Stirring the Cauldron

New Moon Newsletters from Jessica Prentice

New Moon of Long Nights

November moondark kitchen notes
from Jessica Prentice

The moon is new! We are entering the lunar cycle known as the Moon of Long Nights. The nights will get longer and longer, until the last day of this moon's cycle -- the winter solstice -- the longest night of the year. Then the moon will be new again, and we will enter the next lunar cycle. It is a coincidence that the solstice and the dark of the moon fall at the same time this year -- making it an especially dark night.

In the Christian tradition, we are about to begin Advent -- "coming."

It is a period of waiting. Through the long nights, we await a miracle: the coming of the light. In the Christian tradition and throughout much of our culture, the miracle we await is Christ's Mass, the birth of the Son of God. It is also the rebirth of the Sun. The Sun returns. The days begin to lengthen once again, the nights to shorten. We can have faith that Spring will come, and with it a thaw, and the opportunity to till and to plant the next year's crops.

There is something very special about this time, about the darkness, about the expectancy and the waiting. All too often, that is lost in the rush of holiday plans, of shopping and purchasing, of making a list and checking it twice. It is not part of our cultural consciousness to let ourselves be 'in the dark,' to meditate upon that darkness, to listen, to pray. Instead, we rush headlong into the light. We zoom past the solstice in a rush of last-minute to-do's, and arrive exhausted on Christmas morning, glad to have survived the ordeal once again.

We live in a secular, commodified culture that has little use for parts of the traditional calendar such as Lent and Advent that were once so important. Lent is particularly useless to an economy based on sales: there's no money to be made on people fasting and praying and exercising self-restraint. Better to skip to Easter, to the celebration that comes after, and try to generate some income from chocolate bunnies and an array of tchotchkes in pastel hues.

But I must admit that my nature is better suited to the contemplative, expectant times. Advent is my favorite part of Christmas. Part of it is that I love the rituals involved in preparation that take place during this time: decorating the tree and hanging the stockings. A couple of years ago I began a tradition that was new to me: the advent wreath. This is a wreath that is designed to hold four candles and to sit on your dining room table. The first Sunday in Advent you light one of the candles, and pray a special prayer before dinner. The second Sunday you light the first candle plus a second candle, and pray another prayer before dinner. You continue this progression through the third and into the fourth Sunday, when you have all four candles burning for dinner. I find it a lovely thing to do. To me, all of these advent rituals are about creating a space for light to come into the darkness. Not about running away from the darkness, but about having faith that the light will come.

It is important to acknowledge that the holidays can be a difficult time. The next six weeks or so are a period of increased suffering and depression for many of us. It is the Moon of Long Nights, and depression is often likened to a long night, to a period of darkness.

For me, this moon is about recognizing the night, the darkness, the sadness even, the hope for a miracle. Many of us are frustrated and disheartened by so much of what we see around us: the war, the political situation, the ecological degradation, the materialism of our culture. We feel squeezed by the pressures of life, the day to day scarcity of time or money or both. In the midst of so many gatherings and activities, we can still feel alienated and lonely.

Maybe instead of running away from this darkness, we can sit with it a little bit. We can let ourselves be in the moon of long nights, and let ourselves hope for a miracle. Maybe this is a time to have faith, and hope, and to let go of our need to control everything, our illusion that we are in charge. It is also a time to reach out, to ask for help, to be willing to be vulnerable.

This week, many of us will celebrate Thanksgiving. This is my favorite holiday. I know that to some people it is a negative symbol, a celebration of colonial theft and duplicity. While I recognize this perspective, to my mind the heart of Thanksgiving is not at all a victory celebration. Rather, it is an acknowledgment of our vulnerability.

