You can thank me later

Something magical happens when you put crunchy cereal flakes (cornflakes/bran flakes/ancient grain flakes...whatever rocks your socks) and frozen blueberries together, add a cold splash of rice milk and then put a big spoonful of peanut butter and a little drizzle of maple syrup on top.

Very sound medical advice encouraging the ingestion of cereal any time of the day, any meal of the day can be found here.

You're welcome.

Four things about falling

1. What happens to you when you fall into a black hole

'The great secret that black holes have revealed to us is that there is no really. Reality depends on whom you ask.'

2. This quote

“I was falling. Falling through time and space and stars and sky and everything in between. I fell for days and weeks and what felt like lifetime across lifetimes. I fell until I forgot I was falling.”
― Jess Rothenberg, The Catastrophic History of You and Me

Is this what love feels like?

3. How a group of rugby players survived after their plane fell out of the sky

"Who survived? It wasn’t the smartest, most intelligent ones. The ones who survived were those who most felt the joy of living. That gave them a reason to survive."

4. I've fallen in love with this instagram account - it is the funniest thing.

21/09/2016

“Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,

"You owe me."

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.”
― Hafiz

(not my old history teacher)

(I don't know who this hafiz is but he speaks truth)

This song makes me sleepy and happy in the best possible way. I'm adding this to my collection of 'Songs I will sing to my children in future'.

I came home today and had 2 delicious ice cream cookies sandwiches - I've been craving a crunchy cookie for the longest time, and perfected it with this recipe, except that I used regular plain flour instead of buckwheat or quinoa flour, and used less than the original recipe, starting with 100g and adding more if I feel like the mixture is too wet. These cookies with vanilla coconut bliss ice cream is a day done right. That and booking tickets to see Imogen in the Globe Theatre on the day I get back.

The mosquito foggers came walking round today, shrouding the estate in white fumes. Usually I lock the doors tight, and put the fan on it's highest speed to disperse the clouds, but as I reached out for the door on the balcony, I stepped out and realised how beautiful the sky still looks when it's behind a translucent filter of fog.

The thing about honey

'But why don't you eat honey?'

As a vegan, this has been one of the questions that has stumped me for the longest time. Why don't I eat honey? I love honey - it tastes delicious, it's healthier as a sweetener than refined sugar, I love the fact that I can get locally produced Suffolk honey from the village shop in Ixworth and support the livelihood of a small scale company while reducing my consumption carbon footprint.

Recently I read this article which I found quite useful in addressing both sides of the debate.

Why honey is not traditionally seen as part of a vegan diet:

1) Honey is taken from bees, who have to work incredibly hard to produce a small amount of honey. Taking it away from them after their effort is seen as a form of exploitation and theft.

Honey is not just a by-product for bees - bees use it to feed a majority of honey bee larvae. Bees can over produce honey, and some responsible bee keepers will leave enough honey for the bees (how they judge that is something I am still unclear about), however, many irresponsible bee-keepers instead replace the honey with a sugar-water solution, which is nowhere as nutritious for the bees.

2) The act of farming bees violates their right to live in freedom, and bees can be killed during the process of extracting honey as a result of the often used method of smoking the bees out of their hives. One response to this has been the Flow Hive, which promises a safe, efficient method of extracting honey without having to have the bees vacate their hive, but the flow hive comes with its own set of problems and concerns.

Commercially, the queen bee is also often killed to prevent swarming (when many of the colony's honeybees follow their queen to begin a new colony), drones are killed as they are deemed unnecessary to honey production, and more bees are killed in the process of moving commercial hives around the country to pollinate crops and produce honey.

3) Bees are not oblivious to this ill-treatment. Because insects are so different from us, it is easy to forget that they too are sentient creatures who experience suffering.

4) That insects are killed during agricultural processes, a common argument against the abstinence from honey ('You're killing insects there, so why do you avoid honey just because it kills insects?') is an invalid argument, given that veganism seeks to reduce suffering, in particular intentional exploitation and killing. To perpetrate suffering just because you can't eliminate it entirely does not make sense.

But - some considerations:

1) Colony Collapse Disorder - resulting in the mass death of bees - means that the population of wild colonies has declined. Bees - both honeybees and other types of bees - are responsible for pollination, which is needed for the growth of agriculture and the provision of food. Bees would usually pollinate the flowers near their hive, and since flowers bloom at different times in a year, a wild bee would be able to sustainably pollinate throughout the year. It is through the process of pollination that honey is made too, since pollination and nectar-collection go together, and that nectar is then turned into honey.

