Cooking with joy

I feel incredibly energized in this moment. Joyful. Energy in my body is something I had developed a real mistrust of and aversion too. Feeling it signaled danger—I learned to keep it in check and to avoid or repress it. Now I am relearning that it can not only be tolerated but enjoyed, experienced fully, and in service of being alive and part of humanity

I am some number of thousands of feet in the air, flying back to Utah, after a short and precious trip to ground myself with Andy, my parents, some soul community, and the reluctant guardians of Saddle Bluff—the cat elders—June and Lou. I am deeply grateful for these connections, those seen and unseen, that hold me gently, and with great strength in the web of world.

Shortly before our spring break, which was timed strategically to avoid “Jeep Safari” week in Moab, we had nearly completed the metal sheeting of the roofs, stacked and stuffed and wedged bales and flakes of straw in between the exterior framing of all 3 houses, and begun and nearly finished, framing out the interior walls of the space. Phew! After just 3 days of stacking bales and using the leverage of Mother Earth and these strong legs to womanhandle them into place—I lost my roof legs for a moment when it was time to get back up and sheet the roof again. It reminded me, as did my trip home, that internal change takes time—even when it happens all at once. We begin a new habit, way of being, and it takes time for it to root—or for another perhaps overused metaphor—it takes time to cook into a new way of being. I personally, know I am a rather complicated recipe, that needs to cook a little, then sit, probably be refrigerated, and left to cool overnight, then rolled out, baked, and simmered for a long long time, and the bottom of the pan may burn a little in the process. That’s the way it’s seeming anyway. Good croissants take 3 days too. And at the same time, I can feel the shifts in me. There is a kinder internal voice that holds different space for the others, there is laughter, there is joy. 

A few of you have asked me about what the name I am calling myself since this move means to me. Even though I am at risk of writing a sort of BS art school statement, it is probably a useful experience for me to put it on paper. Inder is the end of my given middle name Lavinder—which has been a family surname from my mother’s side. However, in quality it reminds me of my father’s side and Scandinavian roots. I like that it honors both these lines, but is of my choosing or calling. It has always been part of me and yet marks and explores a part of myself which has been dormant and matches where I feel I am in my journey. It is detached, but doesn’t deny, the more difficult parts my story. Inder, In Her, Indra, Independent, Endear, “one-in-herself” (Artemis, Bolan).

So as the Salt Lake vista comes into view, I try to come back to this desert land with a Beginner’s Mind and a one-in-herself beginning place.