the world (quite literally) i'm missing mj too.

get.high.like.planes

meet my sweet swinging friend from bangalore.
just a lil' taste of an indian side street for you.
not too busy, but luckily you get some flava' from the rick-shaws, cow cameo, and passers-by.
love.love.