Who was Cassandra?
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters
of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo
loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed
that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow
Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well,
you know what happened.
the cassandra pages
words, pictures, and a life
Saturday, April 10, 2004
My Good Friday fast this year consisted of - even I can hardly believe it - not using my computer. No e-mail, no blogging, no *anguished sigh* reading of blogs. In retrospect, it was good to take a day off for a reason other than travel or logistics - to consciously refrain. It showed me just how connected I am to the damn thing (not so good) and to all of you (very good indeed). Instead, I spent the day meditating, reading (Merton and a good chunk of Elaine Pagels' "Beyond Belief", since I have to faciliate a discusison on the book in another week), and singing at two services - noon and evening.
Today I've been baking my traditional Easter bread for our choir breakfast between the services tomorrow morning. The recipe is Scandinavian, and the shape Greek in origin (I think); it's supposed to represent Jesus in swaddling clothes - which seems much more Christmasy than Easter-y, doesn't it? I think the finished loaf, while impressive, looks more like a giant slug or maybe an Egyptian mummy, than a wrapped-up baby. It is, however, delicious, and since I am always talking about food but rarely post recipes, I thought I'd write this one out for you. This is a case where only white flour, sugar, and butter will do, so indulge.
Pulla: Finnish Cardamom Bread 1 T yeast 1/4 warm water 1 1/3 C lukewarm milk 1 egg 1/2 C sugar 1/2 t salt 1/3 C soft butter 4 1/2 C white flour + more for kneading (it always takes 5 1/2 when I make it) 1 T powdered cardamom 1 beaten egg for glaze 1 jar apricot or raspberry jam (optional: 1/2 C raisins, 1 T finely chopped lemon or orange peel)
Dissolve yeast in warm water. Add milk, 1 egg, sugar, salt, butter. Stir in 2 C flour and cardamom. Beat until smooth (I do this in a KitchenAid mixer). Add remaining flour and raisins and peel, mix until a soft dough forms. Turn onto a floured board and knead, incorporating more flour as needed, until smooth and elastic. The dough should still be soft. Let rise until double, at least 1 1/2 hrs. Punch down.
Roll out into a large rectangle the size of a large cookie sheet. Transfer to an actual cookie sheet, without edges, that has been greased (I use butter). Place the cookie sheet vertically. Divide the dough visually into thirds, the long way, using the tip of a knife to gently mark the rolled dough. Spread jam 1/4" thick down the center third of the dough. Using a sharp knife, now cut an equal number of 1-inch horizontal bands on the right and left sides of the dough, cutting all the way through the dough and ending close to the jam. Now take the uppermost left of these strips and fold it over the jam, diagonally down and to the right, securing it againt the righthand strip two down from the top. Now do the same with the uppermost righthand strip of dough, going over the jam and the previous strip diagonally and to the left. Alternating sides, weave a lattice this way to encase the jam completely. Let the loaf rise fo another hour, covered loosely with plastic wrap.
Brush lightly with beaten egg. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 350 in the middle of a preheated oven, watching carefully so that the loaf doesn't burn. If it starts getting too brown, lay a sheet of aluminum foil over the top duirng that final minutes of baking.
After baking you can glaze it with dilute apricot jam, add frosting, slivered almonds, pearl sugar - whatever you want. I usually leave it plain, and I don't usually use raisins - sometimes a little lemon or orange peel in the dough. Bon appetit, and happy holiday breakfast!
Thursday, April 08, 2004
In an hour I'll be going to church for a half-hour choir rehearsal before our Maundy Thursday liturgy. This service commemorates the Last Supper, and includes a ritual foot-washing, where members of the congregation and clergy wash each other's feet in remembrance of Jesus washing the disciples' feet at that final gathering before the crucifixion.
I remember how difficult it was for me to participate the first time - it took all the courage I could muster to overcome my embarrassment. The person who washed my feet became, in subsequent years, a good friend, and the person whose feet I then washed was the Senior Warden of the church, an older man who was well-respected. I think it became a little bond between us; quite a bit later, when I was serving on the vestry (the elected lay governing board of the church) this man was a kind, gentle advisor and friend who appreciated my forthrightness and willingness to stick my neck out (and told me so). His wife has had Alzheimer's for nearly a decade, and he has cared for her at home, with some help, all that time. I know the church community means a great deal to him, as it did to both of them.