However, with the declining population of wild bees, it has become more important that honeybees carry on the process of pollination because, quite simply, no pollination means no food.

Because of current methods of agriculture, where large fields (especially huge for a little bee!) of mono-crops only have one flowering at a certain time, left to their own devices, bees would starve. Once that crop finishes its flowering, the bees would have no recourse to a source of nectar. The commercial movement of bees to reach other plants and crops ensures that bees do not starve. By eating honey, you in some way support the movement of bees to crops they can pollinate and collect nectar from, thereby supporting the bees and the growth of plant-based foods.

2) In view of Colony Collapse Disorder, the fact that bees are kept and can be monitored by bee keepers is crucial in sustaining their population.  This is of course predicated on the need for ethical beekeepers, and despite commercial, profit-driven beekeepers that neglect the health and welfare of their bees, ethical beekeepers who also sustain businesses and make profit do exist.

Beekeepers are trained to notice changes in the health of their bees and can save whole colonies if the presence of bacteria or disease threatens the colony. Ethical beekeepers protect their bees from the very parasites and pesticides that contribute to Colony Collapse Disorder.

3) Vegan alternatives to honey can be just as or more ethically and environmentally dubious. The harvesting of agave nectar is threatening the endangered Mexican long-nosed bat and the Jaguarundi through the forced destruction of their habitats - approximately 113,126 acres destroyed from 1991 to 2000.

Final Words

1) If you do buy honey, try to buy local and organic. Local because smaller scale producers are more likely to be able to care properly for their hives, and not use factory-farming methods which treat bees like disposable commodities. Organic because pesticides are the very things that are contributing to bee deaths, especially with regard to Colony Collapse Disorder.

2) Ultimately, what is crucial to remember is this - just because you don't feel resolved over the issue of honey, doesn't mean you cannot take steps towards a compassionate, vegan lifestyle. If honey is the thing you 'just can't not have', then continue eating it, but take steps in cutting out meat, dairy, eggs and other animal products in your diet and lifestyle. Try to find other substitutes for honey, like date paste or maple syrup, and remember that honey is the precious, amazing creation of some very small but very complex creatures.

17/09/2016

Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,

The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:

The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,

The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.

The moss is slippery, though there’s been no rain

The pine sings, but there’s no wind.

Who can leap the world’s ties

And sit with me among the white clouds?

-Han Shan

I'd had pizza dough rising in the oven since about 1pm, inspired by the passion of a man called Gennaro.

'What is it about making pizza? It's fantastico!'

and every time I opened the oven to check on it I inhaled its sweet yeasty smell. Anticipation.

Christy arrived at about 5pm with mushrooms, peppers and some ripe bananas, and we begun making pizza. Christy was so much better than me at rolling out the pizza dough, having taken a pizza making class in kindergarten. My prior experience with making my own pizza has been microwaving frozen Dr. Oetker's pizza, or spreading Prego sauce and cheese on toast.

4 pizzas were almost completed, and ready to go into the oven, but we had to wait because Emily had the onions, and was on her way. Anticipation.

We had to peel the pizza off the baking paper, because it had got stuck, burning our fingers in the process - Anticipation.

But it was worth it and delicious and we all stood on our chairs to take a picture of the spread - four pizzas, three girls, 500 grams of flour. We ate most of it, leaving the pieces with the most paper stuck in the bottom.

We watched Little Miss Sunshine (which is the sort of movie you watch when you don't want to feel too much, but still want to watch something thought-provoking) and then adjourned for ice cream sandwiches.

I begun making banana-coconut ice cream to have sandwiched between our cookies.

And then I broke the blender, and caused a power trip in the house - bathos.

But there was enough ice cream for the three of us to have and it was delicious, although I was very worried about the blender.

Christy had to leave then, and Emily and I needed to sleep early to wake up the next day for the Macritchie treetop walk. But there are not many people I would be able to talk to for 4 hours about the messy, gore-y bits of you and gore-y bits of me, and when that happens you don't fall asleep. Not until 4.30am, when in about 5 minutes a storm wakes you up again, the crashing-sheets-of-rain-howling-winds storm that I love most of all.

“I have learned that to be with those I like is enough” 
― Walt Whitman

And I like you two, very very much.

