What Gets Baked In?
Since the beginning of this year, I have begun some kitchen experiments - what some might refer to as “baking”. Usually on a weekend, I will raid the pantry and/or fridge to see what ingredients are available to transform from shelf powder to home-baked pastry. There are recipes, general guidelines, and traditional wisdom passed down from current and bygone bakers, but reading about scones and digging into the trenches of butter and flour are two very different experiences.
Baking is a simple and elegant example of emergence. An emergent property is one that an entity displays in its wholeness, that is not present in any of the individual parts that comprise it. For example, butter and flour and sugar by themselves have certain textures and tastes, but none of them can be said to be a biscuit. It is not until they combine with thoughtful ratio and exposure to fire that the alchemy of emergence brings about a new form - one that is more complex than the sum of the parts.
Baking has also reiterated for me how profound a subtle gesture can be. In the kitchen, like in life, things rarely proceed the way the recipe dictates. The ability to adapt to a changing environment is important. Sometimes, a “minor” substitution can yield a major shift in the way the experience unfolds.
Take milk, for instance. For my recent batch of biscuits, I realized there was no milk in the house well after the process was underway. Instead, I substituted Bulgarian yogurt for milk because that was what was available. The baking continued and eventually the golden treats were drawn from the oven. The biscuits were slightly chewier than usual. Not long after the first bite, the eminent critic weighed in. He proceeded to observe that this batch was “not as good. Not like normal.” In other words, these biscuits did not meet an arbitrary and preconceived notion of perfection.
But what about how they browned more evenly and the outer crust was richer? What about the witness who could take a moment to appreciate that I can spend a Sunday morning baking something (anything!) for the sheer pleasure of it? It gave me a chance to reflect on how much I/we miss in the ceaseless quest to judge and criticize instead of simply seeing what is right in front of us. Simple in its truth, yet sometimes rather challenging in practice. This process does not happen in isolation and I enjoy the good fortune to have a partner who encourages me to see this way, who reminds me when I seem to forget, and who patiently supports my adventures in baking.
Another “minor” substitution I have been experimenting with is reframing the question my mind asks about many of the things it considers. The shift from “what if…” to “what is…” may only reflect a single letter substitution in the ingredient phrase, but it yields a much different and much richer Present when it comes out of the oven.
As we enter the heat and the fire of this summer season, I am curious to ask: what is getting baked in? And how does the art and manner of how we bake impact what emerges?
Life as Continuity
What are the things that connect us?
I’m currently contributing to a project aimed to prepare students who are considering chiropractic college. Working on the Philosophy section has given me another opportunity to review the tools and terms, but more importantly, the Big Picture. What is the WHY that informs the practitioner? How does the body work? How does directing focus on promoting and advancing health (instead of prevention and treatment of disease) impact how someone experiences their body and the world?
As one of the things that connect us, language is so important. I used to think of myself as a student of the Anatomy of Wellbeing, until I made the connection that the word “anatomy” (to cut up) itself implies an orientation to separating things into pieces. This can be a useful process and often helps us understand things with more detail. However, without an appreciation for the context of the whole and the recognition that in life things are not separate, the process of reducing can lead to division in mind and heart.
Within the realm of the human body, everything is connected. Traditionally, we have been taught that muscles attach to bones via tendons. We can “dissect” these “pieces” out, see the nerves and blood vessels that feed them, and describe what actions they perform. This is what tradition has passed down - a tradition informed by reductionism. What if we approached the body from the perspective of continuity? There is a seamless continuity within and through the entire body. I mean this literally. There are no seams, stitches, or pins in healthy tissue. The connective tissue of fascia wraps, folds, and weaves together all tissue in the body. The nervous system coordinates and communicates directly or indirectly with all parts of the body. The second a knife - a surgical one or a mental one - is applied it introduces a break in this continuity. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as it acknowledges and honors the natural whole state of the body.
How can this sense of continuity inform other aspects of life? If we begin with the perspective that everything is connected - and in some way or another continuous - we realize the tremendous responsibility we have to ourselves, each other and the planet. Nothing and no one exists in isolation. Your wellbeing is my wellbeing. How we treat the environment reflects how we treat our own bodies. We’re in this together. This is the Big Picture.
From the Wisdom of Pine Cones
Along the southern reaches of the Jersey shore, maritime forests of pine and oak grow strong in the sandy soil. Owing to the influence of fire and humanity, the predominant species here is pitch pine (Pinus rigida). The cones of this tree have adapted so that they will open only in response to extreme heat. The natural, necessary, and repetitive process of wildfire both destroys and renews the resources of this land.
At the close of 2018, I returned once again to the forests and the land where I grew as a sapling. The opportunity to spend time with my family, to revisit the well-trod paths of my youth, to hold congress with my favorite groves, and to feel the the brisk south wind along the shore, as always, was beautiful and insightful. So much has changed, yet roots remember.
If left undisturbed, clearings made by fire or people in the forest will become wooded again. In ecology, the process of succession is a slow, orderly sequence of changes in which one community of plants and animals will replace each previous community until a climax community emerges. In the Pine Barrens it takes 100-200 years for an open field to become a mature forest.
And eventually it will burn.
The pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus related the kosmos to “an everliving fire; kindling in measures and being quenched in measures”. The world, like the beings that inhabit it, is constantly in a state of flux. “Changing, they stay the same”.
In my own life, especially in 2018, the sequence of changes I experienced did not seem slow or orderly. It became apparent to me that sometimes we, too, are exposed to the rapid and wild fire of transformation. In time, the flora and fauna of our inner and outer Erlebnis will change, creating and being created by the emerging landscape of Life. In his meditation on trees, Herman Hesse channels:
”A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life...I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail”.
As with trees, we have an elemental contract with earth and water, to breathe the air and to be tempered by fire. Like the pitch pine, a new cycle begins with a kernel in ash and ember. May you kindle abundance in this new year.