Not long ago we knitted a prayer shawl for his wife, with as many people as possible knitting a few stitches. There's a picture on the church bulletin board of the Rector at her bedside, giving her the shawl; they're both smiling. I have no idea what she understood, but as I think about the foot-washing tonight, and the community it represents --where leaders are willing to become servants -- it seems much more like a circle than a hierarchy.
5:32 PM
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Wednesday, April 07, 2004 GOSPEL TEMPLE CHURCH, HARLEM This morning I spent an hour and a half at the dentist - oh joy - and then had lunch with my father-in-law at the retirement home. This afternoon I've been preparing for another interview with GR tomorrow. After writing out my questions, I made a cup of tea and sat down for a minute with my Holy Week reading - my favorite Merton book, The Sign of Jonas, which I re-read every few years. I pulled it off the shelf this time because of what I wrote a few days ago about the various emotions I've experienced duirng this time of year at different times in my life. Merton's book covers the years between 1946 and 1952, during which he took his solemn vows of profession at the Gethsemanii monastery, was ordained to the priesthood, and experienced his first few years as a priest. You can read his April entires, for example, through the six years and see the same range of emotions I've spoken about - and that's comforting.
One of my attractions to Merton has always been his direct writing about his emotional and intellectual life and his unflinching honesty about his failings, his struggles, his faults, his desires, his attachments - as well as his often-gorgeous writing about the beauty and joy he finds in nature, books, and simple pleasures. (Merton would have LOVED blogging - I'm glad he didn't have to know and resist that temptation - and he was a prolific letter-writer.)
Each time I read the book (my favorite part of his long journals) I find something new. Today I saw this. I'm not quoting it because I agree, completely, but because I empathize with Mertons' struggle to know himself fully, and to write with integrity:
Dylan Thomas's integrity as a poet makes me very ashamed of the verse I have been writing. We who say we love God: why are we not as anxious to be perfect in our art as we pretend we want to be in our service of God? If we do not try to be perfect in what we write, perhaps it is because we are not writing for God after all. In any case, it is depressing that those who serve God and love Him sometimes write so badly, when those who do not believe in Him at all take pains to write so well. I am not talking about grammar and syntax, but about having something to say and saying it in sentences that are not half dead...
Imperfection is the penalty of rushing into print. And people who rush into print too often do so not because they really have anything to say but because they think it is important for something by them to be in print. The fact that your subject may be very important does not in itself necessarily mean that what you have written about it is important. A bad book about the love of God remains a bad book, even though it may be about the love of God...
I absolutely cannot believe that the U.S. is bombarding a mosque in Iraq. The stupidity, arrogance, and total lack of comprehensive thinking - not to mention foresight about the consequences of their actions - the administration is exhibiting are so appalling that there is nothing to say; one listens, reads the headlines, and goes away slack-jawed and stupified, and --shaking that off -- desiring nothing more than to climb to the top of the highest building and shout "WAKE UP!!!" But what would come back? A giant, empty echo?
4:40 PM
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Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Busy, too busy today. We're heading over to the neighbors' with a cake and ice cream after a long day of work: I was editing and transcribing interview recordings; J. was cataloging pictures, fixing his radio-sync flash unit, and doing some lighting tests.
Before dinner I talked to my parents. Mom said that the ice has gone out on their lake, and the morning after it went, a flock of mergansers appeared and have been there ever since. Today, in the late afternoon, she spotted a loon. She's hoping a pair will decide to spend the spring there - one advantage of a relatively unspoiled small lake without motorboats is an abundance of reclusive waterfowl. Although I have to admit the loons are more adaptable than one might think. In the summers we often go to visit friends at Lake Winnepesauke, just below New Hampshire's White Mountains and next to Squam lake, of "Golden Pond" fame. All day long the motorboats and jet skis race around the lake, but when the sun goes down, the loons start to call, and you can see them, solitary, in the water on the remote edges of islands.
