Irish Holy Wells, part 3

(Irish holy wells, part 1; part 2.) This post is going to be almost all photographs. St. Culain's Well is one of the loveliest, most tranquil places in Ireland (and you know I have been ALL over). I'm so grateful to Bán for taking me there!   This is the best example of a "rag tree" you are likely to find. Leaving a trinket on a rag tree is a form of prayer for a loved one in need of healing.    The holy well is located just off the Lough Derg Way, and it overlooks this peaceful pond off the River Shannon.     A bit of pottery I found in the spring.  The last line cracks me up. 

Irish Holy Wells, part 2

(Irish holy wells, part 1.) After a few nights in some random little towns in Roscommon and Leitrim, I met up with my old friend Paddy in Sligo, and he took me to a holy well and grotto just outside town called Tobernault (tobar meaning "well" in Irish). As you can tell by the complexity and upkeep, this is quite a popular spot for prayer and reflection.    (More on my time with Paddy in another post.)After a couple nights each in Sligo, Mayo, and Galway, I arrived in Tipperary for a visit with Seanan's family. Bán (Seanan's mom) took me on an afternoon tour of three holy wells all within a few miles of their house.The first, St. Patrick's, I'd been to with Seanan before, but the past five years have not been kind to this little spot. The well is clogged with slurry. (You can't see it too well from the photo below, but really—was I going to take a picture of liquid cow poo to prove it to you? Sigh...)  The second well, St. Brigid's, was overgrown and tricky to find, but it smelled much better!:    Bán saved the loveliest well for last—I'll show you those photos next time. 

Irish Holy Wells, part 1

I have visited six holy wells for novel research over the past couple of weeks. Some were well tended, others neglected and even polluted. Some were enchantingly situated, others less so. But each of them has a long history and tradition behind it, even if they're seldom visited these days. St. Attracta's Well in Clogher, County Sligo. If you follow that link, you'll see just how much further into disrepair this well has fallen since those photographs were taken several years ago. You can still see the bullaun and "serpent's eggs," but the crucifixion carving has been removed (for safekeeping, one hopes!)  The next day I stopped by St. Lasair's Well, which is just across the road from Kilronan Abbey in County Roscommon. (Somewhere in the graveyard is the final resting place of Turlough O'Carolan.) Kilronan means "church of Ronan," by the way—Ronan and Lasair are father-and-daughter saints. Her well is in the midst of refurbishment.   Because of the renovations, all the bits and pieces people had left at the well over the years were scattered on the Mass rock a few paces away.     Here I found my first "rag tree": a bush or tree near a holy well where people leave items belonging to a loved one in need of healing. It could be as simple as a scrap of clothing, a bit of yarn, or a set of rosary beads; or you could find children's shoes, stuffed animals...even a pacifier. (Along with this teacup, I found an unopened package of Weetabix. St. Lasair is all set for breakfast whenever she wants it.) I have an even better example of a rag tree to show you in a future post. 

Bhakti Brunch

This month's focus in Jivamukti yoga is bhakti—devotion to the divine. There are many elements to a yoga practice, not just the physical asanas, and this passage in particular (by Sharon Gannon) is a useful reminder for me:

Even though bhakti and ahimsa are both tenets of Jivamukti Yoga, there could arise a tendency to forget bhakti, devotion to God, and become overly consumed with promoting animal rights, veganism and environmentalism—or you could say saving the world—as a way to practice ahimsa and develop compassion in one’s daily life. We must be careful not to allow our activism to take priority over our devotion to God. If we do we will undoubtedly be bound by avidya and asmita—ignorance and ego identification and all the debilitating vices that come with those hindrances, like pride, anger, revenge and impatience, for example.

I like to think I'm pretty good at connecting to the spiritual side of things, but when I get frustrated, say, overhearing a yoga teacher talking about the most delicious mac ’n cheese with bacon on top, I am engaging in ego identification—even though it seems on the surface that the problem is solely with the other person. (Ha! It never ever is!) So this month's focus has been really important for me.Last Sunday one of my lovely Jivamukti teachers, Reina Lovelace, offered a special class at Karma with kirtan (Sanskrit singing plus harmonium, SO gorgeous) by Irene Soléa, and afterward we enjoyed a vegan potluck "bhakti brunch." It was lovely to get to know some people I've been practicing alongside for awhile now; I can get caught up in my own practice and forget to engage, say hello, introduce myself. We come to practice in the same space for a reason!  Reina made the most AMAZING pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. I have to get the recipe from her!! The dish in the middle (below) is the fruit cobbler I made out of Robin Robertson's Vegan on the Cheap. It's the first recipe I've tried out of that book, and it was fantastic—and so easy, too. I prepped enough fruit for two cobblers so that Faith and I could have some on Saturday night (bless her for letting me use her kitchen!), and we gobbled it up right out of the oven. I can't even express to you how comfortingly delicious it was. (I will be doing more systematic cookbook explorations starting sometime this summer, and I might as well start with this one!)  I love it when no one coordinates what they're bringing to a potluck and yet it all comes out perfectly balanced.  On the savory side, a broccoli/asparagus tofu quiche (also by Reina), quinoa salad, avocado and black bean salad, and an Indian-inspired lentil dish. Everything thoroughly yummy! Good to the last bite (and then I had a muffin.) Several friends have commented to me recently about my healthy appetite. It's totally the yoga.

Brought to you by sunlight. #mudra #nofilter http://t.co/9z6g6g0S32— Brynne (@bhaflett) March 10, 2014

I'll be writing more about yoga over the summer—there's a big post gathering itself in my head, I just won't have the time for another long one until after I turn in my manuscript in June. But I'm really looking forward to the day when I can share with you some specific ways in which my daily yoga practice has changed my life for the better. (Talk about an understatement!) 

Another year of YES

Goodbye, Best Year Ever! Hello, New Year which will no doubt build upon the progress of the Old Year to an as-yet-unfathomable degree!Over the past year I've realized, particularly through my yoga practice, that progress and change may not happen as quickly as we'd like, but if we set the intention and keep it close (practicing, journaling, whatever energetic investment is applicable), we will see that hoped-for change manifesting in our lives. Progress happens by degrees, so that you look back after weeks, months, or years and feel stunned and grateful for what, in ordinary moments, may not have felt like much of a difference. Today I'm looking back and celebrating the changes, and ruminating on some things I'd like to do, be, work toward, and achieve in 2014. How about you? What are some of your intentions for 2014? Who do you want to be 365 days from now?Happy New Year, everybody! 

To the Unseen Future

 I tweeted so much about the Harvard Books warehouse sale that they gave me a $25 gift card! So I went to Cambridge last Wednesday night to pick up a Christmas present, but the section I needed was inaccessible due to a reading in progress. "Oh well, I'll just hit the occult section and buy more books for myself!"   

@cometparty "For research." YEAH RIGHT, LADY. *eyebrow wiggle*

— Sarah P. Miller (@SarahPMiller) December 16, 2013

      

Peace and Ease (another weekend in Providence)

 

In peace and ease she spends her happy days,And fears no envy, as she courts no praise.

—Elizabeth Scot

  There are many things I love about visiting Elizabeth in Providence, but going to the beach is pretty high on the list.      Amiee flew up from Philadelphia and we had a magical time—literally magical. We each had some important inner work to accomplish, and the process becomes so much smoother and more joyful when your "soul pod" is helping you through it. I had a lot of letting go to do.Of course, nourishing the spirit starts with physical nourishment. We had beautiful food at every meal.   Sunday evening we went to Wildflour, a vegan bakery/café, followed by dinner at the Garden Grille (which I believe is owned by the same folks). Like I said, I'm trying to listen to my body, and between two gorgeous cups of coffee with steamed almond milk and cinnamon (thank you, Elizabeth!) my body'd had enough sugar for one day, so I regretfully passed on the bourbon truffles.   That said, fresh juice is just as much a treat to me as a cupcake. That sounds a tiny bit crazy, but it's true—especially since juice never winds up feeling like too much of a good thing.   More "detox" for dinner: this salad with mango, beet, avocado, and orange was light but satisfying. The service at the Garden Grille is great too! I told Bristol about our meal and she mentioned that they've opened another restaurant in Providence called the Grange, so we'll have to check that out the next time I'm visiting. 

