One or Two Butternut squashes, peeled, seeded, halved and sliced into 1/4 to 1/2 circle slices or double this amount of delicata squash, similarly prepared. You can leave the skins on if you want, but most folks prefer to eat their squash without the skins. I like them both ways, but find that my guests prefer no skins and eat around the skin, so I’ve taken to peeling these so that all of the squash gets eaten.
Juice of one or two fresh oranges (if you have to use orange juice concentrate that is okay, but fresh is always better)
Fresh herbs, whichever ones you have on hand or prefer (cilantro, parsley, tarragon, thyme and sage are the ones I use most frequently)
Five to six cloves of garlic or more (as you wish), prepared with the centers removed as per all of my recipes using garlic
Olive oil (1/4 cup – 1/2 cup, depending on how much squash you are making)
Pre-heat your oven to 350° Fahrenheit. Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl so that all the sliced squash is coated with the herbs, olive oil, orange juice and garlic. Arrange the squash half-circle slices on a cookie sheet. You can either line the cookie sheet with parchment paper or just put them straight on it.
Squash 1/2 circle rounds on baking sheet ready to go into the oven, covered with garlic, oil, herb and orange juice marinade
There is no need to add more oil, the oil already coating the squash is sufficient. Bake for 1/2 an hour to forty-five minutes, depending on the squash. Turn the slices once, half-way through the cooking. Remove the cookie sheet from the oven to do this, so you do not lose all the heat in your oven while turning all the slices. This dish goes great with everything and is a different way to enjoy winter squashes. If you bake the squash longer they will get roasted and dryer or take them out when they are soft. Either way they are great, slightly different ways to enjoy the same dish. These are sweet without any sugar, vegan and flavorful. You can omit the garlic for folks who don’t like garlic (but, who can imagine such a thing??!!!!)
Free Range Chicken Eggs, multicolored and cracked open, this is the color you want your yokes to be
My favorite way to eat a Good Egg
(a free range organic one)
A good egg is one that has a yoke bordering on orange, on strong orange. It is not a pastel yellow. A good egg has heft and weft and will make your mouth water when prepared properly. It can be from any particular fowl, but if you don’t like to feel or interact with your food, then you should just stick with chicken eggs. I only get eggs from friends, my local farm-share or I buy the ones that I know are free range and allowed to roam. This means they are more expensive, a real meal in a small container. If I cannot get good eggs, I don’t bother eating eggs in the following way. I only recommend this recipe with a GOOD egg. This recipe is for ONE person, just increase amounts of stuff if you are doing this for a friend. Slice an onion in half and cut the half into thin slices. Sauté it up in butter* until the onion is soft. Throw in a few leaves of fresh basil or parsley or tarragon and only sauté for ten seconds. Put more butter in your pan if you need to. Move the onions over to the side of your frying pa and then crack your egg or eggs over the butter. Cook them either over–easy (how I like mine) or over hard (how Kevin likes his). Sprinkle some good salt and pepper on top of your egg. Toast up a piece of really good rye bread, the dark stuff or some other favorite bread or a half a baguette.* Spread white goat cheese or cream cheese on the bread and put one chipotle chile over this and spread it all around. You can buy canned chipotle chilies in most stores if you aren’t the home chile canning kind of person. These are smoky flavored spicy peppers. If you aren’t a pepper lover, omit the chipotle. My parsley sauce or my pesto also work well if you don’t want the chipotle flavor. Place your cooked egg on the bread, put the onions and the basil over it and enjoy with your hands. This is a messy egg, a yolk spilling over the onions and bread and your fingers kind of egg. It’s an egg I engage with my whole being and I feel it in my blood and in my tummy saying yummy, yummy, yummy!
The Good Egg, with onions, goat cheese and chipotle peppers, gooey, messy and perfect!
*Dairy-free option is to omit the cream-cheese or goat cheese and instead of frying in butter use olive oil for onion and egg cooking. Gluten-free option is to omit the bread. I love this egg with fresh kale, so you can make the sloppy mess and put it over your lightly sautéed kale.
