A Blessing

I did a wedding today for two fine justice workers in our community.  A simple affair, bringing a Latina woman's family and an African-American man's family together (married by a queer white woman...now THAT is the beloved community!).

The groom's aunt, Mrs. M., is 82 years old.  Last night at the rehearsal dinner (barbecue in the couple's backyard, perfect), the bride introduced me and my cielo as "fellow travelers" in the immigration justice movement.  Soon, Mrs. M. was thanking my cielo and I for our work and inviting us to her Louisville, KY home any time we wanted to come visit.  She said we must have good hearts to do the work that we do.

Well, that would have been enough of a blessing, to have my vocation affirmed by an African-American elder.  Then today, when we were passing the peace at the end of the wedding, Mrs. M. grabbed hold of my elbows and just would not let go.  She was shaking a little.  You are a blessing, she said to me, a blessing, you blessed me today...You have something special, such a blessing...

Well, I don't really know what to say to that except thank you, so I just let her hold me and bless me and say I am just trying to be who God asks me to be.

Moments like these, these are how I know I am on the right path, God's path of love and justice, and that I am dealing honestly with my privilege, and being a good ally to other oppressed and marginalized communities.

I give thanks for Mrs. M., and pray her a safe journey home.

Isaiah 40:28-31

I'm doing a wedding on Saturday for some fine radical folk, and this is the scripture text they chose.  They will read the NRSV with traditional language, but I am moved, for my own sake-journey, to change it up a little for you here.

Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  The Divine One is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.  She does not faint or grow weary of loving you.  Her understanding is unsearchable (which means She knows more than you do...so trust Her...).  She gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.  En la lucha, personal and communal, to walk God's path of love and justice, even young folk will faint and be weary, will fall exhausted; but those who wait for Her shall renew their strength, they shall rise up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Complaint

Dear God.

You have my attention.  MUST you continue waking me multiple times in the night with the command to pray?

I'm happy to pray for my people, my cielo, even (gulp) myself, but...

...seriously.  I am exhausted, and I ache.

Love,
Towanda

Read This

via People of Color Organize.

“When Columbus got off the boat, he asked us who we were. We said we’re the Human Beings, we’re the People. Conceptually the Europeans didn’t understand that, it was beyond their conceptual reality. They didn’t see us. They couldn’t see who we were. Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. It’s five hundred years later and they still can’t see us. we are still invisible. They don’t see us as human beings, but we’ve been saying to them all along that’s what we are. We are invisible to them because we are still the Human Beings, we’re still the People, but they will never call us that. They taught us to call ourselves Indians, now they’re teaching us to call ourselves Native Americans. It’s not who we are. We’re the People. They can’t see us as human beings. But they can’t see themselves as human beings. The invisibility is at every level, it’s not just that we’re tucked away out of sight. We’re the evidence of the crime. They can’t deal with the reality of who we are because then they have to deal with the reality of what they have done. If they deal with the reality of who we are, they have to deal with the reality of who they aren’t. So they have to fear us, not recognize us, not like us. The very fact of calling us Indians creates a new identity for us, an identity that began with their arrival. Changing identity, creating a new perceptual reality, is another form of genocide. It’s like severing a spiritual umbilical cord that reaches into the ancestral past. The history of the Indians begins with the arrival of the Europeans. The history of the People begins with the beginning of the history of the People. The history of the People is one of cooperation, collectivity, and living in balance. The history of the Indians is one of being attacked and genocide, rather than a history of peace and balance. The history of the People under attack, the Indians, in an evolutionary context, is not very long, it’s only five hundred years. The objective of civilizing us is to make Indian history become our permanent reality. The necessary objective of Native people is to outlast this attack, however long it takes, to keep our identity alive.”

- John Trudell (Santee Sioux)

Scenes from a Retreat

kneel.
stretch.
breathe.
cry.
repeat.
the fire
releases
the tears
the wood
keeps held
inside
herself.
kneel.
stretch.
breathe.
cry.
repeat.
the tears
are the only way
she knows
god
is still
here.

Dead tree and sky, on the path to my hermitage.

The tears she holds inside herself.

Dusk outside my west window.

Playful feet, warm sand.

Sunday morning snowstorm.

Thirsty, playful mule deer.

Last evening sunset.

Good Friday Meditation

I have posted this song, "Marietta's Lied," before, (appropriately, in a post about pain), but for some reason I am drawn to it today, Good Friday, when we remember the violent execution of our brother Jesus by the Roman Empire.  He was accused of "agitating the nation" (Luke 23:2), of fomenting a revolution of fierce love and utter faithfulness to God's way rather than the way of Empire.  And he was killed for it.  And for today, that is the end of the story.