Up and Writing!

I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be teaching at Squam Art Workshops next fall! The class is called Up and Writing and it's designed to help you evolve from a person who daydreams about being a writer into one who actually writes. You may look at my books and see a gulf of experience between you and me, but there isn't, really—as I mention in my first Flashwrite episode, I spent a good deal of time talking and thinking and reading and dreaming about shaping words into stories before I developed a writing practice in earnest.How did I become a "real writer"? More to the point, how can you? Sign up for the workshop and find out! A week at Squam is an incredibly life changing experience in general—you breathe in the delicious pine-scented air, go swimming in the lake, count stars (and lose track), listen to the loons calling at night, learn a lot, get crazy inspired and make friends for keeps. Squam is the closest thing I have ever found to heaven on Earth.Registration doesn't open until January, but you can pre-register to save your spot. I just pre-registered for Spring 2014 and I'm over-the-moon excited. A really cool online workshop with Harriet Goodall—Gift of the Heart—just launched today as well! 

The Pace of Nature

Illustration by Claudia Campazzo.

On a recent trip to San Francisco I reconnected with Maura McElhone, a friend from Galway and fellow graduate of the M.A. in Writing program at NUIG. A native of Derry, Maura now lives in Northern California. She says, "I firmly believe that life isn't so much about where we are or how we live, and all about who we're with as we live it. I dream of publishing a book, and of that book making an impact on someone, somewhere in the world." When she told me about making a set of extraordinary friends on four legs, I asked if she'd write a guest post for me. I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did.

***

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

—Emerson

It’s a chilly enough evening here in the north San Francisco Bay Area, but I've left the living room window open. I need to keep a constant ear out for them, you see: the deer that come by most nights now for a quick snack, and, in the case of one very special animal, the odd head rub, too.

I first met the deer I’ve come to know as “Gimpy” a little over a year ago when he, along with his mother (easily distinguishable by the sizable notch in her right ear and named “Mango” after the sweet yellow fruit that was the first thing she ate from my hand), would stop to graze on the grassy hillside just beyond my apartment during the spring and summer months.

Once the temperature dropped and winter came, the deer disappeared. To where, exactly, I don’t know. The fantasist in me likes to think of them kicking back with a cocktail on the deer equivalent of Barbados while waiting out the colder months.

When they returned in May of this year, I immediately noticed that the baby was having difficulty walking. It was only when the animals came closer that I was able to see the white bone protruding from his right hind leg. The break was clean, but this offered little consolation as I watched the tiny Bambi-like creature hobble around, dragging the useless limb behind him.

I began ringing various animal rescue centres, but at 9pm, only the answering machines were picking up. Finally, I got through to a woman in Virginia who ran a deer rehabilitation centre. She advised me not to ring the local humane society, but rather, to “let nature do its thing.” Breaks like this are common in young fawns, apparently, and if the animal is at all mobile, and its mother is still with it, it stands a good chance of recovery. The best thing I could do, she told me, was to give him food and water: let him come to associate that grassy hillside as being a safe haven, a place he could come for sanctuary or help. “If he needs you,” she said, “he’ll find a way to let you know.”

Looking at it on paper now, it does seem slightly ridiculous: the idea of this wild animal going out of its way to seek help from a human, a creature they fear from birth. At the time, however, I didn’t linger on the logistics. All I knew was that as long as this little animal continued to find his way to my apartment, I would do everything I could to care for him. I knew it would be tough. I was a human seeking to make a difference in a world that wasn’t mine, after all. The only way this would work would be if somehow deer and human could meet halfway.

So I interfered as little as possible. When Mango and the fawn I’d taken to calling “Gimpy” came by, I’d feed them and during the particularly hot days this summer, I left out a basin of water from which they drank readily. There was a period of maybe two months when I didn’t see either deer, and while I worried, I had to trust that as long as nature was in charge, things would play out as they were meant to.

As it turned out, he’d managed just fine. When he returned with Mango in early August, I saw that as the woman in Virginia had predicted, bone had met bone, and while he’ll never have a fully functioning limb, the break had healed enough to allow him to put weight on that leg. In fact, when he’s standing still, you’d be none the wiser about the injury at all. Only when he begins to move does the slight limp give him away.

More than a year has passed now since Mango and Gimpy first appeared, and rarely a week goes by when they don’t visit. But I’ve never grown used to it. I hope I never do. I hope that in the months and years to come, each and every visit still fills me with the same sense of humility, wonder, and privilege that I feel now.

All too often we are reminded of the separation between our own human world and the natural world, reminded that these two worlds should not and cannot intersect without negative repercussions for one side or the other. Indeed, for most people, the closest interaction they’ll have with a deer is if they have the misfortune of hitting one with their car. It’s why I’ll never take for granted moments like the one I was witness to this past July when I lay on my tummy on the floor for fifteen or twenty minutes, hardly daring to breathe for fear of interrupting the scene that was playing out before me: Mango licking Gimpy’s injured leg as he nuzzled her back. A mother caring for her baby, the most natural thing in the world, and a reminder that for all our differences, we’re actually not all that different.

Perhaps that’s the draw for me. Why wouldn’t I chance a relationship with these creatures who live lives not unlike ours, but better? Innocent and pure lives free from the weight of worry and stress; lives that revolve around eating, resting, and nurturing relationships with those most dear to them. Lives in which decisions are driven purely by instinct and trust. How lucky am I to be invited into this exemplary way of being, if only for a few moments at a time?

And when it comes down to it, that’s why I keep the windows open and brave the autumn chill: to hear the crunch of forest floor under hoof—my cue to slow down, to ready myself for another foray into this realm that exists only at the point at which our two worlds overlap, for a few moments of perfect cohesion and beauty.

I step out onto the balcony and cross to the railings; on the other side the shy doe with the nick in her right ear and the baby with the bad leg are waiting. I drop to my knees and stretch my arm through the railings, apple slice in hand. And while neither mammy or baby hesitates, their large, brown and innocent eyes remain locked on me as they move forward. Then, going against everything their instincts tell them, they take the treat from my hand, sometimes even allowing my hand to rest for a few moments on their heads.

And that’s when I’m in it—that perfect place that exists only at the midpoint between our two worlds and only for as long as the deer are willing to extend to me their trust. It’s quiet there, the only sounds coming from the mouths of the deer as they munch their apples and carrots. And it’s still. It has to be. The deer are skittish, likely to bolt at any sudden or unfamiliar noise or movement, shattering the perfection of these moments. No matter how busy my day has been, or how much I’ve been running around, when I arrive at this place where our two worlds come together, I’m forced to slow down, and to stop. If these creatures can overcome their inherent fear of humans enough to grant me these few special moments, it’s the least I can do to respect and embrace the rules of conduct in their most simple, innocent, and uncomplicated of worlds.

But that’s just my view from the inside. On the outside, at that cross section where nature and civilization collide, look up on the hillside and what you’ll see is nothing more exceptional than a 29-year-old woman, down on bended knee, offering an apple in her outstretched hand, to a baby deer with a gimpy leg who willingly accepts.

Find Maura on Twitter at @maurawrites, and read more of her writing on her blog.

Illustrator Claudia Campazzo was born and raised in Chile and is also a classically trained violist and violinist. You can find more of her lovely work on her blog.

