Gratitude day 2: Coffee, beans and a bandaid paradox
Yesterday, Alaska’s governor announced a state-wide shelter-in-place order. I cried a lot afterward. Later in the day, I found myself wondering how soon I’d run out of things to thank God for — or if I would at least end up making repeat thanks.
But the Jewish Tanakh (what Christians call the Old Testament) says God’s mercies are new every morning. Interestingly, that verse comes not from the Psalms, as I first expected, but Lamentations — a book entirely devoted to grief at a world run amok. How striking that in the midst of such extended mourning, the author can nonetheless proclaim the sufficiency and creativity of God’s provision.
As it happened, I thought of nearly a dozen things for which to thank God during my first couple hours up today. Seven lent themselves to photographs, but I might cover more tomorrow.
Day 2: Saturday, March 28
1. Morning light in the kitchen - Years ago, I found myself forced to find new housing, in what proved to be my only stint living alone. At first, I sought “essential” things like affordable rent, proximity to BART and, ideally, gas burners and wooden floors.
Then one day, I visited a “low”-priced place squeezed between two tall buildings. You would have had to chase natural light with a spoon there. And for the first time, I realized how much of a difference it makes when a place lets in some of the sun — not too much, ideally, but at least enough to warm your face and perhaps sustain a few house plants.
A photographer would expose this better; the light is even lovelier than it looks here.
It’s easy to take for granted the light in my current place, but walking down into the kitchen this morning, I realized anew what a gift I have in its pleasant light.
2. A backup scale - Cooking occupies a central place in life these days. Much of the time I eyeball things or improvise, but my sourdough starter is one of the few times when I try to measure things to the ounce. Thus — as many a host laughed at during my travels — I carted not just the starter but a scale around to the all the dozens of countries visited.
Unfortunately, such frequent use finally used up the battery I’d bought on one of my Germany stops. I keep forgetting to buy a new one, but thankfully, my housemate has her own scale — with a stronger battery. Is this a first-world commodity? I can’t say yes with sufficient strength. But why should I cheat God thanks for even the smallest things?
Amid so much disruption to life’s routines, I’m grateful for the small constancy of a working scale when I needed to measure beans this morning.
3. Beans despite recent shortages - I cook with beans routinely enough that I already had some on hand when the coronavirus started spreading in the United States. But as the chances of quarantine increased, I wanted to bolster my store of dried legumes a bit.
So, too, did dozens of fellow Alaska bean cookers, however. The shelves at Fred Meyer bared quickly, and even Costco ran low or briefly sold out of its restaurant-size 25-pound bags of beans.
The hoards didn’t seek to stock up on African spices, though. That meant they’d left largely untouched the shelves of a small local shop I’d turned to for some Ethiopian spices (still, my favorite food of the trip). Though his wares seemed a bit overpriced, I decided money spent at a small local shop did more than meet my desire to shore up the illusion of security a small food stockpile offered.
American stores rarely stock “red cowpeas,” but evidently they’re related to black-eyed peas and packed with different nutrients. They had a pretty good flavor when I used some in a casserole Monday night.
The friendly conversation with the Somalian man who might have been the owner only confirmed my choice to support the business. In these days of fear and widespread isolation, every human exchange feels like a gift.
4. Adequate coffee filters - Many times since my return from the road, I’ve rejoiced at some stockpile discovered from a burst of pre-trip overconsumption. This time the gift from my younger self serves a mundane purpose: filtering the coffee I drink every morning. I’m also grateful for the generous friend who bought me a fancy new metal pourover unit, after I forgot a cheap plastic one at my aunt’s. (Truth be told, I’d wanted a metal or ceramic one all along, but hadn’t found a used one nearer my budget.)
As I wrote on another friend’s blog years ago, the Lord is kind to the undeserving.
5. Flexible coffee-brewing options - Drinking brewed coffee also lets me adjust the balance of caffeine and decaf to suit the day. It’s another one of those minute details, but I think we can all agree that the sphere of things over which we feel some control has shrunk dramatically of late. Probably there’s some divine kindness in that loss, too, but for each thing where God still lets me do largely as I like, I’m grateful.
This picture recalled another small kindness: the Costco clerk reminded me to grind my beans before I left with the large new bag bought pre-shutdown. I’m sure glad I won’t have to grind beans each morning before I fully wake up.
Maybe pourover coffee and decaf grounds are one small way He shows His remembrance that we are “dust” and our days “like grass” (Ps. 103:14-15).
6. The soothing rhythms of kneading - All that talk of sourdough yesterday kicked off a two-day baking process. Because gluten’s generally bad for parasites (in that they like eating its sugars), but fermented foods are good for your gut, I’m baking a sourdough-raised bread these days, in hopes it’s healthier than normal yeast-raised bread.
To make such a batch takes time, though — a series of long rises yesterday, which finally led to kneading the dough today. I don’t have the exact count, but I made more than a dozen batches of bread on the road, in spots as far-flung as Switzerland, South Africa and Brazil.
9 Likes, 0 Comments - Anna (@danzfool) on Instagram: "Didn't have much time at L'Abri, but got to bake them some sourdough bread, and leave starter!..."
5 Likes, 1 Comments - Anna (@danzfool) on Instagram: "First fully sourdough-raised bread this trip! Starter going strong, three months into my travels...."
Pre-trip, I sometimes kneaded my dough in a KitchenAid mixer, but nothing quite compares to the elemental experience of doing so by hand. In these days of such uncertainty and change, I’m especially grateful for something that ties me to both my pre- and during-trip self, as well as the dozens of bakers before me, from those who brought sourdough to Alaska and fed their cities during plagues past.
7. Band-aids enough and, ironically, a knife sharp enough to cut me - No, I’m not prepping to flip someone off; I opened up part of my finger while unloading clean utensils. When I went upstairs to the first-aid bag from my trip, it looked like I only had band-aids large enough for a kneecap-spanning gash.
Knives shown behind me. This incident notwithstanding, they generally say that “a sharp knife is a safe knife.”
Then, just when I started to give up hope, a small band-aid fell out. In such small mercies, I almost feel God giving my tense shoulders a small squeeze as if to say, “It’s all right. It’s going to be all right.” And ironically, even the cut’s source is something I’m thankful for: a set of new, far-sharper knives I broke down and bought at Costco, after too many days bearing down on dull knives. They were even marked $5 off between the trip when I first looked at the them and the day I decided to buy.
Do much of today’s thanks sound mundane? Probably. I hope I haven’t bored you with them. But as this morning’s Lent devotion poem concluded:
“…what kind of God
keeps himself secret
so that to find him out
we have to seek, as children do
for something like the beetle
scuttling between grass,
hidden in plain sight.”
(From “How Quiet” by Judith Harris)
Perhaps attending to even the gifts of such small things can help convince our souls that all is still well, as the hymn-writer said.