In John's telling of it (John 12), a few days before he is arrested he has a meal with his community.  His friend Mary of Bethany anoints his feet, and there is something about that act which makes me think of this song.  Here's the text:

Joy, that near to me remains,
Come to me, my true love.
Night sinks into the grove
You are my light and day.
Anxiously beats heart on heart
Hope itself soars heavenward.
How true, a sad song.
The song of true love,
that must die.

I know this song.
I often heard it sung
in happier days of yore.
There is yet another stanza -
have I still got it in mind?

Though dismal sorrow is drawing nigh,
move up close beside me, my true love.
Turn your wan face to me
death will not part us.
When the hour of death comes one day,
believe that you will rise again.

Here's a sermon I preached on Mary's anointing Jesus a few years ago.  I think you can see the similarities.

I am moved by the acts of tenderness and love his community shows Jesus as he confronts the Empire, with such great risk.  I think he could not have done it without them.

Blessed Good Friday to you.

Monday Night at the Opera, Sort Of

Well thanks to the miracle of the internet, I am listening to the Met's season premiere of Capriccio live, starring someone's favorite soprano crush Renée Fleming.

(Yesterday, thanks to the miracle of the internet, I listened -- along with several of you! -- to the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, their live broadcast of Bellini's I Capuleti e I Montecchi.  Being able to do this makes me giggle with glee!)

Anyway, I wanted to see if there were production photos of Capriccio up yet at the Met Archive, but there aren't.  But there ARE photos now of Le Comte Ory.  Wowza.

Here are the two most pertinent, in my humble opinion.

Still not convinced about the hair, but otherwise:  Yes, please.  Leather coat, leather boots, vest (am I the only one distracted by buttons?)...she could use a good cuff roll, I think, but otherwise...the overall effect seems to impress the soprano, as well it should...And she certainly outdresses the tenor.

By the way, be sure to check out the pics of the, er, three-way, er, seduction.  When Joyce was interviewed during an intermission of the HD broadcast of Iphigenie en Tauride a few weeks ago (which was fantastic, by the way), she declared, "It's the only opera that ends in a menage-a-troi!"  She ain't kidding!  I am looking forward to the HD broadcast on April 9th.

Chiro Treatment #9

Chiro Treatment #9

in which your heroine
forgets to breathe
because the pain
shocks into
overwhelmed gasp

in which your heroine
cries
and her mind
her being
is only shouting

fuck you
fuck you denver police
fuck you
get the fuck out of my body

rage in shockwaves
deathdealers
deatheaters
agents of deathempire
get the fuck out

thanatos running through
my muscle fibers
keeping me tied up
handcuffed in spirit

but i choose the n'shamah
the cold cup of water
the embrace of community
the stance out of place
the fierceness

and i tell you this,
empire of death:
you do not get to have me.
you do not get to have my faith, my trust.
and absolutely
you do not get to have my body.

The One With The Collar, Part 5

(Parts I, II, III, IV)

It acts like love -- music, and

tells the feet, "You do not have to be so burdened."

My body is covered with wounds

this world made...

Rabia al Basri*

I do my stretches.
I do my exercises.
I go to my appointments
twice a week
to be stretched,
to have unused mucles
broken down
into living flesh again.

I stretch my arms up,
"wall angels," they are called,
I stretch my arms up,
tendons pop over bone,
so unused to living this way.

She -- you know, She --
has felt so far away
for so long.
My connection to Her
feels atrophied
like these muscles
that only remember
how to huddle down hunched
in fear.
"I'll get up," I said to the cop,
"please don't hurt me."
And I got up.  But my body
only remembers huddling
hunched against the
psychic and physical blows
landing around me.

I stretch up,
breathe through the pain.
Tendons pop,
and suddenly Her voice,
saying,
"Dear one, I am teaching you,
you do not have to live huddled
and hunched anymore.  Stretch up.
You do not have to be
so burdened.  Stretch up.
I am teaching you, beloved,
to live in these muscles again,
these muscles atrophied
in despair.  Stretch up.

You feel I have been absent,
She says, but I have been here,
under these hopeless muscles,
getting you ready, strengthening you,
beautiful one of such courage.

Stretch, reach
for Me, for who you are
to be now,
that people already see,
but you, trudging on your knees
thinking you have to
be good,
have not yet seen.