Birthday Surprises and Farmers' Market Goodies

 Last Thursday was my 33rd birthday. It feels a little odd to be writing that, not because I'm getting older but because (with all the yoga I've been doing) I feel like I'm getting younger! I'm continually amazing myself with all the cool poses I can do now that I didn't have the strength, balance, or flexibility for when I was a child. I took a wonderful Jivamukti class that morning with Nina Hayes, fellow MSVA grad and one of my new favorite yoga teachers. (I'm also taking her Mexican cooking class tomorrow night! So stoked for that.)That night I went with a bunch of friends to my favorite Boston restaurant, Veggie Galaxy. My two favorite things on the menu are the vegan mac (with nutritional yeast and turmeric, breadcrumbs, eggplant, leeks, and peas)—it's not gooey like "the real thing," but I do like to point out that "comfort food" is actually way more comforting when you know no animals were abused in the making of it.  The other thing I usually order is a frappe made with coconut ice cream—chocolate banana is my favorite flavor. "Out of this world," as my grandmother would say. I ordered one instead of cake for dessert, and look how it arrived!  Every birthday serves as a benchmark. What did I set out to accomplish over the past year, and to what extent have I been successful? How have I grown? How have I changed? What would I love to do next? Am I a better person than I was a year ago? This introspective process felt more relevant than ever given how much things have changed for me since my 32nd birthday. Just before I moved to Boston, I laid out a very clear picture of what I wanted my new life to look like, and it will surprise no one to hear that my life doesn't look much like the one I'd imagined.But I love this life, with all its uncertainties and "fine for nows." If some mysterious stranger offered to trade this life for the one I'd imagined, I would absolutely decline. You might say going out to dinner with my Boston friends was a celebration not just of my birthday, but of that imaginary choice. I can't even tell you how grateful I feel for the friends I've made here.* * *Birthdays are too important to keep to one day; I intend to celebrate for the rest of the month! (Have I ever shared my philosophy on birthdays, by the way? I've always been big on celebrating them because we are SO BLESSED to be able to do so. I went to high school with several people who will never celebrate their 30th or 25th or even 21st birthdays. It isn't a day for wishing you could turn back the clock; it's a day of gratitude for all the time you've been given.)Anyway, since we're talking about tasty vegan food, I thought I'd share a couple of surprising items I picked up at the Roslindale Farmers' Market last Friday. The first is a teeny-bit-spicy relish-slash-dip adapted from an old Creole recipe:  I think I'll serve this with gourmet crackers at Thanksgiving. The second item (the real surprise) was carrot granola (!) from A.k.a. Marvelicious, which is as local as local gets (they're based in Jamaica Plain):  My Little Sister and I tried a couple of samples, including their pumpkin pie, which was fantastic. I was skeptical about the carrot granola, but it's actually really good. I'm saving it for Thanksgiving weekend, when I'll be doing all my own cooking for once.Speaking of farmers' markets, here's a photo I took after a browse at Copley Square several weeks ago (I meant to blog this, and forgot). You might as well caption it "You know you're a hippie when..."  I showed Alex the contents of my bag—dinosaur kale for juicing, dehydrated flaxseed crackers, and a knitting project using hemp (for crying out loud), all in a reusable market bag—and asked, "Am I a hippie or a hipster?" He confirmed that I'm a hippie, because hipsters are apparently way dirtier than hippies. At least according to Alex. 

The Magic of Myth

You know how much I love Squam Art Workshops. I'm a much happier and more confident person for having attended, and writing that feels like an understatement. When I think of founder Elizabeth Duvivier, who over the past two and a half years has become a very dear friend, I often remember a book my sister wrote a report on in elementary school called Magic Elizabeth. That's how I think of her, because she's given so many people the space and the love they've needed to reconnect with their creativity—to see themselves for who they are, not just who everyone else expects them to be.

It was Elizabeth, too, who encouraged me to dig into the work of Joseph Campbell, and you might remember how much I loved his interview series with Bill Moyers. Joseph Campbell's most famous words are "follow your bliss," and the knowledge, inspiration, and friendships I've received from Squam have made it much easier for me to act on that advice. You can just imagine how excited I was when Elizabeth told me about her new online seminar, "The Magic of Myth"! This isn't just Elizabeth's take on the hero's journey—it's ours. Our lives don't happen to us, we create them, and I'm so looking forward to discussing myths and archetypes and how we can apply them. I signed up for the seminar today, and if you decide to take it too, let me know in the comments! 

Let Go!

 When I was a kid, I loved to draw—loved it, loved it—so much so that it became an integral part of my identity. I was the serious, bookish, arty kid with glasses far too big for her face.At the end of fourth grade, though, something shifted, and I lost confidence in my ability. (Some other time I'll elaborate on exactly what happened.) "I guess I'm not as good as I thought," I said to myself. "But at least I'm still smart."A few years went by. My sixth-grade history teacher, who was also the gifted-and-talented art teacher, praised some drawings I did for a project on the Greek myths, although I didn't actually get into the G.T. art program until eighth grade. (I can't remember why it took two years, but most likely he encouraged me to apply for seventh grade, but I didn't, and then he encouraged me a second time, and that time I listened. Dear Mr. Jennings!)I kept making art all through high school, but I never reconnected with the confidence of my elementary school days. When it came time to apply to colleges, I had my heart set on art school, but I couldn't get a complete portfolio together in time. (Now you know why I majored in art history.)Mind you, I'm not regretting any of the choices I've made, or wishing I could have released my doubts and self-imposed limitations sooner. This is my path, and I own it—and to be perfectly honest, I'm a much better writer than I am (or would have been) as an artist anyway.Still, all these years I've wanted to go back and be that little girl again—to draw not so it would look as much as possible like the thing I was drawing, or so that people would praise my ability, but for the sheer joy of putting marker to paper. And this past Friday, I finally gave myself the chance.I was having an art day with my Little Sister. She suggested I try drawing with my right hand, and something went PING! "This'll be fun," I said, and pulled out another sheet of paper. Here is what happened next:  It's just a doodle—and yet it's so much more significant than that. I started at the center, making those pink and gray squiggles that reminded me of geological strata. La la la, those lines seem to say. Just drawing with my opposite hand. Nothing much to see here.Then I thought, "What if I were to forget that I'm drawing with my opposite hand? What would happen then?"Can you tell which part I drew next? I bet you can.  I've been reading and thinking and journaling a lot lately about limitations—virtually all of them imaginary. Just think of how many times we say to ourselves, I can't do that. I'm no good at that. My Little Sister only just turned thirteen, and I heard her say both of those sentences pretty much as soon as we opened up our boxes of art supplies. I can't draw. I stink at it.You say it, you think it, you believe it. But what if you were to let go of all that, and take an hour's worth of pleasure in proving yourself wrong? When you say you can't, you wall yourself off from whole new worlds of exploration and experience, whether it's in the kitchen or on a playing field or at an easel.You haven't seen the last of my wacky drawings, oh no. I'm going to use them to develop fabric designs, and who knows what else after that. I might also work on making my mind maps more colorful and lively. I'm so psyched to have purchased my first sketchbook since high school!How about you? What was the last thing to which you said I can't do that (even though you really wanted to), and do you think you can summon the gumption to do it anyway?

Yoga and Vegetarianism

I've been going to Back Bay Yoga almost every day since I moved to Boston at the beginning of April, and I've found the studio to be a very safe and friendly place in which to develop my yoga practice in earnest. I adore nearly all of their teachers, and have learned and evolved through pretty much every single class I've taken there.Recently my three-month unlimited membership ran out, and when they posted a new weekday morning line-up that didn't suit my schedule as well as the old one, I decided it was time to explore other yoga studios in Boston. I suppose I've gotten a bit too comfortable at Back Bay—I'll always drop in for classes on a weekly or near-weekly basis, and I may very well renew my unlimited membership at some point, but for right now I feel a strong nudge toward exploring new styles and learning with new teachers.

