Hello loved ones,
I’ve been missing from these stacks lately, for one reason or another. I’m trying to get used to saying nothing when I have nothing to say. But I do hope you’re well wherever you happen to be this spring.
Let’s see, what’s been going on around here? The weeks after Easter are always a sequence of increasing delights as we spot the first daffodils, then watch the redbuds pop, then track the furry pre-blooms of lupines craning their necks in the meadow. We laid down a fresh meal of straw for our mushroom bed a few weeks back and just spotted a spring batch of caps poking their way through it this evening. Nightly, it seems, there’s something the kids are excited to show me when I pull up the drive from work.
Now we’re gearing up for garden season. This is the first year we planned ahead enough to get to the Amish greenhouse just one county road over from us for our seedlings. We’ve usually gone to a big box place 20 minutes away, but no more! The folks who run this greenhouse are delightful and very wise in the way of plants. I’m hopeful some of that wisdom will rub off on us over the years ahead.
What are y’all excited about seeing this spring? Let me know in the comments.
I will say, there was one little bummer early on in April: we didn't go to see the eclipse. Those of you who were tracking the path of totality might be surprised at this, given that we live literally two hours from where it was going to go dark. A number of our friends and family made that trip and attested to the power of what they saw.
Linnea and I were debating even up to the day whether we should try to make it happen, but I had to be at the office for something, and we were running on fumes anyway. The prospect of packing up our kiddos and heading down south felt totally overwhelming to us. So we stayed home and watched near-totality from our backyard, which as every article written leading up to the eclipse told us, was literally a night-and-day difference.
I don't want to suggest in any way that it's not worth going to see a total eclipse, because I know it is. Transcendence is a vital human need, even more so these days when humanity has done everything in its power to drain the world of it. I do think that some of the swooning over it is a bit much, but then, I think most things are a bit much.
But as we watched through our glasses and enjoyed the weird color-drain that takes hold at the edges of totality, I couldn't help but brood about what we were missing. It stained the experience for me a bit, more so than I expected. I was surprised at how crummy and annoyed I felt inside right afterward, even as I tried to put on an excited face for the kiddos. That sickly feeling stuck with me beyond the experience, until I began to suspect that it didn’t have as much to do with missing the eclipse as with something else.
From time to time through recent years I’ve had this inexplicable sense that I'm missing out on something, that I'm not really doing what I should be doing right now, that there’s something out there more in line with God's will and who He has made me to be. No matter where I end up in life I feel like there should be more to it, and that it’s up to me to find that more. I want more purpose, more holiness, more passion, just… more.
I can’t pin this discontent to anything or resolve it in any satisfactory way. The purposes of God are always shrouded in mystery, and the better life I think I should have is hedged around with fences – the good and necessary ones, the ones I’ve built myself, the ones foisted upon me. Even the holier-than-this life I wish to lead is brought up short by my striking inability to make myself holy, and my utter need for Christ crucified to make me so. As much as I seek to work out my own sanctification, it is always God who works in me, and gosh, He goes slow sometimes.
Missing the totality of the eclipse just struck that deep part of me that’s always worried that I'm missing out on something really important, and if I could just find the right key, ministry, church, friends, spiritual disciplines, words… then, then I will be happy.
Missing out on things is an inescapable part of existence, because by choosing to be present in one place, we choose to be absent in another. Every yes to one thing is a no to a million other options. In the face of missing out on 90% of the existence available to us, the only possible choice is to live the heck out of that remaining 10% – and that's not possible if all we're thinking about is what we're missing out on.
Recently Linnea and I watched The Taste of Things, the story of a French gourmet chef (Dodin) and the cook who has worked for him for over two decades (Eugenie). This is a lavish feast of a film, friends, and you should watch it yourself. The way Anh Hung Tran and his team fill every frame with light, every scene with beauty, every interaction with love – it's something to behold. Linnea and I didn't realize until after we finished it that there was no soundtrack at all, that it was all just the sounds of nature and kitchen. The opening scene is literally 38 minutes long and almost completely void of dialogue, but because it was so delightful and soothing it felt like five minutes to me.
The Taste of Things is about food, yes, but it's mostly about love experienced over long years together, of mature love. This is revealed, among other ways, in the couple's interaction with their young protege Pauline. Pauline is gifted with an extraordinary palate, but it's clear to both of her mentors that gifting alone does not a chef make. She needs time to grow and experience things in order to truly appreciate the complexities of some of the foods they make. Dodin points out that it's not really until you're over 40 that you can truly become a gourmet. The luxury of beef marrow, for instance, is a foreign experience for the young Pauline.