Here, I still haven't seen geese overhead, but we aren't on a major flyway. What I have seen are migrating hawks, and on Saturday the osprey was wheeling above the river, accompanied by a chorus of redwing blackbirds. Spring is coming, steadily, despite persistent cold temperatures and even snow to the north.
And, continuing on in the good news department, congratulations to Dr. Lorianne! Yeah!
8:29 PM
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Monday, April 05, 2004
Last night I finished Michael Ondaatje's memoir of his childhood in Sri Lanka, "Running in the Family". It's a strange book, rather experimental and somewhat rough, like pages out of a personal journal; here a remembrance, there a poem, a sketch, an essay. Once I stopped trying to make it be a totally cohesive piece of writing, like his other books, I relaxed and enjoyed it, much as I enjoy all the personal writing we do here.
There is one section that's all poetry, and of these poems, I especially one called "The Cinnamon Peeler":
If I were a cinnamon peeler I would ride your bed and leave the yellow bark dust on your pillow.
Your breasts and shoulders would reek you could never walk through markets without the profession of my fingers floating over you. The blind would stumble certain of whom they approached though you might bathe under rain gutters, monsoons.
here on the upper thigh at this smooth pasture neighbor to your hair or the crease that cuts your back. This ankle. You will be known among strangers as the cinnamon peeler's wife.
I could hardly glance at you before marriage never touch you - your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers. I buried my hands in saffron, disguised them over smoking tar, helped the honey gatherers...
When we swam once I touched you in water and our bodies remained free, you could hold me and be blind of smell. You climbed the bank and said
this is how you touch other women the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter. And you searched your arms for the missing perfume
and knew
what good is it to be the lime burner's daughter left with no trace as if not spoken to in the act of love as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.
You touched your belly to my hands in the dry air and said I am the cinnamon peeler's wife. Smell me. 8:29 PM
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We had a procession with palms today, too, but I never got any because I showed up at church just as the procession was beginning - I'd forgotten to change my clock. This is what happens when you don't listen to much radio or watch TV. We had a very quiet day yesterday, didn't go out at all, and in the morning it never even occurred to me that this was The Day. In fact, walking up the hill to church in time for - I thought - choir practice at 9:00 am, I saw a lot more cars parked than usual and said to myself, "Oh, the 8:00 service must have run late." Even when I entered the building and saw people in the sanctuary I was still in that mindset - but then I heard the processional chant begin in the parish hall, looked up and saw the cross and acolytes at the head of the procession, and said to myself, "Oh, shit!" I rushed downstairs, grabbed my music, threw on my robe, and met the procession just as the choir was heading into the church. My seat-mate, Anne, gave me one of her patented Looks, and said "clock trouble, sweetie?" in-between words of the processional hymn. I rolled my eyes, and we were off down the aisle.
Shirin came to church today because she was curious about the Christian observance of Palm Sunday - "You really mean it starts happy and ends up sad, all in one service?" she asked on the phone. As a Shiia Muslim from Iran, she is used to passion plays - nowhere in the world is there a greater re-enactment of religious grief than in Iran during Ashoura, the observance of the martyrdom of Hussein that began the Shiia/Sunni split. Today she saw the congregation and clergy come into the sanctuary carrying palms, re-enacting Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, and then heard Luke's version of the passion story in a dramatic reading.
After the service she stayed for the coffee hour, and then we left the church together. "It was very interesting," she said - a comment that can mean many things. We've known each other long enough now to appreciate our traditions, understand the differences, and not need to explain too much. I knew that a lot of today's service would have been anathema to a devout Muslim, which made me appreciate her presence, interest, and friendship all the more.
One major difference between our cultures is the sense of Western self-determination versus Muslim/Middle Eastern reliance on God's providence. I've gotten so used to this that I automatically add "Insh'allah" - "God Willing" - to any phrase expressing future expectations when I'm with Shirin. As we left the church today, we walked past a choir member sitting on a bench waiting for her husband. I said, "See you Thursday night."
"Definitely," the choir member replied.
"Insh'allah," said Shirin, under her breath, and we both started laughing, and laughed all the way out of the church.