This is how I found myself this past weekend on the South Boston Yoga website. I'd heard they offer aerial yoga classes, which I was really excited to try. Imagine my dismay, however, when I spotted a paleo diet workshop announcement with a certified nutritionist!

There didn't appear to be any upcoming workshop on veganism to balance things out. More to the point, though, practicing yoga while eating animals is a contradiction, and once again I'll draw upon Rynn Berry's wonderful Food for the Gods to explain why:

Cobra, lion pose, pranayama and mudras. Anyone familiar with these terms for some of the physical and psychological techniques of yoga has probably taken yoga classes, and most likely remembers the feeling of peace and well-being that followed them. In India, the Jains, Buddhists and Hindus practice yoga, which is a set of practical exercises for attaining samadhi, or spiritual transcendence. The eighth hallmark of the ahimsa-based "vegetarian" religions is that they have attached to them a set of physical and psychological techniques for achieving ecstasy.

Professor Berry goes on to note that in the Western tradition "there is no yoga—probably because in classical yoga, spiritual progress is predicated on eating a diet of plant-based foods."That said, the "power yoga" we practice in studios all over the Western world bears little resemblance to "classical" yoga. As Dean Radin explains in Supernormal:  "...[Y]oga as it is known and practiced in the West today, as a quasi-spiritual athletic practice, can be traced not to Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, but to an amalgam of traditional yoga poses combined with Swedish gymnastics and British Army calisthenics."In my experience, most Western yoga teachers merely skim the surface of yoga's spiritual roots, mentioning "the heart center" or the "third eye" without getting into what any of this stuff actually means—an understandable omission given that most students are there for the workout. I can't ever recall hearing the word ahimsa spoken in a yoga class, and yet it is the most fundamental tenet of classical yoga: refraining from causing harm to any sentient being. Following this principle, of course, necessitates a pure vegetarian diet.I politely asked about ahimsa on the South Boston Yoga Facebook page. The next morning, I found my comment had been removed. I tried again, and after what seemed like an odd reply—"Basically, we are not an exclusive community, diet being one of the life choices that we do not persecute. This discussion can happen over a private message if you like"—my second comment was removed as well. Whoever is doing the social media for SBY clearly felt defensive, and chose to frame my logical questions as the intolerant harping of a hardcore vegan (e.g., using the word "persecute") rather than responding to my concerns in an open and forthright manner. I guess they're afraid that discussing the issue in public might turn people off the paleo class, but if they were to offer a vegan workshop too, they wouldn't lose anybody at all! I'm very sad that the SBY social media person chose to handle the situation this way.But I'm not writing this post to complain. Actually, as I was editing this entry I discovered that the paleo workshop has disappeared from the South Boston Yoga event calendar!Still, the issue has been raised, and I'd like to see it through: I've noticed that people on the paleo diet often justify their dietary choices by saying "I'm doing what's right for my body," and as a very happy and healthy vegan, it goes without saying that I consider this attitude a cop-out. (For a sensible take on cravings, read this great post from VeggieGirl. "It’s interesting that this type of logic is used to explain cravings for things such as meat, eggs and cows’ milk," Dianne writes, "but not when what’s being craved is vodka, coffee or donuts.") Furthermore, we shouldn't follow someone's advice just because they have a string of letters after their name; many medical doctors, after all, refuse to acknowledge the connection between the consumption of animal protein and the skyrocketing rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer in America.My real "beef" with saying "I'm doing what's right for my body" isn't about the meat eater in question, however, and I invite you to meditate on the following statement:

If a choice is truly right for you, it won't be wrong for anyone else.

 Even if you don't believe that a cow or pig or chicken counts as "someone" (and you know I do!), what of the human animals who must go to work every day to slaughter, process, and package their flesh? Consider this passage from Gristle: From Factory Farms to Food Safety (Thinking Twice About the Meat We Eat), edited by Moby and Miyun Park:

Insane, right? And this passage doesn't even touch on the psycho-spiritual effects of working in a slaughterhouse (whether it's a factory farm or someplace "local" and "family owned"). If conditions are this heinous for the humans, imagine how much more horrific it is for the cows on the conveyor belt. This is why we practice ahimsa.

* * *

Sunday evening I went to a Jivamukti class with Nina Hayes (a fellow MSVA grad!) at Sadhana Yoga. Vegetarianism is one of Jivamukti's five core principles (video explanation by co-founder Sharon Gannon here; I'm also looking forward to reading her book on the subject), and at the beginning and end of class the teacher generally leads the class in a Sanskrit chant: Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu. In English: May all beings everywhere be happy and free.Every time these words come out of my mouth, a lovely feeling of peace and centeredness settles over me, and the feeling was even more powerful given my frustrating experience over Facebook that morning. Nina also read this poem by Hafiz:

Admit something:Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwiseSomeone would call the cops.Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.Why not become the one who lives with aFull moon in each eye that is always saying,With that sweet moon language, what every other eye inThis world is dying to hear?

It all comes down to love, doesn't it? "Yoga" means "union" in Sanskrit, and to feel and spread and be love is to honor the interconnectedness of all living things. Nina says, "The teachings of yoga are clear in that if we want something in our lives, then we must be willing to provide it to others first. If we want to cultivate deep internal peace, freedom and love through yoga, our diet must reflect this."What do you think about the connection between yoga and vegetarianism? Is it fair to suggest that Western yoga should retain the classical yogic principle of ahimsa, or is the new power yoga "a different animal" altogether? Whatever your current diet, I'd love for you to share your perspective in the comments.And finally, I'd like to give a shout-out to South Boston Yoga for ultimately taking my concerns seriously—I really appreciate that. I feel like I can go for that aerial yoga class after all!

Sempre e Più

 

In the end, of course, you will take what life offers, but often life offers more to people who ask more of it.