No where to be No one to see

I find myself thinking of the time I went to London to try to find tickets for a train journey. I arrived earlier than the ticket shop opened, and because there was a chance of rain (but when is there now a chance of rain), I was wearing my grandfather's bright yellow raincoat. Besides the fact that it is made of thick plastic and is so big it could probably shield another person in the case of a storm, the added aspect of it once being my grandfather's property seems to give it extra protective properties.

Unfortunately that ticket shop didn't sell tickets for trains on weekends, but thought another shop might and so I took a walk to another part of London, stopping in the most beautiful bookshop and peering into a window display of Alice in Wonderland's Mad Hatter's Tea Party. The second ticket shop had ceased to exist, and so instead of tickets I bought a small baguette and decided to keep walking, to nowhere in particular.

Perhaps that is something I ought to do more - spend a day alone in a big city, with no time limit, no plans, no where to be and no one to see. Just me and wide pavements and expensive shops that smell of perfume and leather, and a man getting his shoes shined, and posters of vintage Vogue covers, and Islamic tiles in a window, and warm bread in one hand.

That was the same day I discovered just how in love I was with A Wheatfield with Cypresses, and after buying postcards and emerging from the National Gallery, I was on my way to the tube station, on a quest to find London'd best vegan cookie, when I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see a young man.

'How... are you?' he said, but with the rush of London around me and the lingering memory of A Wheatfield with Cypresses in my head I didn't properly hear him.

'Good?' I replied, more of a question than an answer.

'No, no...how old are you?'

'Nineteen?' (definitely a question) I was perplexed. Who was he? What did my age matter to a boy in a white t-shirt? Was I really nineteen - was life passing by so quickly?

We ended up having lunch together, during which I discovered that his name is Pablo (I hada to ask twice because I forgot the first time), he is nineteen too, has a father from Spain and a mother from England, and a younger brother. He is going to the University of Southampton to do engineering but before that he's just travelling. After that, we did much of what I had been doing earlier in the day - walking around London aimlessly.

The best thing about meeting stranger is that you probably will never see them again, and so I decided to be bold and ask him all the things I wanted to know from strangers, but never asked the hundreds of people I walk past every day. I asked him what his purpose in life and what he thought happened after death, whether he believed in God and what made him most happy.

Pablo lives life the same way I lived that morning. Aimlessly and experientially, for the purpose of trying all he can before he dies, and having the most fun possible. He avoided the question about what happened after death, saying he simply saw death as a reminder to live life to the fullest, and asked me instead what I thought happened after death. I felt a sense of sadness, because despite the beautiful freedom of no where to be and no one to see, it isn't sustainable. It's a drifting through life, like a paper boat floating down a stream, brushing the bank, grazing against over hanging leaves, oblivious to the water seeping in. It's regenerative sometimes, but other times you need to walk on the firm ground of the bank and dig your toes into the soil and have purpose for yourself and for others and for God.

After 5 hours of conversation, in which we also discovered a book sale under a bridge and found our way to Hyde Park, I lied about my train, saying it was earlier than it actually was because I was very tired from the walking and the conversation, and so we parted. After making sure he'd gone onto his train, I doubled back to where we'd come from initially to buy some dinner and a slice of cake, and then caught my train to Oxford with just 2 minutes to spare.

Four fun things

1. I made the life-changing discovery that is Mustafa Centre. They have everything - from rice milk to mangos to dates by the aisle to dosa pre-mix. I picked up some of this vegan cheese, and had my first cheese and tomato sandwich in the longest time. I also love how vegan cheese website has quotes along the bottom of their page. “The time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.” Leonardo da Vinci

2. We need more girls with confidence - here are two sources of inspiration (1) and (2)

"I love my hair, I love my haircuts... I can do anything good!"

3. If Vincent Van Gogh could see all he has made. I must admit I teared up myself. 'He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty...'

4. I'm no longer sick! After losing my appetite for a few days when I had a constant stomach throb and diarrhea, I've realised how precious my usual state of good health is and how I've always taken that for granted. To wake up hungry and to be hungry is one of life's big blessings. While I was sick I was eating so much rice, rice porridge and plain fare. But yesterday I had three helpings of delicious salty black bean dip with guacamole and tortilla chips and vegan cheese - my appetite is most definitely back! Perhaps pancakes on Sunday...

What happens when I get lost

 

Yesterday I got lost.

I was meant to be at a potluck at 7.30pm, but I only left the house at 7.30pm. Because I knew that waiting for the bus would be a foolish idea, I jumped into a taxi that had pulled over to drop someone off at Pietrasanta.

