For the 3rd time in a month, I found my hands in a mix of flour and water.  This time, it’s nixtamalized corn meal (corn is treated with lye to make it store better, and to prevent pellagra) for making corn tortillas.

 

And before that it was fry bread (Native American bread, made from the sorts of things that came in commodity food boxes in the early reservation years. Before that, it was Roti, an Indian flatbread made from wheat flour.

 

Cooking has always been a source of grounding for me – a thing to do when I’m overwhelmed. Because the repetitive acts of cooking – chopping, stirring, kneading – are like a moving meditation.

But there are spiritual aspects beyond that meditation. I’ve been exploring the foods of my ancestors, and expanding our menu here a bit. While my Native ancestors weren’t farmers, they likely knew of corn from others….and it’s definitely native to North America.

While there are groups out there promoting only eating what our ancestors ate for our own health…more than half of my ancestors are, we believe, from Europe (I guess I’ll know soon – 23&Me is running a study on mental health and genetics, and by getting into the study, I get my DNA done for free). They had wheat, milk, and domesticated animals. So I don’t think we’ll be cutting any foods completely out of our diets anytime soon.

But there’s something to be said for making connections with the earth and our ancestors via food – most families have those recipes handed down from parent to child. There’s magic in cooking from scratch – turning random things into a totally different dish.

Next up, I’m trying out some traditional dishes involving “wild rice”  (Native American wild rice isn’t really rice, it’s a grain from another type of plant) and corn soup. Good fall dishes for celebrating all the harvest festivals.

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The back corner of our yard has, in the more than a decade we’ve lived here, become the place I leave offerings and libations. Particularly for Big Dark & Scary – libations are a significant part of my relationship with Her.

This year things have been busy, and the opportunities for ritual have been few.

For the holiday weekend, I wanted to make use of the mulberries that grow everywhere in our yard. In the past, we’ve picked handfuls to eat, but not much more, because the “bushes” are trees taller than our 2-story Colonial home. Surprisingly, the branches we normally can reach were far out of reach this year – apparently the continued pruning to keep them high enough to mow over is finally working.

Instead, along the back fence, near my little devotionary corner, there’s a new “volunteer” bush. It, along with other plants back there, have taken over the corner.

The interesting thing was that this new bush had plenty of berries in reach – in all states of ripeness (or lack thereof).  So I got my berries anyway, thanks to the plants overgrowing the  corner that I think of as mine.

And a thought occurred to me: Sometimes, even when our path becomes overgrown, it still bears fruit. It’s often hidden, and we have to look for it – but then, if we hadn’t let the path become overgrown, there wouldn’t be fruit to look for.

What fruit has your path brought you lately?

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It’s been an odd few months, even for us. A lack of sleep is generally causing a lack of motivation on all fronts, and fixing the sleep issues has been more challenging than one might hope.

In the midst of this all, I’ve been feeling rather lost, spiritually speaking. No time for full rituals, and meditation is right out – I fall asleep – and many of the other things that I used to do are just darn hard with things here the way they are.

But….as always, where there’s a will, there’s a way. Big Dark & Scary has been waiting patiently, and finally poked me the other day. Because, you know, when your primary matron deity is good at breaking down barriers and making changes happen, and you ignore that idea for too long, She gets cranky. Through an odd series of events, I came across a page of mantras for Her, and it occurred to me that I could do that. Daily even.

And from there, down the rabbit hole I went, reading different mantras and looking at prayer beads and knowing exactly what I wanted….and then realizing that with the schedule this week, there was just no way to make it happen, even if I could find appropriate supplies locally.

I was going to put it off, but instead I went to a local craft store and went and played in the bead aisle, looking for what felt right. In the end, I settled on something a little less flashy than the original plan (something that still stands out, but won’t be considered a problem at work).  Dyed red quartzite, red lava rocks, black glass beads, and some smaller glass crystals make up the mala bracelet I’m now wearing, and I’ve already used it several times to run through a set of mantras.

So here’s hoping that this small step will lead to some other changes in the right direction.

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