Once in a while, I read a book that doesn't feel like a book. Instead, it feels like a conversation with a friend. It feels like I'm curled up in my favorite chair with a glass of wine or a cup of tea, and having some girl time with one of my favorite people. It feels comfortable and real and effortless and life-changing all at the same time. That's how I felt when reading Bread & Wine by Shauna Niequist.
I've read Shauna's other two books, Cold Tangerines and Bittersweet, and both of them were amazing. Both of them made me laugh and made me cry, and I had a sort of life epiphany while reading each of them. Shauna has a raw, familiar way of writing that just pulls you in and doesn't make you think as much as it makes you feel. You don't read a chapter and then think about it. You read a chapter and it affects your soul so that you can't help but reflect.
In Bread & Wine, Shauna (and I can call her simply Shauna because I feel like we're best friends, or should be!) adds to her usual reflections by expressing her love for good food and sharing that food with friends. This is the best of both worlds for me as it's two of the things I love most in life: amazing food, and good conversation. In the introduction to this book, Shauna writes:
What's becoming clearer and clearer to me is that the most sacred moments, the ones in which I feel the goodness of the world most arrestingly, take place at the table. The particular alchemy of celebration and food, of connecting people and serving what I've made with my own hands, comes together as more than the sum of their parts. I love the sounds and smells and textures of life at the table, hands passing bowls and forks clinking against plates and bread being torn and the rhythm and energy of feeding and being fed.
Yes! I often think about how life revolves around food, and yet the world tells me to place strict limits around my eating. Holidays and outings and time with friends usually have to do with food: we celebrate and mourn and pass time with food. We comfort and console and congratulate with food. The evidence of each of these shows on my hips and thighs and belly. There has to be a balance. And Shauna acknowledges that balance: feast, and fast. Eat, and play. And love...God, friends, family, ourselves. He made us to do all these things...to fast and to feast and to love. He gave me my love for good conversation and He gave me my love for good food. One line that made me burst unexpectedly into tears: I am God's plan A.
Shauna Niequist feeds us with this book. She feeds us emotionally with her words, encouraging from the pages and soothing us with her real-ness and just-like-me-ness. She feeds us spiritually by taking all that we eat and linking it back to the bread and wine of communion. She feeds us intellectually by challenging us to change the way we think about food and friends. And then, she feeds us. She gives us recipes of all sorts....scrambled eggs and biscuits and turkey burgers, cookies and salad and steak and risotto. I plan to work my way through all the recipes in this book, though I've only made three of them so far. I love to cook and am pretty accomplished in the kitchen, and what I love is that these recipes are elegant and guest-worthy, yet easy and do-able for even a novice cook.
Bread & Wine is a book that will often be found on my kitchen island, either because I've pulled it out to try another recipe, or because I wanted to read that one section just one more time. It is a book that speaks truth and soothes my soul, feeds my body and challenges my heart. It is real life at its best. Shauna wants us to feel and think and eat and pray. She wants us to bring our friends and family back to the dinner table and to see how many parts of us can be nourished by this simple act. In her own words:
I want you to invest yourself wholly and deeply in friendship, God's greatest evidence of himself here on earth. More than anything, I want you to come to the table. In all sorts of ways, both literally and metaphorically, come to the table.
Come to the table, indeed.
I love that word--wanderlust--because it so perfectly describes how I feel about travel. It's not just that I love to travel. It's not just that I enjoy seeing new places and experiencing new things. It's that I lust for it. It feels like I need it like I need air. I value it as an important part of my life.
D. knows that I can only go a couple of months without going somewhere. He knows that as life gets crazy and we spend all our money on those pesky bills and food and gas and stuff, I can be content in our home for a few weeks before I start to get the itch to go somewhere else. Of course, I would love for that somewhere else to be London or the Caribbean or Seattle or Denver. But it doesn't have to be. It could be as simple as an overnight trip to the other side of the state. It could be a weekend camping. Or, in desperate times, it could just be a day trip somewhere different. A change of scenery, so to speak.
