Beautiful Spark of Divinity

I had a year of plans. Instead I have fallen apples. I have gone through a lot of fallen apples. They are more diverse than lemons in terms of what you can make. Some things are made slowly; other things made quick -which suits the theme of this year. We are at the end of the apples. At least I am. People have filled the slow time with sour dough, and the hard/brief summer with time in the garden or parks having drinks or take away. These apples are for every hour when time doesn’t make a lot of sense and you need to eat but the act of eating feels like one more chore in a year of everything being tossed onto the ground. This isn’t earnest banana bread or a jolly quiz. Let’s look at these mildly bruised and tired apples. It is just a couple but they are a lot when there is so much to think about. We aren’t going to peel them or grate them. We are just going to chop them up until we feel we have had enough. Leave them on the board for a moment. You have other things to think about for a moment. Maybe you want to stare out the window and watch the beginning of a murmuration, or listen to Brahms, even if that violin concerto touches a piece of you that you don’t want anyone to see right now. You escape that feeling while mixing together a cup and a half of flour, a cup of sugar, ½ tsp of baking soda and ¼ tsp of baking powder, a dash of salt, and some cinnamon (Take a moment to enjoy that scent and pick up sharp citrus undertone.) Cinnamon was used in the embalming process for mummies in ancient Egypt. It seems like the most appropriate spice in Autumn as we begin the goodbye to the year. We need to surround the end with a sweet perfume to remind us of the pleasure we found even in this year of grand suffering. This is the beginning of a spell to bring something else to life. Otherwise those ingredients will do nothing, and we need something. Get out two eggs, half a cup of milk, half a cup of olive oil and mix it all together and pour onto the dry ingredients for we are alchemists. Mix everything, add those fallen apples. They have purpose. Pour it all into a buttered loaf pan and bake for about 50 minutes at 160/375. It might need longer because that is the way of things. You accept that everything has its own time. You can still be annoyed. I give you permission to be annoyed at this stupid version of time we are stuck with these days. “It will just be a few weeks. A month. Several months. Maybe longer.” All because we are beholden to a strange clock built by incompetent men with egos that hang about like airships. They sure do like disasters. While we wait, we love. It is the one thing we can share freely. We don’t need to show our soft hearts to everyone but we can be loving to those who need it. We don’t need to love those who hurt our hearts but we can spread that love elsewhere to those who are more vulnerable or those who have pain that is a little bit invisible. It is time to change the music. Maybe Beethoven’s 9th symphony.

Oh friends, not these sounds!

Let us instead strike up more pleasing

and more joyful ones!

But first we check on what is in the oven. Is it done? Let’s say it is done. We are going to let it cool. Then you can have some. This is your helpless frustration, and raw heart when nothing else makes sense. Is it cake? Is it bread? If you need this at breakfast, it can be bread. When it is tea or fika, it can be cake. It is yours to eat and share because you created something full of generosity and kindness. The scent and the flavour will let your heart feel tenderness awhile longer.