That taxi driver was probably the slowest driver in the history of taxi drivers. He drove at 30 km/h - I was almost jumping out of my seat when we finally got there.

I took the train to Clementi, and then walked, and then got lost.

Something funny happens when I get lost and am in a hurry.

I start talking to myself.

'Okay, you're just going to keep walking straight, and then turn left, and then hopefully, hopefully, there will be a road.'

'Why is that man smoking I am sure he's under age. His lungs think he's under aged. There is not age for smoking.'

'This is really great exercise. Yup, you keep telling yourself that Miriam.'

'This might be enjoyable if it wasn't so flipping hot.'

'You see this is why I never blog these days. I have all this creative energy and it just gets wasted when I get lost and start talking to myself.'

It must have worked because after about 20 minutes (in which time I managed to not spill the mexican-lasagna-dip-tortilla chip thing I was holding) I found the place!

'I am a champion. I did it. I found it. I am the WORLD'S SWEATIEST CHAMPION RIGHT NOW.' 

The Year of Jubilee

On Wednesday at Fellowship we discussed  The Year of the Sabbath and The Year of Jubilee, which God commands the Israelites to observe. The Year of the Sabbath was incredible - the Israelites are commanded to observe a solemn rest for an entire year. I've talked about rest before, and I think rest days are important, but it was so difficult for me to wrap my head around the idea of an entire year of rest.

Perhaps it is because I base my identity on so much of what I do.

Also the idea of trusting God becomes magnified when you consider an entire year of rest. A year of rest means no planting seed, no tending the fields and reaping the harvest. It means no working to earn money. The basic ways we conventionally find our security to support ourselves are prohibited, and God says instead that He will provide security for the Israelites, that the earth will give them everything they need, and that they will not want (The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want).

When God tells us to rest, He really asks us, 'Do you trust me?'

The Year of Jubilee also called for rest, but on top of that there was the incredible restoration of rights and justice that happened in that celebration. Debts were cancelled, family land was restored, and slaves were set free. God cared deeply that as a community, the Israelites dedicated time to enshrining social justice and rest as part of their worship of Him, as part of celebration - what gave them deep and satisfying joy. Mercy, generosity, righteousness, were not to be some sort of twisted competition to 'out-moral' each other, neither was it to be a grudging duty to avoid God's wrath, it was meant to be an outpouring of joy and celebration, where we find our truest happiness in our worship of God.

I was enraptured by the idea of the Year of Jubilee. I imagined it in my mind - how perfectly exciting, to be a slave and know that you would be free one day. How reassuring, to be someone trapped in poverty, to know that your rightful land would be restored to you, upon which you could then build a stable home and life. How humbling for a rich man, who had built up his life in receiving the interest from incurred debt, to have to let go of what is owed to him. Such a beautiful pictures of restoration and perfection.

The prophet Isaiah describes it in Isaiah 61 as the Year of the Lord's Favour:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

    because the Lord has anointed me

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

    to proclaim freedom for the captives

    and release from darkness for the prisoners,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor

    and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn,

     and provide for those who grieve in Zion—

to bestow on them a crown of beauty

    instead of ashes,

the oil of joy

    instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise

    instead of a spirit of despair.

...

“For I, the Lord, love justice;

    I hate robbery and wrongdoing.

In my faithfulness I will reward my people

    and make an everlasting covenant with them.

Then I found out that the Year of Jubilee never happened. Not even once. The Israelites could not, as a national body, live out the social system that God had commanded them. And neither can our present day society. The perfect picture in my head of the Year of Jubilee was shattered. But then Caleb said something else, "That perfect picture of the Year of Jubilee is just that, a picture." The real jubilee was fulfilled somewhere else - or rather, in someone else. In Luke 4, Jesus took up the scroll and read out from Isaiah 61. And then he rolled up that scroll and said,

“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Mind. Blown.

Jesus is the Jubilee. He is the restoration of justice. In his short time on earth he began that work, healing the sick, freeing the oppressed, and fighting injustice where he met it. And he promises eternal jubilee in heaven, where 'there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away'. The Jubilee didn't happen for the Israelites because that perfection could not operate in such an imperfect society, but it was fulfilled in the perfect person of Jesus, and remains a promise and a hope for us to reach forward to.

"Listen, Peter. When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan's real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Namia though the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream."

