The Dark Path

I’ve just read Thomas Merton’s Dark Path by William Shannon.  William Shannon takes Merton’s writings and life experiences to provide a field book for the apophatic spiritual path. The apophatic tradition begins with the premise that God or Truth can never be captured in language, and can therefore only be described by what it is not. Apophatic mysticism is found within all of the religious traditions and seeks a direct experience of the divine reality, beyond the realm of our ordinary minds or senses. This divine union is the goal of all seekers, and is the only solution to the riddle of life and death. Nothing else we can say, do, think, or become will satisfy the need we feel so desperately to know that “all shall be well” and that our doubts, fears, and perceived inadequacies are all, in the end, unfounded.

This book gives an overview of Merton’s major writings on contemplative prayer.  I wasn’t sure I liked it at first, but was captured by the chapters on The Inner Experience, a book which in part compares the contemplative to the existentialist.  As Merton was a ‘rip roaring Trappist’, his path and views are invariably rooted in Christianity.  Yet I was able to strip away the religious references and find much food for thought rooted in his writings and thoughts on contemplation, views on the darkness and his ‘discovery’ of Zen Bhuddism and Eastern mysticism.  Ironically though, and as Merton himself wrote (here I paraphrase) one doesn’t learn about contemplation by reading about it, but by direct experience of it.  But one who has been there can have an ‘Aha’ experience when reading that which is so difficult to put into words and at which Merton is so eloquent.

“The darkness becomes an atmosphere of breathless clarity, in which we find peace and the deep night becomes the brightness of the noonday sun in which we find the one our heart desires.”     – Thomas Merton

According to the apophatic way, in order to engage the spiritual source with the most intense intimacy, at the moment of union the mystic suspends all beliefs and disbeliefs. Taking an empty mind and an open heart, she steps over the mystical threshold and crosses into the realm of the unimaginable. This crossing into the state of complete surrender is the way of the apophatic mystic.

Once again, I am beckoned into the darkness.  I am coming to know it as a friend and willingly heed its summons.  I can look back on a time when I was literally dragged very reluctantly, heels dug in, into a dark night, but somehow stayed in it and came out the other side much richer for the experience.  It is so tempting for the uninitiated to try and avoid a dark night at all costs or to cling on to the first piece of flotsam drifting past just to make it end sooner!  But the price that we pay for avoidance is not finding the treasures in our depths.  A dark night is the subject of one of my next fibre art pieces.  I wrote a poem just when I was coming out of it and will use screen printing to put it into the piece.

Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire

Remembrance Sunday

C. R. W. Nevinson, A Bursting Shell, 1915

from ‘Salutation’

“And see the confluence of our dreams
That clashed together in our night,
One river born of many streams
Roll in one blaze of blinding light.”

George William Russell, 1917

Tea for Two

One of the best things about being with Steve is that we both love to do wonderful things together and we really appreciate them.  The planning and anticipation can almost be as fulfilling as the doing, and we love to remember and talk about the experience afterwards. So it’s like we get to do something three times instead of just once.

Today, Steve and I went to Gidleigh Park for afternoon tea.  Gidleigh Park is a luxury country house hotel located on Dartmoor near the village of Chagford.  It’s a mile drive up a single track road so we really felt like we were getting away from everything.  We saw a heron fishing and two pairs of deer en route.

Gidleigh Park

On our arrival, we were greeted and as we were early (afternoon tea is served at 4pm) we went for a walk around the grounds to build up our appetite.   The surrounding area is wild Dartmoor at it’s best – mature woodlands with the very same River Teign that I cycle along on my way to work running through it.

Once we arrived back at the hotel, we were shown into the beautiful oak panelled library and settled in next to the fire.   In keeping with the period of the building, there are architectural and design influences from the Arts and Crafts Movement and the décor is understated, British elegance.  Owners Andrew and Christina Brownsword also run ABode Hotels, where Steve and I had our cheap date a few weeks back.  Once again the service was excellent and BTW Gidleigh Park has been named England’s Hotel of the Year. Gidleigh Park is renowned for its food and has earned two Michelin stars.  Definitely somewhere we plan to return to for a special meal sometime.

