Meditation

Listen to the pleasant British man. In less than ten minutes, this could erase any lingering effects of last night's tv-watching coma after fighting with a male ego.

Couscous

I'm experimenting with different kinds of grains in the morning, beyond the old standby of oatmeal, cream of wheat, and boxed cereals.I know throughout the world folks are eating noodles, crepes, tortillas, and all kinds of other bread products for breakfast.

One quick idea is couscous. It takes such a small amount of time to make a big pot of couscous, especially the smaller grain couscous. I made a big pot yesterday and left it in the fridge. For a savory person like me olive oil, Bragg's, and even some hot sauce to the couscous is a good seasoning mix. I sliced up some cucumbers, salted them, and with toast on the side I had breakfast. I found a lot of couscous recipes for breakfast that were sweet- mostly involving nuts, dates, raisins, and adding some kind of cream to make the dish a little bit like a hot sweet cereal. I'm feeding a vegan family and also trying to invoke some of the world cultures that eat couscous regularly like Morocco and other parts of North Africa. For my sweet version, I would add a little bit of rice milk, some plump golden raisins(that had been soaked just a little while), a little cumin, maple syrup, and maybe throw in some shredded coconut I have in my fridge leftover from a wonderful Easter brunch(thanks, mom!). Yum. Think global. And then buy your non-local ingredients from local businesses!

morning-chant-11 songs

music @ dhingana.com

Pick a Random Book

Start a morning like this: Go to one of your bookshelves and pick a random book. Well, maybe not too random- make it a book you like. Open the book and point to a randomly selected page. Use that as a meditation of what you need today or what to reason and think about. Here's mine, from Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters by George Jackson-

from page 102:

"...I stay busy, all of the time. I never have enough time to do the things that I must. I have made inroads into political economy, geography, forms of government, anthropology, archaeology, and the basics of three languages, and when I can get a hold of them some of the works on urban guerilla warfare......

I must now start doing all that is humanly possible to get out of prison. I can see great ill forecast for me if I can't find some way to extract myself from these people's control. ... I don't mind dying but I'd like to have the opportunity to fight back. Take care, George."

Sunrise by Mary Oliver

Sunrise
---------


You can
die for it --
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Inspiration Profile: Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

On a semi-regular basis I'll offer a little post on someone contemporary or historical who provides some sort of inspiration to me on any given morning. It can be their actions, the way they lived their life, a story about them, the art they produced, or just a small piece of information about them that can somehow shape a day. The themes will vary. The people could be uber-famous or live on my block. Either way, they're helping me.

Case in point- Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. If the phrase "rebel nun of the 17th century" is used to describe her I already know I'm feeling it. I found her as I was searching for more contemporary Latin-American/South-American women writers. She was raised by an illiterate mother who had six children and never married. She learned to read early, had an aversion to marriage and a calling to religion. She became a nun AND an intellectual. She was reading and writing and speaking the truth that no one dared in those days especially a woman and a nun. Her studies and intellectual pursuits were constantly put down from the church and society. Her poetry is famous is Latin America.

I found this paragraph in Wikipedia about her especially interesting-

"In her time, the convent was the only refuge in which a female could properly attend to education of her mind, spirit, body and soul.

Nonetheless, Sor Juana wrote literature centered on freedom. In her poem Redondillas she defends a woman's right to be respected as a human being. In Hombres necios (Stubborn men), she criticizes the sexism of the society of her time, poking fun at and revealing the hypocrisy of men who publicly condemn prostitutes, yet privately pay women to perform on them what they have just said is an abomination to God. Sor Juana asks the sharp question in this age-old matter of the purity/whoredom split found in base male mentality: "Who sins more, she who sins for pay? Or he who pays for sin?""

My morning inspiration: Speak the truth. Live out loud. St. Ines de la Cruz, a nun in the 17th century who was surrounded by a society who called people heretics if they talked about science or even murdered them, continued to write letters, poetry, essays and continued to seek knowledge. I can speak my truth in modern day Amerikkka.

Vegan Scones

Too tired to make waffle batter? Not enough patience to flip pancakes? Try making the excellent basic vegan recipe of scones from the Vegan with a Vengeance cookbook by Isa Chandra Moscowitz. Isa's cookbooks are probably my favorite vegan cookbooks ever. She's got great recipes, easy directions, and they really come out fantastic. She also has a ton of breakfast/brunch recipes. My mate describes these as "sweet biscuits". I tend towards a savory taste in the morning, and this is one of the main reasons I'm so interested in international breakfast cuisines which are full of savory dishes Americans don't touch in the morn. He tends toward sweet baked goods, including cookies. Sweet or savory, scones are pretty fast, fill you up, and you can do a bunch of varieties.

Are you a sweet or a savory person in the morning?