09/08/2016

Yesterday I fell sick. It was the worst of times for that to happen - Dad had taken two afternoons in a row off to spend time with me, Reshem was here for a stopover before his 6 month backpacking trip through Southeast Asia, and tomorrow I am about to go off to Malaysia for a church Young Adult Retreat. I felt like I needed to be present, engaged and expendable with my time and energy, but couldn't because my body was aching and tired and so cold.

Instead of going for the treetop walk we planned initially (foiled again!) we did something less strenuous with Dad and Reshem (bowling) and then I came home, took my temperature (fever) cried a little with frustration and disappointment, because I felt like I was letting the people around me down, and then went to bed with three blankets to stop the shivers.

In the night, three times I felt someone come and feel my forehead.

And I felt so thankful then that I was sick at this moment, in a place where I have people (angels in disguise) around me who care and make me take a step back and rest even though my instinct is to just try and push on.

There is almost always a part of my mind that is taking me to the next thing - I need to read this, I need to write that, I need to run this much/this fast, I need to... I need to... But 'need' is a tricky word of sometimes self-deception. Because the only thing I truly need is God, His mercy and grace and presence with me when I'm well and when I'm ill, His patience when I'm rushing from thing to thing and forgetting to worship or honour Him, His unfathomable power as He knows the plans that He has for me far better than I could anticipate or force.

And one thing God intends for us is rest. I find it so incredible that something God asks of us, that we dedicate at least one day of the week as a day of rest (and specifically, to find our rest in the contemplation and worship of God), is not only for our spiritual health but also so intrinsic to our physical health. Something I read:

Life is light and shade, fast and slow, light and dark, action and rest, awake and asleep… There’s an ebb and flow of life that unless we learn to work with, will fight against our constant need to drive hard, until something out of our control happens to slow us down. [...] While we sleep our brains consolidate memories, and our muscles, bones, and organs repair themselves and sleep keeps our immune system healthy. Getting consistently less than 6 hours of sleep per night increases the risk of cancer purely because you’re not giving your body time to rest, regroup and repair.

In 2012, Scientists discovered how our brains clean themselves out. While our bodies and cells are working, they accumulate toxic waste. The lymphatic system washes this waste away from our bodies, but our brains need a different cleaning system.

A clear liquid called cerebrospinal fluid covers our brains. It travels through special channels and washes the brain out, taking the toxins to the general circulatory system, where the liver can remove them. Studies show that this special cleaning system within our brain is TEN TIMES more active during sleep.

When we wake, these channels squeeze shut, and the cerebrospinal fluid hangs out mostly on the surface of the brain, not deep inside it. When we are awake, this cleaning system performs at 5% of its capacity.

While are we awake, our brains are crazy busy supporting everything we do: movements, thoughts, capturing memories, and interrupting the signals that come in through our senses. It’s only when we are asleep, and these processes shut down for the day that our brains can switch into cleaning mode.

God says 'Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest'. It might not seem like the most impressive thing to say - he doesn't say 'and I will give you power' or 'and I will give you riches' or 'and I will give you your heart's desire' - but it is the very thing we need.

So today I rested, all day. I lay in bed. I spent some time replying to people I love from all over the world. I had lots of rice congee, and a bagel with apple sauce. I practiced some yoga that focused on healing and slow meditative movements -leaving out the crow in the second one because I didn't feel like that was the most constructive thing for my body. I learnt that the ampersand used to be part of the alphabet.

I feel much better now.

Which you have that growed

Something you realise as a returning overseas student is just how much people change while you are away, and particularly how they change. Some people stay largely the same, but as the sands of time sharpen some edges and dull others, most of my friends develop new facets of self, or mediate and mature in some aspects, or lose some parts of their old self as they step into a new skin of their adulthood.

On Tuesday night I met Cheemeng, who I haven't seen for about a whole year, and as I waited for him in Real Food, I wondered what would have changed. Having not kept in contact much while I was in England, I didn't know what sort of person he'd be, especially having gone through army which changes one so much.

Well, the first thing I noticed was that he'd grown a couple of centimeters taller. But more importantly, he'd become so much happier, and sure of his direction in life, and mature in his conversation.

But in many aspects he was also still the same old cheeky, irreverent friend I've kept since orientation. I wish I could have said this line from Great Expectations to describe him:

"Which you have that growed," said Joe, "and that swelled, and that gentle-folked" Joe considered a little before he discovered this word; "as to be sure you are a honour to your king and country"

But since he hasn't read a book for at least half a year (and has left To Kill a Mockingbird half finished) I wasn't sure if that particular description would be quite relevant.