Stretch up! She says,
you are not this pain.
You are not the pain
they inflicted on you.
You
are Mine."

So
I stretch.
The muscles, they are sore,
but I keep stretching.
I keep showing up
so the doctor can
crack me open
and the despair can flow out.
I stretch, I grow stronger,
and the next time,
the next time
I step out of my place
and sit down in the street,

I will not be the same.

*Full poem by Rabia is here; interestingly, I posted it almost exactly one year ago today.

Progress Report

So I thought y'all might like to know how my chiropractic treatments are going.  I am happy to say they are helping!

I'm almost half-way through:  I have had 4 treatments (it should've been 5 but I missed one with the stomach flu, ugh) and I can already tell a difference:  Less pain in my shoulder/arm/wrist, and I am starting to sleep better in terms of being comfortable enough to be able to go to sleep, and not waking up due to the pain.  (If I have trouble sleeping due to other reasons, well, that's a whole 'nother post entirely...).

I'm encouraged!  I even drove through blizzard aftermath this morning to get to my appointment, because I didn't want to miss it.  Parts of the treatment are really painful (but only briefly) and leave me sore, but I can tell the difference it makes so it's worth it.

Immersion Therapy with Marietta's Lied

Pointed question to me in spiritual direction today:  "Is pain required?"

My immediate answer:  Yes.  And explained, in the work for justice, especially as white folk we have to risk being hurt; too much "non-violent action" by white folk is really designed to protect our white selves from getting hurt.  So for the work to really mean anything, we have to risk getting hurt.  Have to risk pain.  We have to understand that our action may be non-violent, but that doesn't mean we won't get hurt.  My director understands this and knows I think this way...but she was making me say it, you know what I mean?

So then there was this question:  "Then is refusing to heal required?"

Um.

All this is in reference to the fact that I'm about to start chiropractic treatments twice a week for the next 5 weeks in hopes to "fix" or heal or at least feel better from the pain I have had now for over 3 years from the arrest.  At my exam last week, the chiropractor found essentially the same problems the physical therapist did three years ago.  Oh man.

I don't talk about it much, that I still hurt.  It has been a struggle over these years to know what to think of it all.  I did acupuncture for about 6 months last year which took the edge of but even she said I needed something...stronger.

I know I have learned a lot from the pain.  What it means to be hurt so by the empire, to carry that in my body, a constant reminder of what happens to you when you step out of your given place.  Something I only understood intellectually before Oct 6, 2007, and now understand in a very different way, understand in my body.  And what I understand is only a tiny fraction of what historically oppressed communities who are constantly violated over generations know.


(Yes, as a lesbian woman I too am an historically oppressed community, but somehow I think my whiteness also protects me in certain kinds of ways from even understanding my own oppression.) 


Anyway, the pain.  I want to hold on to what I have learned from it.  What my director was trying to get at was if holding on to what I've learned necessarily means holding on to the physical pain itself, especially if I can get relief from it.


Have I learned what I needed to learn?  Is the physical pain just getting in the way of what needs to come?  I think maybe yes.  Did you catch this section in my last "collar" poem?

the prayer we read claims
that hope overcomes despair,
and my head nods
but my body, still hurting
in those same places,
cries bullshit.
what the body knows.

My body doesn't know that hope overcomes despair, because my body still hurts. Moments of joy cannot overcome the constant pain.  And this so clearly reflects my struggle not to be cynical about the world, that change can happen, that our efforts for justice make a difference. 

I think my spiritual struggle is connected to the physical one, don't you?  I can't believe it (hope) because my body doesn't believe it.  It remains to be seen what will happen with all these treatments; I know it will be painful (the irony:  healing is painful!) and I am hopeful I will feel better -- but I am also aware that this could be a significant moment on my journey.

But this post title says immersion therapy...which is supposed to be about immersing myself in beauty to help find relief after a hard stretch.  Indeed, after wrestling with this stuff for several hours today, immersion therapy is what this Friday night has been -- thanks to my cielo, and to GreenGirl who asked me who Kiri Te Kanawa is.  Thanks to that question I have been listening to YouTube clips for over 2 hours now, starting with the 1982 Rosenkavalier (can you think of a better way of introducing someone to Dame Kiri?), detouring through a new-to-me Geneva Rosenkavalier (Kirschlager and Kiberg), back to Kiri  recording West Side Story, and then suddenly, Marietta's Lied.  Oh my god.  I had heard it before -- it's in my "favorites" several times -- but tonight it is just what I need to hear.  Oh, there is beauty and joy to be had in this world.  Oh, if I could fill the painful places with these voices and this music instead...