Despite my intrepid “fearless” nature in general, there’s something about being alone in a cabin in the woods at night. Surrounded by beauty, surrounded by quiet, surrounded by peace I still was unable to relax at night during my recent solitary birthday retreat. Every sound was something scary, I couldn’t get comfortable sleeping because I needed to face the curtained window that faced the gated entry, just in case that would give me warning when the headlights of some very wounded and crazy person showed up to murder me.
I wish it had been otherwise, but it wasn’t. I have all kinds of tools for navigating fear. I followed my tradition’s practice of the BedtimeShema cycle, which is extraordinary and addresses all manner of difficult things that could come and attack one, including ones fears about such things. All the prayers reassure one and surround one with the Archangels and speak of the Holy One being our rescuer. They are designed to gird you for the fears and terrors of night. I spoke all of them, felt better and fell asleep for ½ an hour, until the first bird or bat or leaf stirred outside and plunked on the roof.
I spent the nights in the bedroom of my friend’s cabin. They are a practicing Buddhist and a practicing Hindu and their space reflects that. Under the extraordinarily sunny golden Indian tapestry, with mirrors sewn into the pattern to ward of the evil eye, I was still afraid. On all sides of me there were deities of powerful protection. I had three Ganesha beings watching over me and a Buddhist one as well. I tried calling on them and even did a meditation where I imagined myself surrounded by beautiful elephants walking in a circle of protection around me. I just knew they would keep me safe.
I slept for an hour maybe until the next lizard outside scurried under a pile of dried leaves. I tried the Jewish prayers again, tried the meditation, tried getting up and having a cup of chamomile tea, tried turning all the lights on, tried lighting all the candles, tried reading, tried listening to my book on tape, tried listening to meditation music of water flowing, tried and tried and tried and was very tired. No restorative lengthy hours of sleep happened for me, despite all this trying (as in really working hard) TRYING!
I am not a taker of sleeping pills, but I’ll tell you what, I really wanted some and if I’d had any handy, I would have taken them for sure.
So, I napped during the day, here and there, and I kept trying for each of the four nights I spent alone to sleep more than a few hours. The first night of my retreat I had my husband with me and we were able to sleep several hours straight, until the mouse made noises like the apocalypse in the kitchen. Since my mate went and investigated and saw the mouse, he was able to return to sleep and I was as well. I was also next to him and in his arms. But, he wasn’t there the other four nights. So, I had to address my fears.
Or at least be honest about it. What does it mean when I trust the Divine and believe that my time to leave this earth is in the Holy One’s hands? If I really feel that to be true, why would I be afraid at night or ever? Fear is not rational though, it has nothing to do with what you believe or even know, it has a flow and power all its own and it is a VERY deep and core current.
Most of us, myself included, just do everything we can to avoid it. Some folks like dipping into the horror story narratives because it is just enough fear to make them feel stimulated, but then it is all pretend. Real fear, which isn’t about Hollywood zombie take-overs, is another thing entirely. Part of why I am going away on retreat is to look at my fear, so why should I be surprised when it comes to visit me? I just wanted to look at it, not be in it! Darn, it doesn’t work that way.
This territory is well-known to spiritual practitioners or all stripes. There are tools, stories, prayers, guidelines and every manner of helpful teachings to support ones navigating these waters. Clearly, I will need to call on more of them, then I had handy with me for this virgin voyage out alone.
By the final night of my stay, I was pretty sick of my own situation and determined to face this fear head on. I chose to set up a chair outside facing the valley and the front gate. I brought my loud bear horn with me and my small can of pepper spray. I wrapped myself in a shawl and was determined, not to even bother trying to sleep but to face the night and the dark. I had forgone going outside at night, too afraid the other evenings, to appreciate the wonder of stars and half-moon rising and setting. I went outside around 4:00 am, so I knew the dawn was about two hours away and this made me feel safer.