What becomes clear throughout the film is that love is much the same. Dodin and Eugenie, by virtue of 20 years sharing their lives and kitchen together, are in the autumn years of their love. The maturity of it is clarified for us as viewers not in what they receive from one another, but in what they give to one another. They are truly happy.
How is this possible?
One could argue that of course they’re happy, they have all this leisure time to just cook and eat amazing things, with no thought of work or family responsibilities. If my life was like that, I’d probably be happy too! But Tran and his team take care to clarify that it’s actually not about leisure or even amazing food. In one sequence, a visiting prince invites Dodin and his fellow gourmets to an elaborate, many-course meal. Every gourmet in the film agrees that he’s missed the point, that there is no clarity or care offered by an excess of experience.
Instead, the meals most savored are the omelette Eugenie makes Dodin every morning (which has been honed to excellence by consistent repetition), or the clear bone broth Dodin makes when Eugenie is ill, which has been brought very carefully to perfection over a long, slow simmer. When Dodin plots a menu response for the prince, he chooses pot-au-feu, literally boiled meat and vegetables in a single pot.
What is striking and beautiful about Dodin and Eugenie’s relationship is that they’ve given their time and attention fully to this one person, this one vocation, this one kitchen. By the time we step into their kitchen and peer into the pot, they have mastered patient presence. They know how to savor things.
We watched The Taste of Things in between episodes of a wildly-different show about cooking, The Bear. In this series, chef Carmy struggles to turn a failing dive into a high-end restaurant in the heart of Chicago. The setting is a hit of pure nostalgia for us, of course. I devoured a midnight Italian beef with two of my bro-in-laws the night the Cubs clinched their ride to the World Series at the exact restaurant the show is based on.
The Bear is also about love, but it's more about what it takes to give and receive it in the midst of trauma and dysfunction. Carmy returns to Chicago to take over his brother Mikey’s restaurant after Mikey, suffering from drug addiction, ends his own life. Coming back from his high-pressure, high-end restaurant job, Carmy steps right into the dysfunctional family life he was trying to avoid all these years, all while attempting to turn around a restaurant that is teetering on the brink of collapse. The Bear is chaotic and tense. These characters are missing something, namely any sense of peace or purpose that is not rooted in survival, achievement, or trauma. A haze of anxiety hovers over everything.
While the camera in The Taste of Things glides and floats around the kitchen, peering over shoulders and resting on quiet light, The Bear is full of slash cuts and loud interruptions. While Dodin and Eugenie cook with confident, assured movements, Carmy can’t stop fidgeting, as if he’s holding all the pain inside like a pressure cooker about to explode (which he does, frequently). Dodin and Eugenie are framed in every shot by their kitchen, their garden, a snowdrop-covered meadow – the film feels wide and spacious. Carmy and his crew are framed in ultra-tight close-ups, heightening the feeling that the chaos is not just around them but inside of them, and there is no escape from it.
In The Taste of Things, time vanishes into the background of their lives, doing the quiet, unobtrusive work of tenderizing and seasoning each meal. In The Bear, ticking clocks and ringing timers run the room. In the high-end kitchens Carmy trains in, a sign hangs over everyone like a guillotine: “Every second counts.”
These two wildly different visions intersect, however, whenever the characters taste a meal. The pure delight that illuminates Eugenie's eyes when she tastes an exquisitely prepared oyster is the same delight you see in line cook Tina's eyes when she tastes the lemon piccata chicken Carmy prepares. That savoring of a dish – from a simple omelette to a complex braise – is the culmination of something deeper than just a few ingredients. There's history in it, and love, and presence. For Carmy and his crew, there's hope for healing – if they can ever slow down long enough to face it fully. That begins to happen in fits and starts during the second season, as the characters deal with their pasts, dig into healthier mindsets and routines, lean into loving others, and allow themselves to receive love.
About a year ago, I got off social media entirely, removing Instagram and Facebook and Twitter from my life. The fog took a while to lift, hampered by my propensity to scratch the itch with different activities like obsessively checking my email. At some point, weaning myself off of the dopamine highs got easier, and I started living life like I used to before social media interrupted it (sometime around 2008?) I can attest that, among other fears and regrets, I have not once regretted this decision, and I highly recommend it to you if you haven’t taken that leap.
A year in, I feel like my concentration is thicker and my conversation more curious. My memory has improved, and my mood is more regulated. I'm more comfortable letting things happen in their own time. I'm less interested in controversy, and more willing to engage it when it happens in real life. Overall, I'm savoring the here and now in ways I've always wanted to and could never have done without logging off.
