An Episcopalian priest friend of mine once described a brief conversation he had with a monk.

Priest: What do you do at the monastery?

Monk: We fall down, and then we get up. Then we fall down again, and we get up again.

That’s the story of this blog for me. I posted a handful of items during the fall months, my best run yet. But after the election and its immediate aftermath, I became paralyzed by fear over the swirl of historic events including the post-election lies from you-know-who and the continued and ferocious spread of COVID-19. I also wallowed in a bit of self-pity, missing the familiarity of holiday traditions and absent family members, particularly my son Emmet.

During this same period, I’ve cooked a lot of food, almost exclusively food of the African diaspora. You still gotta eat! As I have said elsewhere on this blog, the act of cooking (chopping, stirring, tasting, seasoning, waiting) represents a comfortable ritual for me, a way to lower my anxiety and focus on the tangible and concrete actions necessary to produce something nourishing and hopefully pleasurable. But I haven’t done many of the other things I hoped to do during this season, including posting to this blog, reading former President Barack Obama’s book “A Promised Land” or otherwise finding ways to pay my position of privilege forward in ways that are meaningful. 

I have fallen down, and I have been sitting still for a while. It’s now time to get up, again. I need to keep writing and to keep seeking ways to connect the dots between my personal gifts and the world’s needs. 

Despite my inaction, several cookbooks and culinary scholars have been providing important sources of inspiration this winter. The books include several of Marcus Samuelsson’s books, most prominently his newest, “The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food,” which Abby gave me as a Christmas present. Another important cookbook, also new to my collection, has been “Soul Food Love,” by the mother/daughter team of novelist Alice Randall and poet Caroline Randall Williams. 

I cooked a series of dishes from these books including the short ribs Marcus served to President Obama, a Jamaican curry pie that may now be one of my favorite foods ever, doro wat, several different curries, meatballs, mac and greens, steamed chicken with broccoli and basil and peanut chicken stew. My goal during the coming weeks is to write a series of posts about these books, these dishes, their creators and what they may mean for us more broadly as humans living in a complex and ever-changing world. Long-term, I want to focus my writing on the connections between food, justice, equity and sustainability. I realize these are lofty aspirations, but there’s nothing wrong with aiming high, right?

During the holidays, I also watched more than my fair share of TV and movies, and way too much news. I can’t recommend highly enough the Small Axe series of films created by director Steve McQueen (most well known for the award-winning film “12 Years A Slave”). My good friend Henry, who teaches screenwriting at the University of New Orleans, says the second film in the series “Lovers Rock” (a dreamlike meditation on the connection between music and spiritual freedom) was the best movie of 2020. Who am I to argue with Henry?!

To celebrate Martin Luther King Day, I made my signature red beans and Spanish rice, Marcus’ pulled pork on a bun (slow braised in the oven for eight hours and seasoned with an East-meets-West combination of flavors) and traditional vinegar-based slaw. I will write more about these dishes as part of my aforementioned aspirations for this blog.  

Along with continuing to contribute to this blog, I plan to focus on getting back on my spiritual feet, which mainly means just doing some basic footwork. One of my favorite passages from a favorite book, “A Joseph Campbell Companion” reminds me of an important truth: “If what you are following is your own true adventure, if it is something appropriate to your deep spiritual need or readiness, then magical guides will appear to help you…If you are ready for it, then doors will open where there were no doors before, and where there would not be doors for anyone else. And you must have courage. It’s the call to adventure, which means there is no security, no rules.”

That’s heady stuff, but each step forward represents progress along this hero’s journey of life. As they say in the rooms where people are saved from despair daily, “More will be revealed.” Given that I am tardy in posting here, I am donating $50 to City Harvest and $50 to the Oregon Food Bank this week. Thank you for spending a little time with me.