I sang some prayers, I was afraid and I cried and I looked out at the billions of stars shining light years away, who all were singing to me. I remembered that I am their kin and despite the small noises in the night, I stayed put to hear their night song and their long, long history song. I remembered that I am a tiny speck on a tiny speck in a vast Ocean on an expanding Universe journey. My life and its certain end, just are not that big a deal when you put yourself on the deck at night and face the starlight.
So, that’s what I did my final night, and I was still afraid, but I managed it. I didn’t sleep, but at least I spent time enthralled by the beauty of night and wow, I survived to write about it! As this month of Elulunfolds, we face all kinds of fears, consciously, like the fear of having hurt others, the planet, and the Divine. Not facing those fears, will not make them go away, they just loom larger. I think I will have to do a lot more sitting outside in the dark before I can comfortably sleep alone in the woods, but I will do it.
Just like I will face the truth of who I am and what I do that is harmful to others, to myself, to the planet. The Jewish New Year is not just about getting a new start, it’s about fixing and aligning oneself with what is right and true. This means looking deeply and cracking open our hearts. Wednesday, September 24th, the Jewish New Year/Rosh Hashanah will be ushered in right before the sun sets with the sounding of the ram’s horn which we call a Shofar. This sound pierces the soul and cracks through all our hardened shells (we call klippot). I invite you to be exposed and vulnerable and to let in something strange, wondrous and transformative and in doing so, I hope you find what is sweet and true in you and in all those around you. L’Shana Tova u’Metuka (To a Sweet New Year)!
~~~~~~ *Nicole unwinds, unwraps and unfurls her thoughts for you from her home in Bayside and she does so sometimes with twinges of fear, but mostly with great gobs of joy and wonder!
*Originally published in the Mad River Union on Wednesday, September 24, 2014
The air is thick with smoke from the large fire at Happy Camp. I am several valleys away from this fire, but it is still impacting the skies here. It is smoky in the mornings here where I am on retreat for my Jubilee (50th birthday). Nevertheless, it is extraordinarily perfect. It is quiet, except for bird song, squirrel chatter and lizard movements among the dry leaves. The smoke clears by mid to late afternoon, which is when the wind seems to pick up. My days have taken on a dreamy quality of time moving extremely slowly with no sense of urgency. This is absolutely what I wanted and needed. There is a profound restorative quality to this time. I was just about at the very end of my tank, even my reserves had been used up.
“The skin of the earth
covers its imperfections
Just as my face conceals
my vast uncertainty.
In the dry cracks of the earth
I find that it has bled
from the injuries of man.
The earth has healed itself
through time moving across
its tortured face of skin.
But what shall heal me except
the sun which makes cracks in my face
so that I can come together with my land.”
In the afternoons up here, I walk to the river, moving very slowly, so that I can come together with my land.
When I get to the river, it is cold and has deep pools as well as shallows. I immerse and rejuvenate, alone with the trout, crayfish, birds and water bugs, so that I can come together with my land. Besides immersing myself in quiet and cold water, I came here to do some work. The process of self-examination and hard work of this month of Elul, which is the month that precedes the Jewish New Year called Rosh Hashanah, is always pressing upon me. I’ve written about this before and I wasn’t sure what new things I could say here. My process this year, is of course, WRIT LARGE, because it is not just about a single year, but the last 49 years and my very conscious choice about changing direction and focus. In order to do this, I have to snip the old frayed threads or sew the ragged patches up, so that my body and soul can move into the next part of my brief time on this planet, so that I can come together with my land.
Elul reminds us that life is cyclical. We make mistakes, we grow, we fight, we harm, we love, we fall down and we do these things over and over until we are no longer able to. This cycle is as old as human consciousness. There has always been war, there has always been ugliness. There has always been fear and pain. There has also always been love, and tenderness, hope and reaching for Holiness and Wholeness and more folks working on mending what is broken than folks breaking things.
