Tomato Pie

and some faith and hope

I woke up this morning with one thing on my mind: tomato pie. I will be making this scrumptious, yummilicious offering today.

I’ve got it all planned out. I’ll have something for breakfast, then make the pie and have that for lunch and dinner today and breakfast tomorrow. Perfect timing, because tomorrow afternoon I leave for Sacramento to speak at the Sacramento Center for Spiritual Living on Sunday. Even though I’ll only be gone for about a 24 hour period, I like to leave town with a clean house, and if I make that tomato pie, then clean up my mess, I will only have my meal dishes to clean up.

Plus, tomato pie is a joy. I will use a farmer’s market heirloom tomato in it, and I love the savory flavor of the pie.

I cling to simple joyous things like tomato pies these days as if they were my lifeline. Each day is an exercise in feeling sad, hopeless and sometimes angry. Don’t get me wrong, my life is fine. I’m healthy, sleep well most nights, I have a good life with friends and fellowship and rewarding work and really cool critters that hug me back. Annie the mare really leaned into my hug this morning. But I am sad about what is happening in the country. Even a small bit of awareness, just reading headlines, produces a bleak set of feelings that threatens to turn my consciousness into one giant ball of depression. I teeter between that low spot and loving it all with full acceptance and forcing myself to change my thinking and get up off the couch and do something for god’s sake, anything!

Add to this that I am tired of this teeter totter. I want to get off. I want my old enthusiastic Pollyanna self back. Fuck affirming Pollyanna without the naiveté. I want my full on Pollyanna back!

It does not seem to matter that intellectually I know a few things. I KNOW that dismantling is required in order to be in a position to create something new and wonderful. And I KNOW that there were some things in this country that simply weren’t working for a lot of folks, and that some dismantling was needed. I KNOW that the creative process is powerful and allows me - us - to achieve things that most people consider impossible. I KNOW that feelings are not facts and that feelings can be changed using spiritual tools that are at my fingertips.

I KNOW all of this.

But I’m tired. I’m tired of having to use my spiritual tools every - single - day. I’m tired of having to work at being happy and at peace.

But the alternative is depression. Hopelessness. A bleakness so gray and dark and icky that it threatens to overtake everything good in my life.

So I persevere. I keep on keeping on.

I remember that little thing called faith, and that while faith has never made much sense to me, I know it is powerful. I also know that some people consider faith a dirty word. Fine. Use whatever word you want for it. I’m remembering my faith here and that faith is one of those things that is most likely not meant to make sense. I’m remembering that good always prevails. I’m remembering that I don’t have to know how it prevails, I just have to know, to remember, that it does. I have a track record of this in my own life. I shouldn’t even be alive today, literally. And back then, when I had no faith, all I had was hope, that was enough to rebuild my life into what it is today. And when life fell apart again, I rebuilt again. Using the same tools I am now. And then again. Those tools work and they work well. I just have to keep on using them.

So today I remember that if I can’t fully sink into having faith, I can have hope. And begin there. And go about my day and take care of my critters and make my tomato pie and hit the road tomorrow. That road is another miracle in my life. That road does something for me. The road is like a giant reset button. And I get to go and speak to a community about the fact that things happen, losses occur and it gets messy. And I get to remind them that the mess is part of the journey, and that there is no lotus without mud, and that we have these spiritual tools available to us to allow us to navigate that mud and find the beginnings of the lotus in all that muck and nurture it and grow it and emerge from the mud different. More. Better. Brighter.

So I make my tomato pie and carry the message of hope and faith. That’s my job today. I feel better now. How about you?