—Garrison Keillor as Mr. Blue

 When I landed in Florence for a semester abroad in January 2002, I didn't have a ready-made friend group to fall into. I can't recall without digging out my old journals how I was doing emotionally in those first few days and weeks, but I do remember how excited I was to be living in a 17th-century villa with a cappuccino bar downstairs. (RIGHT?! That cappuccino got me halfway through my practice novel, but that's another story.)I also very clearly remember, in late January or early February, taking a phone call in the cafe area long after the barista had left for the night. I'd met Aravinda on a school trip to D.C. the previous year, and although we hadn't quite become friends yet, she was having an issue with her roommates (in an off-campus apartment) and needed to talk it out. They were telling jokes that were upsetting her, and even after she explained why she was upset (without getting into it, I can tell you that she was totally justified in her reaction), the roommates and their friends carried on as if she hadn't said a word. As I listened to her speak so openly of her hurt and frustration, I realized that I really, really wanted to be her friend. She trusted me to listen, and because she'd reacted to the situation just as I would have in her place, I knew I could trust her back.   We were friends from that night onward, and had lots of adventures in Italy together (and later on, in Ireland and Greece). Since she recently married a wonderful man named Nevin (which is why I was in San Francisco last month), I thought I'd take this opportunity to honor our friendship and all that I've learned from it.  Aravinda is one of the very smartest and most exuberant people I know, which is a (rare) personality combo I've always found invigorating. I've made many friends over the years I've wanted to be more like, but my friendship with Min was the first in which I was mature enough to realize this consciously.  People who know me in 2013 probably wouldn't peg me for an introvert (I'm an INFP, by the way), but being more friendly and open and outgoing is something I've consciously worked towards over the past decade. Looking back on my childhood and young adulthood, I see I was often fearful—afraid to express myself, to stick my neck out, to try new things instead of judging them. My perfectionism, too, kept me within a relatively narrow range of experience; for instance, when I got to Italy, I was so intent on speaking Italian properly that I never got around to having an actual conversation for all my hesitations. Aravinda, on the other hand, chatted away with every Italian she met, including my cousins in Sapri (on the Amalfi coast) when I took her to visit them.Did Aravinda care if she got the grammar wrong, or used a wonky cognate from her years of high-school French?Nope.Guess which of us my Italian cousins enjoyed talking to more!I watched her in these interactions, and wished I could be like her: so articulate and enthusiastic she almost literally sparkled, candid to a fault—and yet, on the whole, she did not care what anyone might think of her. She was the first friend to read my early writing, marking up my chapters and often telling me, "This is good, but you can do better." I loved her for her frankness, because I knew she cared enough to tell me the truth.Most of all, Aravinda was never afraid to ask for anything she needed or wanted, and before I knew her it had never really occurred to me that I could (and should!) do the same. But it makes sense, doesn't it, that if you want to be a person who has good self esteem, you begin by making friends with kind and honest people who already have it? By the tender age of twenty Aravinda had already mastered the prime directive of Richard Bach's Illusions (which you'll find at the top of this page, because it is the simplest and most perfect advice ever): she was who she is, calm and clear and bright.Lucky for me, some of that sparkle has rubbed off. Today I'm the person I wanted to be back then, and it has a lot to do with my friendship with Minnie Minster. More than she knows, I bet. There are many varieties of friendship, but the best kind offers both friends a continual opportunity to grow into better versions of themselves.  Aravinda is such a rare and lovely bird that to be perfectly honest, I doubted for a long time if there was a guy out there good enough for her. Here's something else I love about who I am these days: I actually enjoy being proven wrong. 

 Wedding photography by Ian Chin.    

Learning to Listen

"Be vigilant, and allow no one to mislead you by saying: 'Here it is!' or 'There it is!' For it is within you that the Son of Man dwells. Go to him, for those who seek him, find him."

—from The Gospel of Mary Magdalene *

Sometimes I'm not sure how much information is too much, so I err on the side of discretion. I started this blog in 2008 as a record of my creative and professional life, and while I might touch on personal stuff from time to time, it's generally from an oblique angle. I don't see the usefulness in telling you I've been through a break-up, for instance, when I could leave it at "Goodbye Galway."I'm not exactly changing my stance on this, but I am increasingly feeling that some topics we might classify as "personal" might also serve a practical purpose. If my goal is to be useful, and something I've learned has helped me tremendously (creatively and personally), then why would I opt not to share it?Because some stuff might strike you as, in a word...weird.If you know me, you know I am a bit of an "odd duck." I think maybe I always have been. I don't want to believe in something just because a so-called authority tells me it's the truth, or because I want to believe it's the truth. It doesn't make sense to me that there could even be ONE objective truth. So I prod and I ruminate, and even though I might say "I believe in this" or "I don't believe in that," I am also willing to be wrong on any given point (and so "I believe" merely serves as an expression of my subjective truth in that particular moment.) It's only logical to me that if I were to say "that's impossible" or "that's not true," then I would be walling myself off from potentially limitless possibilities. Oftentimes "I don't know" feels like the only reasonable response.For me, "being spiritual" doesn't mean strict adherence to a tradition I had no part in making; it means exploring and engaging and growing a little less uncomfortable with uncertainty, calling myself out on the lies I tell myself (and others) that provide me with an illusory sense of comfort and security. Through this process I grow into a better version of myself. I can see my progress through my interactions with loved ones and strangers alike: I am more patient than I used to be, more loving, more willing to consider someone else's perspective rather than jumping into the same old "mental tape" of you did this to me and that's why I'm totally justified in being a passive-aggressive shrew to you right now. (Not to say this never happens anymore, just that it happens less often because I'm actively working on it.)All this is to explain to you why I'd like to start blogging on spiritual topics from time to time. It just isn't enough to tell you that going vegan opened up a whole new realm for me; I have to give you details and specifics, or else none of this really means anything. I trust you'll take or leave any of it as you feel like; and if you choose to leave it, let me clarify that if certain things hadn't happened to me personally, I would be skeptical too.I mentioned in one of my September Squam 2012 recaps that I learned and grew in unexpected ways through a workshop with Marie Manuchehri, who is a very gifted psychic medium and energy worker. Listen to Marie's radio show and you'll hear plenty about Reiki and spirit guides and chakras and past lives and other stuff many people would dismiss as New Age twaddle. And yet, whether in a five-minute call on the radio show or through her private practice, Marie is clearly helping people to heal their physical and emotional traumas. My dear friend Amiee—whom I first met at Squam that weekend—also took Marie's class, and it changed her life even more dramatically. It was Amiee who introduced me, in a very grounded and practical way, to the concept of listening to my body.Back in March, I was feeling trapped for reasons I'll get into some other time. I was spending the weekend at Amiee's house, and we were talking through what was going on with me; and she suggested she do some "energy work" in a spirit of experimentation. Amiee has since completed her Reiki I and II certification, but at this point she was running on 100% intuition.As my friend moved her hands over my arms, legs, and lower back, I felt some pretty weird stuff welling up. I felt like crying, so I did. I have no idea how long the session lasted—half an hour? an hour? fifteen minutes?—but at the end of it I felt deeply mellow yet revived and refreshed. At the risk of giving you way too much information (okay, I know this is TMI, but it's useful TMI, remember?), even if I hadn't believed in any of this to begin with, over the next few hours and into the next day I made many more trips to the bathroom than I ordinarily would have. It was a concrete and measurable (ha) reaction—this was for real—and it was also extremely healthy.It turned out that the whole point of this energy work was the release of stagnant emotions I was holding in various parts of my body, stuff that had originated in childhood (and well before that, too, if you believe in that sort of thing). I felt, again, all the anger and frustration and deep disappointment that my parents could not have been the people I wanted them to be. (No doubt everyone goes through this, but it seems like other people don't hold on to things the way I always have. Or maybe I'm just doing that inside-outside comparison again.)At any rate, I understood—truly understood, for the first time—that these were my emotions to process and release, that it would not do to go on blaming my parents for what I'd been feeling all this time. (One unexpected result of this shift is a delicious new sense of mental and emotional and even physical space—space that I can use for something new! As Marie Forleo says in last week's MarieTV episode, "You can't have really amazing stuff show up in your life if you don't have room for it.")The emotional release wasn't the only surprise: Amiee had been having a conversation with my organs. "Your liver is happy. Your spleen and pancreas are content, but they'd be happier if you ate some fresh greens." (Amiee and I had eaten well that weekend, but before that I have to admit I'd been noshing on too much bread and Vegenaise.) But the real aha moment came when she said, "Your uterus is exhausted."Last TMI moment of this post, I promise! In the interest of environmental responsibility, I had been using devices like this in lieu of sanitary pads and tampons for more than ten years, and had continued to use a cup even though I'd never found it comfortable. C'mon, lady, my uterus seemed to be saying. Just get yourself some Luna pads so I can chill.Why the heck would I spend ten years doing something that made me uncomfortable? Because I wasn't listening to my body.Since that strange and wonderful day at Amiee's apartment, I have had one more body wake-up call, and this one happened without any help. I was at the end of a box of contact lenses, and every time I reminded myself to order a new supply a little voice would say, Don't. Don't order any more contact lenses. Your eyes need a rest.In the meantime, I was wearing my last pair well past the point at which I ought to have tossed them, and I will admit that this wasn't the only time I was guilty of overwearing. I finally went to see an optician at Copley Square, and told her I wanted to buy my first new eyeglasses since 2004.When the doctor finished examining my eyes she said, "It's a very good thing you came in. You've been wearing contact lenses for so long that your corneas are cutting off the blood supply, which means that blood vessels are beginning to grow in the corners of your eyes to get fresh oxygen to your irises. We've caught it early so there's no damage yet, but if you'd waited much longer the blood vessels might have grown to the point at which they interfered with your vision—and that is irreversible."WHOOOOOOOOOOOA.That was much too weird for coincidence, right? I knew what was going on in my body; I just needed to pause and actually pay it some attention.Doesn't it feel like we're working against our bodies more often than not? We get frustrated when a cold or stomach bug slows us down, we slap all sorts of chemicals on our skin, we eat food we know will give us indigestion (or worse). And that's the tame stuff. Here's where I think the early Christian ascetics got it entirely ass-backwards (ha, ha): the spiritual is rooted in the physical. If we don't first know what's going on in our bodies, we won't have a clue in any other respect. (My daily yoga practice is helping me tremendously with this process as well, but I'll write about that later.)So...if you've read this far, I thank you for hearing me out. This subject might seem like an odd departure for me, but it feels absolutely right. As I said though, if it's not for you, I won't mind a bit if you'd rather skip it.Also, I'll be tying in the vegan angle to a greater extent in future posts; looking back on the past three years, it's actually been quite a clear progression of experiences from Harmony Homestead Farm to Sadhana Forest to Squam to Hawthornden, all of which helped me clarify my path and purpose—and, piece by piece, allowed me to "tune in" in ways I'd never even dreamed of before.There is some crazy-marvelous stuff underway here, and I'm very excited to hear how your own experiences compare!  *  Research reading for Immaculate Heart. It's fascinating how much of this gospel controverts Church dogma. The Teacher is within you? No wonder they suppressed it!

