kitchen practice

Tonight we gather
round a lamp-lit table
laying out words and hearts,
words and hearts that tell
a particular story about
our lives together and,
how tomorrow morning,
that story continues as it has
every other day this summer:
from dawn through dusk,
putting on our kitchen robes,
stirring awake the pulse of practice.

Isn't it our delightful duty
to do such work, the cooking of life,
of our lives and all life so that both
the difficult and the delightful
become digestible?
Mmmm..delicious....

I'm holding my finger
against my lips and there's
no on around but us now and
I want to tell you a secret that everybody knows:
how the complications of the human heart are unknotted by
kneading bread, frying onions, cleaning sinks;
how our lives unfold into endless offering
and the wide world over cared for by
scrubbing carrots, paying attention,
by saying "yet."

~Chris Lance, Austin Zen Center

This poem describes so well why I love time in the kitchen.  Here's to week two!