After a long, challenging week I ate leftovers for dinner by myself Friday night — not exactly a feast but sort of appropriate for the night of the Hunger Moon. Falling in late February, this moon is all about making due with the bottom of the pantry, the dregs of last summer’s harvest preserved in all the ways that grew uninspired about a month ago, when the pickle salads and canned greens went from novel to wearisome reminders that a few miles away we could choose to procure anything we might want, fresh and transported from as far as it could be found in season.
I turned off my phone, as I often do Friday evening, intending to keep it off for Shabbat, but just as often recall some reason why I really must turn it back on to check something or be accessible to someone. This week I kept it off. I read before sleeping, and in the morning, unusually well-rested, I woke hungry, and made some buckwheat pancakes from leftover batter made of nothing but fermented whole buckwheat—a perfect Hunger Moon breakfast (recipe here!)
Then, as Hany practiced guitar I lay on the floor and stretched—not a regimented yoga practice the likes of which we’re taught we can’t do with a belly full of pancakes—but the kind of practice that allowed me to really feel the tension living in my body—especially my neck and shoulders but also my hips, low back and belly—as I rarely do and move in a way and at a pace that allowed my body to relax the tension, loosen its grip.
Then I started cooking. I was signed up for a meal train for a friend who recently had her first baby, and had a vague idea what I’d make—a shoulder from one of Hany’s venison harvests was thawing for stew. I opened the fridge and in hunger moon style dug deep, retrieved bags of old beets, potatoes and onions, and made a big pot of bone broth borscht (with beef bones from nearby Churchtown Dairy) and another big pot of venison stew.
Once everything was simmering I sat down to write, in a notebook, with a pen, this.
I’ve been thinking about time, space, and practice, and how practice is what happens at the intersection of dedicated, sacred time and space — whether it’s “formal” practice like yoga or meditation, or taking mindful time in daily activities like cooking, sweeping, or creating an altar on a table, bookshelf or counter.
Time is a choice: how we spend our days, how we allocate our hours, minutes, moments, and clues to how to manage our time can be found in our lineages. Do I choose to keep the Sabbath in the way of my ancestors, they who led me where I am, who held to a code of lineage for millennia, who were clearly onto something in the way they lived? How has it been working out for me not observing a day of rest one day per week as they did? Does it serve me being connected to the world with its deluge of content seven days a week, every waking hour?
Similarly, clues about nourishment come from our lineages. As I chose what seeds to plant this season I found myself veering away from corn towards potatoes and buckwheat, which feel rooted in my Eastern European lineage.
There’s more in my notebook about choice in relation to time, space and nourishment but I’ll leave that for later.
As I shift from putting my energy into the spaces of social media to more intimate modes of virtual connection, I have one request: If you’ve read this, let me know. If anything has resonated, even more so. It means the world.