Here are my favorite sopranos singing the aria.  And I dedicate them all to my cielo, who, even more than these beautiful singers singing this beautiful aria, reminds me again and again that there is joy in this life.


Marietta's Lied:

Joy, that near to me remains,
Come to me, my true love.
Night sinks into the grove
You are my light and day.
Anxiously beats heart on heart
Hope itself soars heavenward.
How true, a sad song.
The song of true love,
that must die.

I know this song.
I often heard it sung
in happier days of yore.
There is yet another stanza -
have I still got it in mind?

Though dismal sorrow is drawing nigh,
move up close beside me, my true love.
Turn your wan face to me
death will not part us.
When the hour of death comes one day,
believe that you will rise again.

Dame Kiri, the one who started it all (in more ways than one):





My current beloved soprano, the Divine Ms. Fleming:




The amazing Leontyne Price:




If mezzos are more to your liking, then here's Anne Sofie von Otter (which I really like!):




It's on to Fleming singing Strauss, who could ask for anything better?  I may be able to sleep tonight...

Minnie the Badass, and Other Operatic Thoughts

Went to see the Met HD broad cast of La Fanciulla del West yesterday, which was great fun.  More photos here.  This opera was new to me and I found it moving.  The romance was nice enough but what I found particularly moving was the character of Minnie as embodied by the delightful Deborah Voigt, who filled the role with spunk and verve and tenderness.  Also her interaction with the workers touched me.  Here are some of my thoughts about the experience.

• We arrived early with a friend and read through the synopsis.  I considered the plot and leaned over to my cielo and our friend who came with us and said:  "So let's get this straight.  The main character is a woman, who owns her own apparently successful business, rides horses, knows how to use guns, teaches the Bible, cheats at  cards, gets involved in a interracial relationship, and at the end of it all saves the day by rescuing a man from death.  How much are we going to love this opera???!!!"  Minnie is a badass!  And as the opera progressed I enjoyed learning more about her character -- that she treats the workers with dignity (while having good boundaries!), that she loves to read (perhaps is mostly self-educated?), that she explores the wildnerness on her own, that she enjoys living alone in her cabin, that she has a strong moral center of her own, and that she doesn't take any crap, from anybody.  I even had the sense that her desire to find love was not so much because somehow she felt incomplete without a man, but because her own parents were so happy, and she wanted to experience that for herself.  We most often don't get heroines like this, in opera or movies or anywhere, so I enjoyed this.  And Voigt was most convincing in her portrayal of all these aspects of Minnie.

• So it was jarring, then, when she is alone with Johnson/Ramerrez near the end of the 1st act, suddenly she says she is little, "una povera fanciulla, oscura e buona a nulla," a poor girl, obscure and good for nothing.  Um, what?  See above paragraph.  She says to him, "You say such beautiful things to me, beyond my understanding."  Again, what?  She has, just minutes before, read from the Bible and elucidated a theological stance based on her interpretation of the text.  (More on that in a minute).  She knows what hyssop is, for goodness sakes.  And suddenly she is saying Johnson shouldn't expect much, because she only has a 30-dollar education (whatever that means in 1850, especially for a woman).  Why Minnie should have this sudden strain of insecurity and self-deprecation was beyond me; it seemed so counter to everything that had come before...and in reflecting on the opera later, it was counter to everything that came after.  I believe in a kind of love at first sight (hi, cielo!) but I was not clear what there was in particular about Johnson that would overwhelm Minnie to the point of actually forgetting what a strong, intelligent woman she was.  Puccini, what were you thinking?

•  So, theology.  Right, I'm a theologian so I can't help thinking about these things.  But in this case it seemed fairly obvious to me that Puccini set up a clear theological debate in the first act.  Early on, one of the miners is caught cheating at poker.  The other workers want to kill him, but the sheriff, Jack Rance, however, devises a different punishment.  He takes the two of spades and pins it to the guy's vest, telling the other guys that if he ever removes it, they are to hang him.  It's the Wild West version of the Scarlet "A:"  He's marked for life.  No redemption for him.  Now, when Minnie teaches her Bible lesson, she reads from Psalm 51.  Puccini clearly did not have his Bible at hand because Minnie says she is reading from verse 2, when actually she is reading from verse 7 (the one about hyssop), and later, verse 10.  At any rate, her interpretation of these verses is "Cio vuol dire, ragazzi, che non ve, al mondo, peccatore, cui non sapra una via de redenzione," there is no sinner for whom there is no redemption.  So then the question in the opera becomes, is there redemption for Johnson/Ramerrez for being a thief?  He is trying to find his way to redemption, but will he be allowed to?  Rance thinks not.  Minnie struggles when confronted with the real implications of her theological claim, but decides yes, in part, I think, because of her realization in Act 2 that "we are all the same, all theives and gamblers," including herself for running a saloon and making money off whiskey and gambling.  And then in Act 3 she goes about convincing the miners who are ready to hang Ramerrez, in what to me was a very powerful climax of the opera in the third act, that indeed, for every sinner there is redemption, that, as she taught them, each of them have the love in their hearts it takes to forgive.  Everyone but the sheriff forgives; he is left looking on, pistol dangling from his hand, lost.  