This cycle, my Mussar teacher gave us a very specific assignment. I’m used to making lists of people in my life I need to ask forgiveness from and I have a practice that is pretty automatic at this point. My teacher asked our class to start the forgiveness work this Elul by forgiving folks who had hurt us for the first ten days. She wanted us to make notations and to do this work internally. There is a daily forgiveness process in the Jewish tradition that is part of the Bedtime Shema, where we grant blanket forgiveness to all who have wronged us and ask that they not suffer on account of any wrong they have done to us. Only religiously observant folks recite this blessing regularly. I attend to it in Elul, but it is kind of automatic and non-specific.
This homework assignment was really different. I had never actually made a list of all the people I needed to forgive. It was not that long, but there were some biggies on the list. I wrote a name down, and then listed the hurt that person had done me. After I completed this part of the process, I started to chant the name of the person and to speak to them and tell them I forgave them for the wrong and the hurt they had done to me, as I did so, tears came and a huge sense of release in my heart. I found myself blessing these folks after I forgave them. I certainly did not expect any of this and it took me by surprise.
For the men who raped me, I forgave them for the harm they did me, but asked that my forgiveness be connected to justice unfolding and for them never harming another person again. I asked the Holy One to please help them to find health and healing and awareness. I’ve done years of work on this territory, in various therapies, and most of the hurt is no longer present for me. There are tiny droplets of pain that re-surface now and then. I can go great swaths of time not thinking on it– “I find that it has bled from the injuries of man. The earth has healed itself through time moving across its tortured face of skin.”
There were two folks on my list that I put aside for later, I am not ready or able to forgive them on some level. I can forgive the men who raped me, but not these folks who betrayed my trust and hurt my family. I will have to get some help from my teachers about these two people and how to not be holding onto this hurt. Elul is not an easy month for me and yet this process is amazingly liberating, even being able to identify that I am not able to release those people, is helpful. It tells me I have work to do. I don’t believe forgiveness is a simple thing or that I have to grant it. In my tradition I do not have to forgive someone until they seek my forgiveness and make amends. My choosing to forgive them ahead of their asking is completely on me and also part of a deeper spiritual practice.
There is enough sticky goo in all of our lives, old hurts and tattered remnants of messy memories and shattered feelings. I would rather be free of these so that I can be of good cheer and good service for this moment unfolding right now. It is late, almost midnight. More musings on how to let go of fear and be more present coming in the next few weeks. For now, though, you don’t have to be Jewish to take advantage of this time, make a list of folks who have hurt you, see if you can forgive them, and see how it makes you feel. Take a chance on letting go of old stuff, so that you can come together with the land, which has no choice but to forgive all the wrongs we do. Did the sun not rise today, did the vegetables forget how to grow? Forgiveness is the nature of earth and we are made of this lovely loamy stardust stuff.
Nicole comes together with her land and your land and any land she can by engaging with it, and then writing about it. This column was written high in the hills as Nicole turned 50 and is now officially “over the hill.” It appeared originally in the Mad River Union on Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Morning Light in Marakkech, Morocco coming through the ceiling of one of the ancient palaces of the Royal Family
The sun is just peeking over the hills of Jacoby Creek. I can’t see it yet, only the light rose watercolor-like wash on the bottom of a few clouds. I’m sitting on the floor in my new, very own room. It’s the first room I’ve had of my own since I was nineteen. I got pregnant that year, so my space has been shared with children and a husband for a long time. There is joy and sadness in this transition. This room belonged to both my daughter and son respectively. They are both adults now and have moved into their own spaces and rooms. I miss them.
And, now there is some time for me, for exploring who I am and will become over the next few years. I still have one son at home and lots of time and energy for him. None of this can adequately convey the profound sense of exaltation and glorious wonder I feel when I step into this space. Let me describe it for you. I have painted the walls white, the room is an attic room and the ceiling is pyramid-shaped and paneled in beautiful lengths of a light-colored wood (I’m no carpenter, so I can’t tell you what kind of wood it is). I won a bid I made on eBay for a fabulously complex red wool carpet from Iran.