In the library

We ordered the High Tea with smoked salmon, ham, chicken and egg & cress sandwiches (crusts removed, of course);  lemon, chocolate and carrot cake, an exquisite fruit tart; scones, strawberry jam and clotted cream and four types of cookies.  I chose Gidleigh Park blend tea, which was a mix of English Breakfast and Earl Grey and Steve had a cafetiere of very good coffee.

Afterwards, we were left to relax in front of the fire and stayed until night had fallen.  The drive home was lovely with the nearly full moon lighting our way.

A proper cup of tea

A brunch by any other name

Brunch \ˈbrənch\ n [breakfast + lunch] (1896) : a meal usually taken late in the morning that combines a late breakfast and an early lunch.  The French try to avoid English terms being introduced into their language so they call it le grand petit déjeuner translated as the “big breakfast”.  Austrians start their day with a light meal followed by mid-morning Gabelfrühstück meaning “fork breakfast”.  From the Netherlands we have zondagsontbijt or “Sunday breakfast”.  When I was in college, my German friend Sigrid used to give me not one but two breakfasts!  Zweites Frühstück or second breakfast is still served throughout Germany most notably in Bavaria (there also called brotzeit, literally “bread time”).

In the immortal words of the great bard himself (sort of):

“What’s in a name? That which we call a brunch
By any other name would still be good to eat”

Obviously, the word brunch is a marriage between breakfast and lunch, but why not leakfest?. Actually I just googled it and got a plethora of links to a huge variety of websites, blogs and forums including security/media leaks (obviously), vintage amplifiers, coolant/oil leaks in car engines, but nothing at all about food or a regatta gone horribly wrong.

Steve works from home and I go out to work three days a week, so we have the opportunity to begin four days a week with brunch.  This morning, I got up and put the pureed pumpkin I made on Sunday night into Zip-loc freezer bags, a really good storage idea I got from Pioneer Woman.  I measured it into 2-cup portions, handy for the recipes I plan to cook with it, and they stack very neatly away in the freezer.

Speaking of pumpkin puree recipes, this morning I am making Pumpkin Pie French Toast from Kevin at Closet Cooking, one of my favourite food blogs. I slightly modified the recipe with my ideal proportion of eggs to liquid, which is 1 egg to 1/3 cup liquid, increased the amount of vanilla extract and substituted crystallized ginger for ground ginger.

Pumpkin Pie French Toast

• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/3 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/2 teaspoon Bourbon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon finely chopped crystallized ginger
• 1/8 teaspoon cloves
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 8 slices of bread
• Butter for cooking
• Maple cured bacon
• Maple syrup

Mix everything in a shallow dish.  Soak the bread into the egg mixture on both sides until it absorbs the liquid.   Saute in a pan until lightly golden brown, about 2-3 minute per side.  Serve with maple syrup and bacon and coffee.

Worth sleeping in for!

Barmy Art

Sorry Linus!

I practice a policy of gastronomic laissez-faire and say “Live and let live, but if you hunger for a critter, try to get one that has been raised and killed humanely”.  If possible get it from the source and don’t waste any part of it.  Thank it’s soul for giving itself so that I may eat, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.

I was once very irritated by a smug, holier-than-thou vegetarian who said, “I don’t eat anything that has a face” and I know of certain carnivores (who shall remain nameless) who won’t eat an animal which has a name, eg Bossy the Cow or Chicken Little.  Well, even my vegetables have names and faces.  Enter Sam and Petunia, our Jack-o’-Lanterns.  They both have both names and faces and are both going to be eaten.

Sam & Petunia

Sourced from Michael Howard’s deli, just across the street from us; all of their meat and vegetables can be traced to the farm it came from.

Sam and Petunia had a happy, free range life in their pumpkin patch  .  .  .  .  .

and fulfilled their duty as Jack-o’-Lanterns, sitting at the top of our stairs and welcoming our dinner party guests.

I started with the offal and made toasted pumpkin seeds for hors d’oeuvre at our Samhain Feast on Saturday.

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

• Pumpkin seeds
• Olive oil
• Sea salt
• Soy sauce and chili powder, or freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to about 350° F/180°C.   Toss the seeds with olive oil and salt.  Sprinkle with either soy sauce and chili powder or toss with Parmesan cheese.  Spread on a cookie sheet and roast for about a half hour, tossing about every 1o minutes.

Tonight I made pureed pumpkin which I’ll freeze and use for soup. pumpkin cheesecake and our Thanksgiving pumpkin pie.  Sorry Linus!