• Redemption?  Yes.  That's the opera's answer anyway.  It may seem naive, especially in the wake of last week's bad news in Colorado and yesterday's political violence in Arizona.  Minnie struggles in the 2nd Act, as I mentioned; it's not an easy resolution for her.  The insight that "we are all the same" -- the sheriff, the povera fanciulla, and the thief -- seems to point to some of the complexities of the problem of assigning blame -- who is really innocent?  Who is really free from blame?  When injustice is endemic and systemic and institutionalized (slightly beyond the scope of the opera, but think about the fact that the sheriff is also a gambler), whose hands are clean?  We are all in need of the hyssop.

• On a different note:  When the curtain went up on Act 1 and the workers started wandering in, mentioning how they missed home, I began thinking about the immigrant workers I know, some of whom are members of my church.  Are they so very different from the men depicted here, who have left home and traveled a great distance to a strange land to try to make money for their families?  It is the same desire, why do we now treat our immigrant brothers and sisters so inhumanely?  When the troubadour comes in and they all begin to sing of the ways they miss home, and then "Jim" breaks down and weeps on the bar, saying he can't take it anymore and wants to go home, well, it broke my heart and I cried.  Not too long ago someone wept like that, broken, on my shoulder, and the tenderness of this chorus, well, Puccini got it just right.  The instructions in the score say the scene is to be "agonized" and it certainly was.

• One last thing.  The opera is a product of its time, as everything is.  So I suppose it should not have such a shock when Act 2 opened with Hollywood-stereotype Native Americans actually grunting at each other.  The score is clear, they're supposed to grunt and such.  Puccini's opera here (and I am certain the play that it's based on) is racist.  But this production added the insult of Billy being drunk in the bed -- that's not in the score instructions, so the director made things worse -- so we have the stereotype of the drunk male Indian and the young Indian maiden with the "papoose" on her back.  What is the responsibility of opera directors/designers to NOT perpetuate racist (etc) stereotypes to the extent they're able?  This has got to be harder in some operas than others, but it would have changed the plot/meaning of this particular one Not One Bit to instruct the singers to ignore the grunting and turn those bits into to something more conversational, and to not put Billy in the bed with a whiskey bottle.  I mean, come on.  Let these characters have some dignity.

So there you go!  Really, it was a wonderful experience, including Sandra Radvanovsky's interview with the horses backstage during the first intermission, and her banter with Deborah Voigt over the mass of props during the 2nd intermission, over which was better, a rifle or a spear a la Brunnhilda.  Yet another reason to love the HD shows!

Minnie cheats at poker:


Deborah Voigt talks about the role here.

Anik will appreciate that I got my score/libretto help from IU Opera Scores. Here's Fanciulla.

Friday Five: Year-End Edition

For the final Friday Five of the year, the revgals suggest listing 5 blessings of 2010 and 5 hopes/dreams for the new year.  This seemed like a good spiritual practice, since "blessings" is not the first thing that springs to mind when I think of this year.  This year was rough, and as I read through others' year-end blog posts and status updates, it seems "rough" describes many folks' 2010 journey.  May 2011 be a gentler road for us all.

Blessings:

1 -- Bearing witness to my cielo's continued growth as the most amazing human I have ever known.  Assuming all continues smoothly, she will be ordained in 2011, something I am already looking forward to.

2 -- Rediscovering an old love: opera.  Thanks to this broadcast, which blew my world open and reminded me that there is beauty in the world:



And in rediscovering opera, I discovered the global White Shirt contingent, which has provided much delight.  For an example, here.

3 -- Good friends and mentors who help me feel less lonely during the lonely stretches.

4 -- Goats and hermitages and a flying St. Francis.

