The Wars America Forgot

As the stock market lurched down the morning after Election Day, most Americans were more worried about our economy than our wars. Exit polls show that only 1 in 10 voters considered Iraq an important election issue.

Archive - Soul Song

I sing of soul coiled,
At the root of my spine,
Wrapped in red veils,
Kundalini, the bride.

I sing of soul rising,
Amber as flame,
Dancing, sweet Lakshmi:
I sing in her name.

I sing of soul changing,
Even when still,
I sing yellow birds,
On a cracked windowsill.

I sing of soul patterns,
In word-tangled art,
I sing the green maze,
Of hands and of heart.

I sing a soul river,
That flows from my throat,
In silence, reflected,
One timeless, blue note.

I sing of soul amethyst,
The luminous mind,
I unfurl my soul,
and sing what I find.

Mid Missouri Pagan Pride

Today Ozark Avalon Church of Nature and Hearthfires of Columbia hosted a Mid Missouri Pagan Pride gathering. Peace Park was beautiful and the day flawlessly bright. We were lucky enough to have our vending space beneath a tree, who offered us shade and a continual swirl of green-yellow autumn leaves.

Today was a big step for Tangled Macrame, so I would like to thank everyone who visited my shop, especially those who took home hemp-y treasures. Thanks to Taz and Alex for encouraging me to take out the space. Thanks to the pirate crew on our left...see you all at Bacchanalia!

Yummy...

The macrobiotic diet combines vegetarianism with Zen Buddhism to create meals that balance the body and spirit. Foods are characterized as yin (cold, sweet) or yang (spicy, salty), then paired within recipes. Individual dishes balance one another as part of a seasonal menu of local, organically grown foods. Brown and water form the high fiber core of the diet, accompanied by sautéed veggies and seaweed. Fatty meats, alcohol, refined sugars, dairy, and tropic fruit are all restricted. In addition to restricting food choices, the macrobiotic diet reminds people to eat slowly and thoughtfully.

I’m thinking apple bread and pumpkin pie, but this is close as these recipies go…

CousCous Cake with Vanilla Sauce
6 cups apple juice
2 pinches of sea salt
1/2 package agar flakes
2 cups CousCous
3 TBS rice syrup
2 TBS almond butter
zest and juice from one orange
1/2 cup toasted hazelnuts, toasted in the oven, skins rubbed off and cut into pieces.

1. Bring the apple juice and salt to a boil.
2. Add the agar flakes and cook on low with the lid off for 5 minutes until flakes dissolve.
3. Add the CousCous and cook for 10 minutes.
4. Stir in the rice syrup, almond butter, orange zest and juice and toasted chopped hazelnuts.
5. Pour into cake pan and let set.

Vanilla sauce
2 cups apple juice
pinch of sea salt
2 TB rice syrup
1 TB almond butter
2 TB kuzu diluted in 1/4 cup cold water
dash vanilla, dash nutmeg , dash cinnamon
fresh orange

1. Bring the apple juice, salt, rice syrup and almond butter to a boil.
2. Stir in the diluted kuzu and simmer for 1 minute.
3. Remove from the heat and add the vanilla, nutmeg and cinnamon.
4. Serve on Cous Cous Cake and garnish with thinly sliced pie-shaped pieces of fresh orange.

Autumn Recipes
Macriobiotic Diet Overview

This Body, This Body Holding Me

Women have bodies that are graceful as a maple sapling, bodies that are round and sweet as an apple. Don’t ask your body how much it weighs; ask your body how well it lives. Can you pick up a fallen child? Can you feel pleasure? Can you laugh? If your body does the things you want to do, if it carries you through your day, then it’s good enough.

The health and beauty industry can shove its annual $50 billion up its air brushed butt.

First Journey

After his descent into the mysteries of death, the hero emerges with new insight and knowledge. Both Odysseus and Aeneas learn, through observation and direct dialogue, the fate of souls once mortal life ends. However, Aeneas discovers an afterlife that promises transformation, in contrast to the grey monotony found by Odysseus.

In the Odyssey the dead are a “blurred and breathless” procession of heroes and queens, wandering aimlessly until empowered to speak by sacrificial blood. Achilles describes their hopelessness. “Better to break sod as a farm hand for some poor country man, on iron rations, than lord it over the exhausted dead” (XI, 544-546). The irony of these words, coming from a man he once urged toward glorious death in battle, was not lost on Odysseus. Nearby Tantalos reaches eternally for water he can never reach, a mirror of Achilles who also longs for unobtainable release. Thus confronted by the tragic similarities between the fate of heroes and sinners, Odysseus emerges from the Underworld terrified, but determined to manifest Teiresias’ prophecy of peaceful death at the hands of age.

Virgil’s epic, by contrast, presents a more diverse Afterlife, one profoundly affected by how a person lived and the manner of his death. Here the unburied are trapped on one side of the Styx, while suicides, heroes, and the damned are sorted into specified regions. The most striking difference between the two realms, however, is explained by Anchises. “For some the stain of wrong is washed by floods or burned away by fire. We suffer each his own shade” (VI, 602-604). In other words, death isn’t the end. In time, the soul is transformed into a new human incarnation or ascends into heaven, based on his character.

Aeneas emerges determined and enlightened, more aware of his role as Founder and as a spiritual work in progress. This knowledge is a kind of compensation for the fact he will die pitifully, before his task is complete. Odysseus, on the other hand, received no reassurance, only an affirmation of the preciousness of mortal life and his desire to return to those he loves.