There are days when I wonder about what is being said and done in online spaces that I used to inhabit. I wonder if I'm missing out on opportunities, or the chance to make new friends, or reconnect with old ones. I still sometimes want validation for the things that I experience. Once in a great while I think of a witty tweet, or take a picture before realizing that I have nobody to send it to except my wife, who is sitting next to me and has already seen what I took a picture of.
This vague anxiety over what I could be doing is undoubtedly one of the more long-lasting results of years of social media use, and it has noticeably waned since last March. But there’s more to it than just post-social echoes, I think.
Not to be the millennial in the room, but my generation tends to hold some pretty high expectations of ourselves. We were told from early on just how vital we were to the cause of God's kingdom, how we were the generation who could bring about the return of Christ by completing the Great Commission. We were to avoid wasting our lives. We were to do great things for God. We were meant to live for so much more, you know?1
The problem with all of this, you might have surmised by now, is that life happened. And as life was happening to all of us, we simultaneously received the dubious gift of greater access to all of the people who were achieving (or at least appearing to achieve) the very things we were told we needed to achieve. Our lives began to look less and less like the lives we imagined in our heads or saw on our screens.
For those of us who went to a Bible college, the sense of greater purpose was more potent. Things like spending time in the Word took on existential stakes. If you stepped out of line spiritually or morally, didn’t pray enough, or made a decision out of what you wanted instead of what God wanted – you might derail The Plan.
Think for a moment what this means. It means you are doomed to failure from the start simply for being human. You will always be frustrated. You will always walk in fear.
This is a tough mindset to break out of, but I think we have to start by acknowledging that the anxiety in our souls over missing out on what God has for us is actually more of a temptation than it is a sign. It offers us some fantasy of higher ground that will always exist beyond our reach, and suggests that we entangle ourselves in methods to reach it instead of devoting our waking hours to God here and now.
In naming that a temptation, we’re accepting the savory reality we live in and turning our backs on a delusion that will never satisfy our hunger. And our current reality doesn’t have to be painless or perfect for us to give it our undivided attention. In fact, pining away after a different ideal life is only going to make any trouble we’re experiencing now that much worse.
The day before the eclipse was a Sunday, and the path of totality was a conversation topic for a moment during morning prayer with a few members of our church family. I asked one of them, a 60-something dairy farmer, whether or not he was going to travel to see it. He chuckled and said, "Oh no, I've got too much going on here on the ground for that."
What if we asked ourselves: what is going on here on the ground that requires our attention? What is there to savor here, in our own cities and gardens and kitchens?
In that headspace, “Every second counts” is no longer a threat, but a reminder: Look at what is in front of you now. This is what matters. You only experience it once, so savor it. Out of that submission to the here and now that God has given us, we learn what His present love for us really means, and learn to give it away.
Dodin says it best, perhaps, when he paraphrases Augustine at the end of the film: "Happiness is continuing to desire what you already have.”
May it be so in your life and mine.
April Favorites:
Linnea and I got a kick out of these two Open Door vids from Architectural Digest — Jon Batiste / Suleika Jaouad’s home, and Debby Ryan / Josh Dun’s home.
Speaking of Josh Dun, I’m kind of stoked for the next Twenty One Pilots album. Next Semester is my favorite of the singles that came out recently, although I do love the Trench-era flavor of Overcompensate.
Just picked up Timothy Keller’s Forgive, and I’m already loving it.
Related Letters
Absolutely no shade toward Switchfoot intended here, just toward the Christian subculture that leveraged that song. JF was definitely part of the solution to this, not the problem.
You should write reviews for movies & shows more often. 😊 I have a soft spot for The Bear. Definitely going to rewatch season 2 before season 3 releases soon. It's like witnessing a miracle unfold when those characters are granted breath and space. I was blown away. And the soundtrack!
And thanks for reminding me about The Taste of Things! On another note, I've been mulling over this quote from Ruth Haley Barton's book Strengthening the Soul of Leadership...so helpful for us elder millennials brought up with the weight of the Kingdom on our shoulders:
"What can I do to make myself grow spiritually?”
“As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning.”
“What then is the use of the spiritual disciplines you have taught me?”
“To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise.”
"We were made to live for so much more, but we lost ourselves..." That brings back some memories. :) Thank you for this beautiful article. I am also off social media. It has been hard in some ways, but I'm glad I made the decision. Would love to watch "The Taste of Things" someday.