{merchFetch tpl="merchStampsA.html" hasImage="1" isbn="0-307-33679-4,11-99-02948-3,1-888305-78-9,11-99-02709-x" cache="20"}
Right after I graduated from college, I worked for awhile as a bus person at Greens Restaurant owned by the San Francisco Zen Center. The restaurant is in Fort Mason, formerly the military headquarters for the US Army on the West Coast and now a center for arts and non-profit organizations. The dining area looks out onto the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge and after each lunch shift everyone would put in an order to the kitchen for a meal and the whole staff would sit in the empty restaurant with the light streaming in and enjoy lunch together, looking out at the Marin Headlands and the seals that sometimes came around. When I worked there, everyone received a wage without tips, and the floor staff would clean up with the kitchen staff, scrubbing pots and rinsing off floor mats. It was great fun working together so hard, the atmosphere was friendly, warm, bustling, but also peaceful.
Greens got much of their produce from Green Gulch Farm, an organic farm in Marin county also owned by the Zen Center and at the time (and still) restaurants that were using locally grown produce were well connected, so I heard about Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley and I bought a cookbook by her. I remember my efforts to cook a few of those recipes didn’t turn out so well. The recipes were mostly three pages long, many of the ingredients were exotic and not readily available, often specialized equipment was required or long, involved multi-step processes. I tried a couple of the recipes, but quickly moved on to other cookbooks.
![]()
A couple of years ago Alice Waters published another cookbook, The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution and it has become my most frequently used cookbook. The first half of the book is a primer on cooking techniques including menu planning, salads, soup, bread, beans, pasta, frying, slow cooking, etc. Each chapter offers succinct helpful advice on food preparation illustrated with a recipe or two and possible variations. The rest of the book is recipes, simple, each with few ingredients, most of which take 15 to 20 minutes to prepare, with variations listed for each. It’s simple enough for a beginning cook and substantial enough for a seasoned cook. It does what few cookbooks I’ve seen do – invites you into the discipline of cooking, providing tips and guidance to dive in, but also a simple frame from which to depart and find one’s own way.
This cookbook for me is an illustration of the fruit of faithfully practicing an art or discipline over time – what was complex and arduous to discover becomes simple in its expression and manifestation. Alice Waters probably couldn’t have written this cookbook as her first - as she has practiced it, her relationship with the art of cooking has brought her to the simple core of her particular way of cooking and she has learned to convey the underlying principles of her work to others. She makes it ‘look easy’ even as the understanding she has gleaned has come with the daily practice of cooking for others over decades.
![]()
Paulette Meier’s new CD Timeless Quaker Wisdom in Plain Song also conveys that same distillation of a practice or understanding down to its essence. Paulette shares rich quotations from Quakers in a style similar to Gregorian chant. She says that each of these songs came to her fully formed, often out of worship and that she began setting these words to music because she felt a desire to internalize them, make them a part of her. Creating and singing these chant/song versions helped her to do that. Her full, lucid, crystalline voice and the potent melodies combine to create a tool to deeply center by. Several times I’ve felt distracted, restless and I’ve listened to this CD and it has grounded me, immediately, and helped me to open to the present moment. To get a taste of these wonderful songs, you can listen to sample tracks here.
![]()
Faith & Play, the Quaker curriculum based on Godly Play®, is an approach to teaching Quakerism deeply rooted in foundational stories of Quaker faith. The seed for each story arises out of dialogue and worship, then is collaboratively developed with the Faith & Play Working Group, tested extensively with children in meetings, and finally refined based on that experience. Through this process the essence of the message and the story are discovered and honed. My experience of telling and hearing the stories is that they have become koans of Quaker faith, small nuggets and puzzles of wisdom that are often remembered and considered by those who hear them. My son, Simon, can remember almost every Faith & Play story he’s heard, and can sometimes recite back to me lines from the stories. Through practice, these stories have illuminated the simple wisdom in each of these Quaker tales. A new edition of the Faith & Play curriculum was just released by Quaker Press of FGC, including two new stories Let Your Life Speak - A story about the testimonies and what happens whenwe live our lives guided by Spirit and Friends Meeting for Business - A story about meeting for worship with an attention to business. You can purchase it either as a downloadable .pdf or a full color printed version.
![]()
QuakerBooks of FGC has recently begun distributing publications by AFSC. One item that is older, but still oh, so relevant is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham City Jail. In it King responds to a public letter from eight Alabama clergymen calling the protests in Birmingham “unwise” and “untimely” and urging that the demonstrations cease and that “honest convictions in racial matters could properly be pursued in the courts.” The letter in response is a remarkable example of King’s stirring convictions and incredibly clear, resonant, and beautiful language expressing a pathway and vision to a world beyond division and oppression, a world he could describe because he walked in its light. He says, words with which you may be familiar, “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.” In these times, when the birth pangs of transformation and resistance in response are all around us, these are words to be nourished by.