For the last couple of weeks, my Wanderlust has been particularly insistent. Many of those close to me have been traveling, while I've been here plugging along in my everyday life. My friend C. was on a cruise in the Caribbean, as were my parents. And my husband D. was on a work trip to Africa of all places, seeing new things and having new experiences. And I needed to get Away. However, our finances and time being what they are right now, there was no Away in sight. So, I asked D. if we could do something different over the weekend, and then I planned it.
Ann Arbor is not far from us...only an hour away...but neither of us have spent much if any time there. But it's a college town (obviously...U of M) and I knew we would find something fun and different to do. And part of the fun is the research. I found a Natural History Museum on campus and decided that was the thing. I put a shout-out on Facebook looking for fun places to eat, and my fellow foodies came through as always.
It was only a few hours, but we had a great time. We played:
That's A. pretending to get hit by the massive club-like tail of an ankylosaurus.
And here's D., J., and A. in a hollowed-out canoe. Fun!
We explored the museum and saw the planetarium, which was a surprisingly good show. Poor D. had two little boys next to him who wrestled the entire time, but he still learned where the phrase "dog days of summer" came from along with the rest of us.
And then, of course, we ate. We went to a fun little restaurant called Prickly Pear Southwest Cafe, which my friend M. recommended, and it was delicious! I had something outside the box for me: Chicken Poblano Rellenos.
It was unbelievable, and I was so happy with my choice!
We even got home from our outing fairly early...by 8:00, and had time for a family viewing of this week's episode of Survivor, but my Wanderlust is temporarily satisfied. Sometimes, all it takes is a day away doing something different than you normally do.
Oh, and eating good food. For me, travel is almost always about the food!!
There are many things I’m passionate about:
Of course, my family.
My relationship with Jesus Christ.
Food. I adore food. More to come on that later, I’m sure!
I love to travel. And I don’t mean just the “being on vacation” part of travel. I like all of it. I like going through security at the airport. I love hours in the car on a road trip. I love 9 hour flights. I like it when the flight attendant asks me if I want beef or chicken, and I get to open up that little package of airline food to see what surprise item awaits me. I love sitting in the airport people-watching during a long layover. Of course, I also love the other parts of travel. I live in the amazing USA, which I’ve experienced quite a bit of and adore, but I’ve also traveled to the UK, and Spain, and the Caribbean, and Morocco. And I love to see things I thought I would only ever see in books. I love meeting people who were so different than me, but still so much the same. I love to read the history behind centuries-old buildings and to see things that I don’t always understand but that are fascinating to discover. I love to travel.
I’m also passionate about books. I love to read. Novels, biographies, classics, poetry, magazines, whatever. I just love to read. I love to fill my mind with stories that aren’t my own. The more I learn about how others think and live and thrive, the more I learn about myself and the world around me. The more I get to know others’ stories, even if they’re just made-up stories, the more I appreciate my own. The more I understand about the struggles of others, the less I feel by myself. Books give me this. I have a bookshelf as my nightstand, and it is currently full of close to a hundred books just waiting to be read by me. My friends call me a book hoarder. True, but I’m not ashamed.
And among all these things about which I’m passionate, I have to say that writing is one, for sure. I have been a self-proclaimed writer for as long as I can remember. In Middle and High School I wrote a lot of really cheesy poetry. In college, I took a couple of creative writing courses and wrote some short stories, though there was really only one that I was really proud of. I also wrote some poetry then that was a little more free-form and not as cheesy. And in my adulthood, I’ve written a little here and there. The thing that was most fulfilling was my first real blog. I blogged almost every day, and I made friends through blogging that I’m still in contact with today. I had followers and heaps of comments, and I felt…well, like I could do this. Like I was finally a writer, even if it wasn’t a book. Even if I wasn’t getting paid. I was writing what I thought and what I felt, and people actually wanted to read it! It felt like what I was meant to do.
Somehow, it fell away. I got busier and it felt less important. I had a couple of tough blogging experiences and I got discouraged. So I saved some of my favorite blog posts, and deleted my blog. And I’ve regretted it almost since the moment I did. I miss blogging. I miss putting my thoughts out there into the world and seeing what others have to say about them. I miss it.
So here I am, for what it’s worth. We’ll see where it takes me.
