Soul search in Barley soup and oatmeal muffins?

Today, required soul food and these are the foods that warmed me up from the inside.
I got the idea for Barley and beef (Ram steak in this case) from a wonderful blog called Feeding My Enthusiasm.
When I saw the picture of that soup I felt like something deep and forgotten from my childhood was unearthed and needed to be attended to.immediately. I had completely forgotten about barley and boy how I missed it.
The next day the soup was made and the flavor was better than the childhood memory.
The muffins were baking in the over while the soup was cooking on the stove and this place smelled like where I wanted to be. I added frozen Okra to my soup and used bacon to rendered fat to soften the vegetables instead of olive oil or canola oil, I know, I'm terrible, but I'll take bacon fat over the others any time. I also added parsip to the suggested celery, carrot, and mushrooms.
So you see, it was not even up to me, I was attacked by an urge to cook from beyond and was surprised to find out how soothing and healing it was to obey, eat to my satisfaction, and be calm.






She was not there,
Who was?
She could not be sure, but it wasn't herself.
It had been too long. The person she had come to identify as herself had changed and she did not know how to make friends with this new one, new what?
She missed some quiet, she had no patience, too often, she found no joy, but then, where did she want to be?
As the days wore on she learned to make it through, it took changing every single thought in her routine of thought.
No wonder she had become someone else, but staying away from the deep end depended on it. After a while there was no going back, the tracks had been erased, she had no desire to find them anyway.
In the new world, there was no use for the old ways.
She had to face it, all of it, all the time - reality
it never went stops, what with its multitude shades of gray.
New layers of it kept unfolding and there was no averting what was exposed, staring as it was - right in the face,
It was too much, for anybody, really, . . . so she had to numb it out - called "detach."
Detach, what an ugly word, but necessary, she kept practicing.
What to do?
Where was the inner voice that was suppose to know ?
It is said; if you look inside, fearlessly, relentlessly, unabashedly, you will find a new meaning, a new peace.
She tried, it wasn't there, really.
"Always, the non believer, . . . why should anything miraculous happen to you?
But she needed a miracle, so desperately. . . .
To feel her body floating up in the air in meditation. . .or something of the sort, it's all in the mind, why couldn't it happen?
just that feeling, for once, of having overcome her daemons?
So true to her nature she kept trying, because if nothing else she had always been a per-severer.
What was it that had the controls over her soul?
No, don't say it. It is to much to comprehend that it all boils down to chemical imbalances. .. that all she was came down to matter over soul any time any day.
Soul being merely the thing that trapped her inside this body.
Make yourself a cup of feel good tea and drink up, cause it ain't gonna get any better than this.
Yet, only earlier that very day she was so high on cloud nine.
And even as she was walking on that cloud she was aware, too aware of being in an ever so happy moment.
And what was going through her mind?!!!!!! here it is: "How long before the fall?"
Yes, that's what she was thinking!
She should have slapped herself right there in the middle of the step she was taking in the middle of that sidewalk she was walking, in the middle of the day she was living.
She took a picture.
A mental picture; one foot in the air, holding hands with her two children, one on the left, one on the right - a moment - her moment.
Her existence in that split second so palpable, she could taste it - the taste of newness, of delicious hope.
And all the while her mind contemplating the end of the step, the fall.
What was it, this way of thought robbing her of that protective innocence which was the very thing defining who she used to be?
Having lost it, how could she hope to be in the moment?

Yes, she knew the answer all along, still, she now had to survive it.


Now, now, . . . A phase, just a phase, . . . it'll be alright, it'll be OK,

"I am a child of the light,
I am loved by the light,
I am born into the light,
I am sustained by the light,
I am protected by the light,
I am surrounded by the light,
I am born anew into the light every moment of the day.
Amen!"







to be specific without being specific