5 -- Colleagues in the multi-stranded movement for justice, which only grows stronger.

Hopes/Dreams...and things I'm looking forward to:

1 -- Opera-related, there's the Capriccio HD broadcast in April, the Die Walkure HD broadcast in May, and the HOPE that the Met will release the above-mentioned Rosenkavalier on DVD, as they have done with other HD broadcasts.  Cuz then I'd feel like this:

2 -- I started the "One With the Collar" series (last one here, which has links to all of them) without realizing that it would be a series.  These poems have been helpful ways of thinking about my own experience as a minister, of wrestling with issues of privilege, authority, pain, injustice.  So I want to be more intentional about these reflections moving forward.

3 -- Continued deepening growth of the faith community I pastor.

4 -- Finally being delivered.  All right, maybe not "finally" as in that's the end of that, but finally in the sense of being brought out of whatever-the-hell-I'm-in right now and onto what is next, whatever that is.  Ironically, it's exhausting, even thought there is nothing I can do but be still and let God do Her work.

5 -- Time with my cielo, my friends, "my" hermitage, the goats...

Happy 2011, everyone!

The One With The Collar, Part 4

(If you're new around here, parts 1, 2, and 3)

(wrote this Monday, December 6th, with some edits/additions today)

this happened today:
met someone at stella's at four
for pastoral care.
we meet up on the sidewalk
and as we're going to the entrance,
i realize
there are two men sitting
at the picnic table there.
wearing army-green uniforms.
army? i think. then,
i see the patch on the shirt
of the guy facing me.
SWAT.
oh shit, i think. and their HQ
is not far away.
and i look up,
and meet eyes with him,
and he is one of the ones,
one of the ones
who beat up JT,
i saw him,
i heard him,
i heard her scream,
and i saw him in court,
more than once,
and i can't breathe,
and i start to shake.
we went in, and i couldn't speak,
so i went to sit down.
person i met brought me water,
then
while person got their coffee,
i texted my cielo and JT,
tried to remember how to breathe,
tried to ease my body back
into stillness.
thankfully person i met
totally understood. i only shared
a small bit of the story. and i was able
to get back to the present and be
pastoral and present and appropriate.

they don't cover this in seminary.

fuck.
3 years,
and i still react like this.
not just the seeing him,
but also the seeing him living
like, something appearing to be
a normal life,
having a coffee with his buddy
at the hip coffee shop.
of all the nerve.

from there,
flew home, put on the collar,
went to the vigil
at the detention center.
my body,
always hyper-aware anyway,
even moreso now, to see
as we pull up,
the cop in the intersection

lights flashing, then moves on
and parks a block away.
as if we can't see him.
the prayer we read claims
that hope overcomes despair,
and my head nods
but my body, still hurting
in those same places,
cries bullshit.
what the body knows.
as always, the GEO guards
circle in their big, white, truck
then park in the shadows
with the yellow lights on,
as if we can't see him.

and i shout, and i shout,
and i wonder why
when i am here
my voice feels like
it is rooted somewhere deeper
than my body,
like it could carry me over
an edge of unknown.

and all i can think is,
all i can pray is,
resistance.
resistance.
resistance.

Friday Five: Pie Edition

I haven't done one of these from the revgals in ages, but when I saw the theme -- PIE -- I couldn't resist!

This one's for you, my dear BlueEyes, pie-maker extraordinaire (her apple-pear-cranberry pie we had on Tuesday was scrumptious!).

Please answer these five questions about pie:

1) Are pies an important part of a holiday meal?

I am of the opinion that pie is an important part of ANY meal.  Including picnics and birthday celebrations in the Rocky Mountain National Park (it helps that there is a FANTASTIC pie shop on the way).

2) Men prefer pie; women prefer cake. Discuss.

Really?  All the women in my life prefer pie in general.  Although we all do appreciate a really good chocolate cake.

3) Cherries--do they belong in a pie?

Yes.  Best pie I have ever had was the cherry pie at from the Estes Park Pie Shop (see link above), the tartness was amazing.  The fact that there were deer roaming around just made it better (yes, it was desert for a picnic in the RMNP).

4) Meringue--if you have to choose, is it best on lemon or chocolate?

I think meringue is best when it's by itself in those little meringue cookies, dusted in chocolate.

5) In a chicken pie, what are the most compatible vegetables? Anything you don't like to find in a chicken pie?

Hmm, I have not given this much thought.  I guess I would say carrots, peas, potatoes, onions, maybe celery?  I rarely eat this kind of pie, so am not an expert.