![]()
One by Kathryn Otoshi is the best book I’ve seen for children on bullying and nonviolent resistance. The story is incredibly simple, but through gestural, colorful drawings and spare text Otoshi tells a powerful story of an encounter with a pushy personality and a loving, clear, strong response that is persuasive and inviting. The dust jacket text says it well: “Blue is a quiet color. Red is a hot head. Red likes to pick on Blue. Yellow, Green, Purple, and Orange don’t like what they see, but what can they do? When no one takes a stand, things get out of hand. Until One comes along and shows all the colors how to stand up and count!” One not only demonstrates an effective nonviolent intervention, but also lovingly invites Red back into the circle. There is real depth to the metaphor in this story as well, and it can be read on many levels.
Blessings,
Lucy
A couple of years ago Alice Waters published another cookbook, The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution and it has become my most frequently used cookbook. The first half of the book is a primer on cooking techniques including menu planning, salads, soup, bread, beans, pasta, frying, slow cooking, etc. Each chapter offers succinct helpful advice on food preparation illustrated with a recipe or two and possible variations. The rest of the book is recipes, simple, each with few ingredients, most of which take 15 to 20 minutes to prepare, with variations listed for each. It’s simple enough for a beginning cook and substantial enough for a seasoned cook. It does what few cookbooks I’ve seen do – invites you into the discipline of cooking, providing tips and guidance to dive in, but also a simple frame from which to depart and find one’s own way.
This cookbook for me is an illustration of the fruit of faithfully practicing an art or discipline over time – what was complex and arduous to discover becomes simple in its expression and manifestation. Alice Waters probably couldn’t have written this cookbook as her first - as she has practiced it, her relationship with the art of cooking has brought her to the simple core of her particular way of cooking and she has learned to convey the underlying principles of her work to others. She makes it ‘look easy’ even as the understanding she has gleaned has come with the daily practice of cooking for others over decades.
Paulette Meier’s new CD Timeless Quaker Wisdom in Plain Song also conveys that same distillation of a practice or understanding down to its essence. Paulette shares rich quotations from Quakers in a style similar to Gregorian chant. She says that each of these songs came to her fully formed, often out of worship and that she began setting these words to music because she felt a desire to internalize them, make them a part of her. Creating and singing these chant/song versions helped her to do that. Her full, lucid, crystalline voice and the potent melodies combine to create a tool to deeply center by. Several times I’ve felt distracted, restless and I’ve listened to this CD and it has grounded me, immediately, and helped me to open to the present moment. To get a taste of these wonderful songs, you can listen to sample tracks here.
Faith & Play, the Quaker curriculum based on Godly Play®, is an approach to teaching Quakerism deeply rooted in foundational stories of Quaker faith. The seed for each story arises out of dialogue and worship, then is collaboratively developed with the Faith & Play Working Group, tested extensively with children in meetings, and finally refined based on that experience. Through this process the essence of the message and the story are discovered and honed. My experience of telling and hearing the stories is that they have become koans of Quaker faith, small nuggets and puzzles of wisdom that are often remembered and considered by those who hear them. My son, Simon, can remember almost every Faith & Play story he’s heard, and can sometimes recite back to me lines from the stories. Through practice, these stories have illuminated the simple wisdom in each of these Quaker tales. A new edition of the Faith & Play curriculum was just released by Quaker Press of FGC, including two new stories Let Your Life Speak - A story about the testimonies and what happens whenwe live our lives guided by Spirit and Friends Meeting for Business - A story about meeting for worship with an attention to business. You can purchase it either as a downloadable .pdf or a full color printed version.
QuakerBooks of FGC has recently begun distributing publications by AFSC. One item that is older, but still oh, so relevant is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham City Jail. In it King responds to a public letter from eight Alabama clergymen calling the protests in Birmingham “unwise” and “untimely” and urging that the demonstrations cease and that “honest convictions in racial matters could properly be pursued in the courts.” The letter in response is a remarkable example of King’s stirring convictions and incredibly clear, resonant, and beautiful language expressing a pathway and vision to a world beyond division and oppression, a world he could describe because he walked in its light. He says, words with which you may be familiar, “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.” In these times, when the birth pangs of transformation and resistance in response are all around us, these are words to be nourished by.
One by Kathryn Otoshi is the best book I’ve seen for children on bullying and nonviolent resistance. The story is incredibly simple, but through gestural, colorful drawings and spare text Otoshi tells a powerful story of an encounter with a pushy personality and a loving, clear, strong response that is persuasive and inviting. The dust jacket text says it well: “Blue is a quiet color. Red is a hot head. Red likes to pick on Blue. Yellow, Green, Purple, and Orange don’t like what they see, but what can they do? When no one takes a stand, things get out of hand. Until One comes along and shows all the colors how to stand up and count!” One not only demonstrates an effective nonviolent intervention, but also lovingly invites Red back into the circle. There is real depth to the metaphor in this story as well, and it can be read on many levels.
Blessings,
Lucy