The Lost Religion of Jesus

Rosslyn Chapel.And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food." And it was so.

(Genesis 1:30)

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, then you have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.

—St. Francis of Assisi

Within Christianity there is not a real consciousness about diet. But someday the Church will wake up and realize that an ethical diet is necessary to a moral way of life.

—Brother Ron Pickarski, OFM

While I was at Hawthornden back in January, I went with a few of my fellow writers to the Sunday service at the 15th-century Rosslyn Chapel. We'd come mostly to soak up the medieval atmosphere; it's been a long time since I set foot in a church hoping to emerge again with any sort of insight or answer.The second time I attended this Church of Scotland service, the minister—a jovial middle-aged man—opened his sermon with a joke about the Findus horse meat scandal. I stared at him in disbelief. As he segued into a second joke about Little Bo Peep finding her sheep on the shelf at Tesco, I took a white-knuckled grip on my seat in the pew, quivering with indignation (and if you know me, you know I'm not exaggerating).I didn't hear another word he said. All I could think was, How can I look to this person for spiritual guidance?Until that moment, I might have made a casual assertion now and then that Jesus was a vegetarian. But when I heard the minister make those jokes about the slaughter of innocent animals, I knew it was true. How could the man who preached "do unto others," a man we sometimes refer to as "the prince of peace," actually sit down to dine on animal flesh?Turns out there's a wealth of evidence to support this intuition, and a trove of interesting books to interpret it. I recently finished The Lost Religion of Jesus: Simple Living and Nonviolence in Early Christianity by Keith Akers, and right now I'm reading Rynn Berry's Food for the Gods: Vegetarianism and the World's Religions. You'll recall that Professor Berry gave us an excellent talk on the history of veganism on our last morning at Main Street Vegan Academy; and before we go any further, I should underline the rich historical precedent for vegetarianism. The Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, whom you remember as the guy who came up with a² + b² = c², was also an ethical vegetarian; his many followers (and all who came after) were known as "Pythagoreans" up until the mid 19th century, when the word "vegetarian" was coined.In Food for the Gods, Berry writes:

Evidence for Jesus's vegetarianism in the canonical gospels is circumstantial, but nonetheless compelling. Ethical vegetarians find it inconceivable that such a potent religious figure and moral teacher could have slit the throat of an animal, or have eaten the cooked body parts of an animal. Apart from the moral impropriety of such a diet, flesh (not excluding the flesh of fish) was an extremely scarce commodity in the ancient world and would have been considered a luxurious food; it would have been out of character for a man who stressed simplicity and frugality in living to be eating such opulent food.

Speaking of frugality and simple living, I'll give you just one reason why I feel so uneasy in the religion I inherited, and why I avoid my hometown parish: the pastor built himself a three-car garage to house his Lexus (and two other cars, perhaps?) I'm certainly not saying the man should be living in a hovel and walking two miles to work, but a fancy car and a three-car garage built with parish funds don't qualify as "simple living" by any stretch of the imagination. People like to think of themselves as "good Christians," but how many of them actually live by the principles Jesus espoused?But I'm getting ahead of myself here. How do we know what Jesus really said—and what he actually ate? We must re-examine everything we think we know about him, teasing out the underlying motives of early church leaders. The Bible, as any rational Christian will admit, was written by human beings, each of whom had their own agenda. Nor does the Bible contain every worthy piece of scripture; many documents written by early followers and contemporaries of Jesus were jettisoned (or perhaps "suppressed" is a more accurate term) by Church "fathers." The discovery of the  Nag Hammadi gospels in Egypt in 1945 yielded alternative accounts of Jesus's life and message, such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Philip, and the Apocalypse of James. Keith Akers also draws on contemporary sources (like Epiphanius of Salamis), not all of whom were sympathetic toward those Jewish sects who lived by the teachings of Jesus (and if someone who obviously doesn't like or agree with you says nice things about you, we can feel that much more confident that those nice things are true).Akers makes the distinction, first and foremost, between Jewish Christians and gentile Christians. The first group was comprised of several similar sects, many of whom were considered heretical by the Jewish establishment; the Jewish Christians believed that Jesus was the prophet of whom Moses spoke, and that he had come not to establish his own religion, but to correct the false and adulterated parts of their scriptures (directions for animal sacrifice being but one example). Jewish Christian sects like the Ebionites (from the Hebrew ebionim, "the poor") lived in pacifist communities, pooling their resources and eating a vegetarian diet. It is very likely that Jesus lived and preached within just such a community; the apocryphal scriptures indicate that he overturned the money-changers' tables in the temple because he was opposed to the needless slaughter of oxen, sheep, goats, pigeons, and doves—that there was nothing "holy" about it! The priests, who lived on these offerings, were none too pleased of course—and if all this is true, it follows that Jesus would be arrested and crucified on the priests' instigation. (So many things about my religion just didn't make sense to me until I read these books.)As for gentile Christianity, Akers makes a fascinating point: that pacifism was a highly inconvenient principle vis-à-vis Constantine and his army, who converted en masse after the emperor, prompted by a vision, bade his army mark their shields with crosses before a military triumph. It is this faction, of course, which took over the "Christian" message and its dissemination, diluting or overlooking the most basic tenets of nonviolence and simple living. The Jewish Christians remembered and lived by these principles, but they weren't accepted by either orthodox Judaism or gentile Christianity, and as pacifists they suffered tremendously through a series of Jewish revolts against Rome in 66-70, 117, and 132-135 CE. Though contemporary sources tell us they regrouped at Pella after the first revolt around 70 CE, and through geographical description Matthew pinpoints his own location in that vicinity (thus bolstering the case that the Ebionites' version of the gospel was the original), Jewish Christianity was destined to remain on the fringes of this new world religion. Akers writes, "When the larger gentile Christian church drove out Jewish Christianity...it also lost the core of Jesus' teachings." Hugely influential Church fathers like St. Paul, who introduced the concept of "original sin," were instrumental in this adulteration process; contemporary sources tell us that the Jewish Christians were ardently opposed to Paul's methods, believing that he corrupted Jesus's teachings to suit his own ends. Those who came out on top politically were those who established the doctrine—a belief system Jesus himself would not recognize.