I wanted this Persian red rug because the majority of what I plan to do up here is just sit and meditate, pray, study, cry, dream or imagine a world filling up with Peace. In each corner items representing the elements are placed. I’ve got the four directions marked with air, water, fire and earth. Additionally I am putting the symbols for the twelve tribes of Israel; three in each direction so that I am surrounded by my ancestors. My tradition and the basis for life on this planet are represented here in the elements and in these symbols. There is one window in the room between the eastern corner and the northern one. Now the clouds are orange sherbet and the sun will be making its appearance soon. I’m also using this space to write in. My laptop is up here on a small bamboo tray that I move to the side of the rug when I’m not using it. The rug stays free of items, when my tush isn’t on it, it is itself a meditation (the rug!, not my tush).
Rosh Hashanah Flowers arranged by Nicole for Temple Beth El
By the time you read this, we will be in what are called the “Days of Awe” in my tradition. These are the ten days between Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). In this time period, we are granted a few more days to seek forgiveness from those we have wronged and to work on turning ourselves back towards the path of right actions in the world. On Yom Kippur, one of the teachings has to do with the idea of our fate for the year being sealed. I’m not sure I resonate with the idea of my fate being sealed, but I do resonate with the cycle of working on myself and correcting my behavior. I also look at the idea of fate sealing as a sort of template to work with, if I am angry and grumpy, nasty and unkind, my fate won’t seem as good as if I endeavor to be hopeful and cheerful. The practice of self-cleaning began with the new moon of this past month. I’m in it right now; making lists of mistakes I’ve made, folks I need to apologize to and get clear with, lists of my faults, qualities or things I’ve said or done which I am not proud of.
Rabbi Tirzah Firestone of Boulder, Colorado, passed on this image in a teaching she gave. I don’t remember who gave it to her, but it’s an ancient idea about the vessel our souls inhabit. On Rosh Hashanah, the Holy One grants us a new vessel, clean and vibrant to hold our self in and to pour ourselves out of. If, we have worked on our stuff, looked at our faults and made an effort to turn back to who we truly are in our hearts than we will not only notice this new vessel, but be enlivened by it. Every mistake we make during the year creates a crack in this vessel, big errors, like hurting other people makes for big holes. This means that by the time Rosh Hashanah rolls around, all that might be left of our vessels could be a shard or two; nothing that can hold water or light or love or laughter. In my tradition, if I do the work between myself and others, on Yom Kippur, the Holy One forgives me for the mistakes I’ve made between myself and myself, between myself and the Divine. Only those I wrong can forgive me for the wrongs I’ve done them.
So, I am endeavoring to do less wrong all the time. It’s actually a pleasure to be on this path. As I apply my intelligence and awareness to the task and work to live my life according to what is true in my soul, I feel lighter and clearer, never close to perfect, but just with a slight bounce in my step and a ready smile on my face. How can I smile when the world is a mess? Will my frowning or crying make it better? I cry in my new room, with the tribes of Israel surrounding me and the Holy One holding me and I sink into the elements which sustain not only me but also which breathe on all the children in every lonely place on this earth. I sit in Bayside California on Iranian wool crafted with flowers and complex curly swirls and send my prayer for peace into the wool and out through my window. Perhaps the sky will hear my cries for Salaam, Shalom. Perhaps you will.
And perhaps, all our collective crying, and praying and working will travel on the elements and reach those not only who are suffering but those who are contemplating hurting others or using violence to resolve their problems. I don’t know for sure, I’m just one woman sitting on her rug hoping while the sun rises.
Nicole lives and sits in Bayside California and hopes wherever you are sitting is a good place. She is wishing you Peace.
This piece is originally from September of 2006 and was published in The Arcata Eye. It is older writing but timeless information and so I share it here since I am actually busy and celebrating the High Holy Days right now. Next week, I will upload more of of my current Jubilee Series, which also deals with the themes of forgiveness touched on in this piece.
Open Heart Open Hands 