* * *

While the church rejected the requirement for vegetarianism, it is indisputable that there were very large numbers of vegetarians in early Christianity. In fact, there are hardly any references to any early Christians eating meat. The view that Jesus ate meat creates a paradox: vegetarianism was practiced by the apostles and numerous early followers of Jesus, including Jesus' own brother, but not by Jesus himself! It is as if everyone in the early church understood the message except the messenger. The much more likely explanation is that the original tradition was vegetarian, but that under the pressure of expediency and the popularity of Paul's writings in the second century, vegetarianism was first dropped as a requirement and finally even as a desideratum.

—Keith Akers, The Lost Religion of Jesus

* * *

Regarding Jesus's possible vegetarianism, the first problem that comes to mind is that classic story of the loaves and the fishes. In Food for the Gods, Professor Berry points out that we must revisit the original Greek to find out if there actually were fishes served at that wedding feast:

Now, most translators render opsaria as sardines or little fish, but opsaria which comes from the Greek opson (relish) also meant "relish"; so it's possible to translate it as five loaves and two "relishes," "dainties," or "tidbits."

Professor Berry mentioned in his lecture that "relish" is the primary meaning of the original word used, and "little fish" only the tertiary meaning. Furthermore, bread with some sort of relish was a commonplace meal in first-century Palestine:

In Jesus's time, they dipped their loaf in relish or they tore off pieces of bread from the loaf and dipped it in the opsarion, or relish, which might have consisted of finely chopped olives with spices or ground sesame paste.

In other words, "The Loaves and the Fishes" might rightfully be retranslated as "The Loaves and the Hummus." Of course, Rynn Berry and his colleagues have pointed out other mistranslations; considering man's place among the animals, for instance, "dominion" is very different from "stewardship." It's the difference between a guardian and a slave driver. As the Rev. Andrew Linzey says in his Food for the Gods interview, "The original author [of Genesis] was seeking to describe a relationship—not of egotistical exploitation—but of care for the earth. It's extraordinary that almost 2,000 years of biblical exegesis should so often have overlooked the radical vegetarian message in Genesis I."As I sat through the rest of the sermon that morning, I knew I had a choice to make. I could behave as I always had—i.e., fuming in silence—or I could push past the nervous twisting in my guts to speak my mind in a calm, rational, mature way. I really didn't want to walk to the back of the church when the service was over, and wait in the vestibule doorway while a mother and her young son spoke to the reverend about some ordinary piece of church business—but I knew I had to if I was going to become the person I'd been saying I wanted to grow into. (I'm reminded of something else Rev. Linzey said in his interview: "At particular moments, almost against oneself, one finds the energy to do seemingly impossible things.")So I waited. And once the parishioners had said goodbye, I stepped forward. "Reverend, may I tell you what's on my mind?" He said yes, of course, and I went on, "I was upset by the Little Bo Peep joke you made at the beginning of your sermon. I believe that if we want to see peace in the world we have to start with our own stomachs"—he laughed when I said this, but not unkindly—"and that's why I'm vegan. I'm not going to try to convince you of anything, I just needed to express this to you."The minister replied in a warm and genuinely concerned attitude, apologizing if he had offended me and remarking that he had several colleagues who were vegan. I thanked him for allowing me to "speak my truth" and rejoined my friends in the pew. But I couldn't focus on their conversation; my whole body thrummed with excited energy. I'd been able to turn that knot of frustrated nervous disappointment in my stomach into something constructive, and there is no way I can adequately describe to you just how wonderful it felt.I guess we'll never know for certain that Jesus was a vegetarian, but there is far too much "circumstantial" evidence to overlook the idea. He taught his followers to love God, and love one another—indeed, the entire religion is based upon this simple principle!—and if we are to conduct our lives in this way, it ultimately makes no sense to practice compassion only for our fellow humans.In this blog post I am truly only scratching the surface of this topic; if you are a devout Christian, I highly encourage you to read these books, and think long and critically about what you believe in. I've put together this (non-exhaustive) reading list for myself (drawn from the extensive bibliographies of Berry and Akers), and it includes titles by veg(etari)an theologians:

Is God a Vegetarian?: Christianity, Vegetarianism, and Animal Rights by Richard A. Young

The Vegetarianism of Jesus Christ by Charles Vaclavik

The Birth of Christianity: Reality and Myth by Joel Carmichael

Jewish Christianity: Factional Disputes in the Early Church by Hans-Joachim Schoeps [this one I'll have to find at a good library!]

The Master: His Life and Teachings by John Todd FerrierThe Other Gospels: The Non-Canonical Gospel Texts, edited by Ron Cameron

Animal Theology and Christianity and the Rights of Animals by Rev. Andrew Linzey

Dominion: the Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy by Matthew Scully

For Love of Animals: Christian Ethics, Consistent Action by Charles Camosy.

I no longer feel comfortable identifying myself as a Christian for reasons outlined above—and yet, as a vegan, I want to follow Jesus's example in a way I never felt inspired to do when I was a card-carrying Catholic.

Life After Life After Life

(Main Street Vegan Academy, part 4.)I was staying downtown (more on that tomorrow), so on Sunday afternoon I took a wander through the Trinity churchyard.Every time I see an 18th-century grave marker I'm fascinated, again, by the phrase departed this life. I like to take the words out of their Christian context, and simply consider death as an onward journey. I can almost get excited when you frame it that way--as J.M. Barrie put it, "an awfully big adventure."One of the doors to Grace Church.On the other hand, don't we "depart this life" and begin another quite frequently throughout our lives? Coming back to New York often feels like peeping in on that version I was living twelve or fourteen years ago. I pass Grace Church on Broadway, and remember how I admired the view over the churchyard from the window of an NYU dorm room when I was visiting as a high school senior. I walk through Washington Square Park, and think back on all the conversations I've had there, all the interesting people who came in and out of my life.(Some things thread themselves through, joining each chapter together: to the end of my life (the actual end), whenever I see hydrangeas, I will always think of my sister.)Maybe it's odd that I love graveyards as much as I do. Part of it is the romance and the gothic flavor and all that, but there's a practical reason too. We need every reminder that our lives won't last forever, that we must experience them as fully as we can—the highs and the lows, avoiding none of the messiness. Those colonial New Yorkers have had their turn; now it's ours.

An Edible Churchyard

I have a big post coming up soon on veganism and Christianity. In the meantime, here are some shots from Old South Church, which has an organic heirloom kitchen garden to benefit homeless women and children through a charity called the Women's Lunch Place.If I wanted to belong to a church again, here is still more evidence why I'd consider this one.(Kate and I went inside while she was visiting last month.)Stopped by the farmers' market across the street (it's open Tuesdays and Fridays) for some beets and dinosaur kale (so called, I guess, because the leaves are huge. Sweet and juicy too, perfect for juicing). Hooray for local produce!!!

You Will Be Deleted!

 For over a year now there has been an elephant in this room (if we imagine, for a moment, my blog as a physical space). Have you noticed that new copies of Petty Magic are no longer available online? That the novel was never issued in paperback?These are minor disappointments in the cosmic scheme of things—a writer's career knows peaks and troughs like any other line of work—but when I reflect on the fact that I am 32 years old and already out of print, I can't help thinking of the Cybermen on Doctor Who. Right before they blast you into oblivion, they announce in booming robotic monotone, YOU WILL BE DELETED!  I laugh when I draw this comparison, because of course I'd much rather be out of print than blasted into oblivion. No matter what happens, I feel blessed to be alive and healthy and living my joy (especially when horrible things happen). I can't stake my happiness on factors beyond my control—like, say, the decision of some anonymous number cruncher in a Manhattan skyscraper. To do so would be the very definition of insanity, as I wrote on my friend Nova's blog last year. If I hadn't had this pinchy, seemingly-humiliating, sometimes-frustrating-as-hell experience, I would not be the person I am now, and I like this version of myself better than any I've ever been.That said, I wish we writers could be more candid with each other (and with our readers) about the challenges we face. When I found out Petty Magic would not be published in paperback, and again when the book went out of print, I felt embarrassed and ashamed, as if I could have prevented it by doing more on social media or being more assertive with my publicist. I didn't feel that I could speak honestly about my experience for several reasons: because friends' careers seemed to be going well and I didn't want to rain on anyone else's parade; fear of my frankness being perceived as "sour grapes"; or an ego-driven impulse to pretend things were going well for me work-wise so that no one would think of me as a failure.But as I told a friend who is in a similarly difficult situation right now, no one will think you're a failure, and if they do, they're no friend of yours anyway. When it comes to art, the only failure is in never having tried. I believe that with my whole heart.So where does this leave me now? Goodness, there's a lot to tell you! As I mentioned recently, over the past couple of years I've written two novels: a children's novel and an adult novel I initially thought would be YA since the protagonist is sixteen. This novel, Bones & All, was the project I was revising at Hawthornden this past January, and we put it through a couple more rounds before my agent submitted it to Crown as my option project. We fully expected they'd decline to publish it simply because my first two books did not make them any money. When everyone who loves your work is let go, all that's left is "the bottom line." (When I first started as an editorial assistant at HarperCollins almost 11 years ago, I was shocked when a jaded young colleague said, "You think you're part of something noble here, but at the end of the day, it's just another book—a product like anything else.")But I have good news for you. I've been given a new home and a fresh start, and I will share all the details with you very soon.As for Petty Magic? There's an audiobook in the works through ACX (short for Audiobook Creation Exchange), which means you'll be able to purchase it through Audible or iTunes starting sometime in July. I've found a marvelous narrator—or rather, she found me!—and I'm really excited to hear her bring Eve and the beldames' world to life. Unfortunately, in order to get the rights back to produce the audiobook, Crown had to take the ebook off the market. We're investigating some options for digital reissue, I have hopes of a second chance in paperback once Bones & All becomes a solid seller, and in the meantime the hardcover is still available on Amazon at a bargain price.Thank you so, so much for all your enthusiasm and support over the past six years. I can't express how grateful I am for you faithful readers and friends! 

The Heart is a Compass

After that rather enigmatic post two weeks back, a couple of friends (faithful blog readers—thank you, thank you!) were a bit concerned when I wrote that "some important people in my life aren't going to like the direction I'm headed in." It's nothing dramatic, it's just the ordinary resistance you experience when the people who have always loved you don't see why you need to change.This is how I feel on the inside, every day.As you may know, I went vegan two years ago this month. I have never felt happier, more loving or more at peace with my place in the world. I have never felt such clarity of mind and purpose. I am more honest than I used to be, and every day I experience joy and gratitude on way deeper levels. I love the lifestyle so much that I want to share this feeling with anyone who is open to it!This is the shift I was alluding to a few weeks ago: I will always write novels, but novels aren't enough. So in June I'll be training with Victoria Moran to become a vegan lifestyle coach, with a focus on veganism for enhanced creativity. I am insanely excited about this new epoch in my career; I can see my life unfolding decade by decade toward (and past) the century mark, and this really is the beginning of the big work. No matter your dietary habits or personal philosophy, I trust you will support me as I make myself as useful as I can possibly be. (Later on in the summer I'll be launching a brand-new website, which will have my book stuff and the vegan coaching stuff all in one place. I'm also making the jump to Wordpress, which means I'll have spam filters that actually work!)I want to tell you more about the internal changes I experienced when I went vegan at Sadhana Forest two years ago, so you see how the shift came about and why I believe in the connection between veganism and creativity.I arrived in India a longtime vegetarian feeling increasingly uneasy about consuming dairy products, although I wasn't able to articulate this until afterward. I was really excited at the prospect of spending a month in a vegan community, so when Jamey sat down next to me at dinner one night and asked, "What's keeping you from going vegan?", I was totally ready to hear him out. He spoke his truth, and it became my truth. It felt like my head had cracked itself open and a great white light was shining through. Or—if you want to describe it more prosaically—a light bulb went off.

You are still hurting animals by consuming their milk and eggs.

You were not built to eat these things.

The world will be a better place for your choosing not to eat them any longer.

I was giddy with joy for having made the choice to go vegan. And then, a few days later, I came down with sunstroke.I'd been drinking lots of water, but I hadn't been getting enough electrolytes. (It happened to pretty much everyone at some point.) So I spent six days in the "healing hut," alternately stumbling to the toilets and taking reluctant sips of downright nasty electrolyte powders dissolved in water. I slept a lot.It sounds miserable, I know. I was miserable. But my brain was alight, and whenever I woke up from a fever dream I had to scribble in my journal. I finally got "the click" for my epic Edinburgh novel, what McCormick has referred to (bless her!) as "my Wolf Hall." I tossed, I turned, I roused myself and wrote GOTHIC SATIRE! in exuberant capitals. I'd been waiting a long time for that click, and when it happened I momentarily forgot how rotten I felt. Looking back on those six days in the healing hut, I wonder if my body checked out so that my brain could process the leaps I was taking--psychologically, spiritually, and creatively.It may seem at first like I'm making too much of this--making a connection between going vegan and getting good ideas when it's just a coincidence--but believe me, it isn't. Ever since I began writing in earnest in 2002, I have had "trough periods" in between novel projects. These periods could last up to two years, and were characterized by false starts, frustration, and plenty of self doubt. Before I went vegan, whatever new story I tried to work on right after a successful project was doomed, inevitably: there was a ghost novel between the practice novel and Mary Modern, another two or three ghost novels between Mary Modern and Petty Magic, and yet another one afterward. It bugged the hell out of me, but I figured this was just the way things were. This was how my brain worked, right? Wasn't it just the nature of the creative cycle?Not at all! The past two years have been my most prolific by far. I've written two novels, one of which--a children's novel—I believe to be my best work. The other one, a new novel for adults (which I originally took for YA because the narrator is a teenager), is my agent's favorite out of everything I've written. I have never written two successful novels in as many years before. I have never transitioned so seamlessly from one project to the next and back again. (I began with the adult novel in June 2011, pressed pause to write the children's novel in early 2012, then returned to it at the end of last summer.)The ideas keep coming, and these days everything clicks. I have my Edinburgh novel to look forward to along with another adult novel I may end up writing first (I actually wrote the first 10,000 words while I was in India), more travel writing (travelogues! YES!), and more stories for children. I have never felt so inspired, and I know it's because I am striving to live with greater compassion and authenticity. And of course, on a physical level, I am thinking more clearly because I am no longer putting unnatural, disease-promoting substances in my body.Why shouldn't everyone feel this amazing? Why shouldn't you?* * *I was trying to think of a catchy title for this post, and when I thought of "The Heart is a Compass" some other part of my brain kept wanting to replace it with "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." It's the title of a novel by Carson McCullers, which I remember as very finely written but relentlessly depressing. There is a piece of classic Yaddo gossip to do with McCullers crushing on Katherine Anne Porter, to the point where she literally curled up and fell asleep on the floor outside KAP's bedroom door, and from what I've read about her, McCullers had a rather short and not particularly happy life. I'm bringing all this up because that particular string of words, "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter," serves as a stark reminder that our thoughts really do create our reality. So here goes:My heart is never lonely.My heart is always full.