This is in itself a rarity in the trajectory of European-American culture. It is an opportunity to recognize our interdependence with all of life -- to know that we depend on God's green earth for the food we eat, on soil and water. A chance to remember that we rely on the wisdom and experience of other people from other cultures, that we need help, that we don't survive alone and isolated, but in and through relationship. And perhaps most important of all it is a chance, in the midst of the moon of long nights, in the midst of advent, to pause and be full of gratitude for all we have been given. We can stop grabbing for the next thing, take a break from wanting and striving, and feel how really blessed we are, and in how many ways.

It is a ritual meal, and it is a ritual of preparation. It is one time in the year when many people actually cook from scratch. I used to think to myself, wouldn't it be great to establish one day a year as "National Home-Cooking Day?" But then I realized that for many Americans, Thanksgiving IS national home-cooking day. That is, if we can manage to avoid the pre-cooked, grocery-store Thanksgiving package deals. While they may seem to lift a little of the stress involved in cooking from scratch, I think they pull too much of the heart and soul out of the holiday.

I was invited last week to a "pre-Thanksgiving feast" at the home of someone I had just met. Although it had been a long day at work, I couldn't resist dragging myself to his home in one of the outer Bay Area townships -- partly because the street he lives on is "Full Moon Drive," which I HAD to see for myself, and partly because his menu sounded so cool. He had a long table with what seemed like 20 different dishes, all homemade. There was a delicious and old-fashioned hominy, which he had made by buying whole-kernal dent corn and processing it with ashes from his wood-fired oven -- one way to achieve an essential part of the preparation of dried corn, called nixtamalization. He had sourdough bread made from a starter he made himself, and butter that he had churned from raw cream. The mashed potatoes were made from potatoes that he had dug last weekend on the farm tour I organized to Marin... In other words, it was my kind of meal! Everything was delicious, but more than that. It was full of his time, intention, and love.

Here on the Left Coast, and maybe in other parts of the country as well, there has been an effort to recast the Fourth of July, Independence Day, as INTERdependence Day. But the Fourth of July, with its fireworks and flags, will always be about freedom and pride. And besides, we already have an Interdependence Day -- that is, Thanksgiving. A day when we get together with family and with strangers, when we feed the hungry, when we eat home-cooked food, when offices and stores are closed and we take a break from working and buying. In remembering the "Pilgrims," the seekers, who came to this continent fleeing oppression, we have a chance to remember all who have been oppressed, have fled, and have found themselves vulnerable, in a strange and distant land. It is a chance to acknowledge that these pilgrims, these wanderers, made it through the winter through the generosity of human beings from an entirely different culture. The pilgrims gave thanks for the people who were indigenous to this continent, who had helped them. And they gave thanks for the foods that were indigenous to this continent: turkey, cranberries, potatoes, corn, pumpkins. They gave thanks for the Earth's abundance.

So Thanksgiving is one day a year when we actually pay attention to the food on our table, how blessed we are to have it. We acknowledge the hands that grew it, harvested it, cooked it. We may also acknowledge the Earth, which supports all this life, all this abundance. It is, to my mind, a celebration of relationship. As was the dinner on Full Moon Drive last week.

If there is one thing that will carry us through the Moon of Dark Nights, through the holiday season, it is relationship. It is gathering together, and lighting candles. It is acknowledging the darkness, but making space for the light. It is reaching out when we need help. It is extending a hand to others. We are all vulnerable, we are all needy; we all suffer in darkness, we all long for the light.

In case you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend the little animated short The Meatrix: www.themeatrix.com -- a reminder of the matrix of relationships involved in our food system.

And I also want to make a plug for a wonderful new book that's out, one that expresses well the importance of relationship in our lives, and in how we cook and eat: Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. It is full of recipes for fermented foods from around the world, from sauerkraut to tempeh to a Cherokee sour corn drink called Gv-No-He-Nv. Sandor will be coming to the Bay Area and doing booksignings, demos and workshops over the course of this moon, including one at the farmers market at which I work. To find out more, go to www.wildfermentation.com. If you'd like a list of his schedule of events, email me and I'll send it to you.

Many blessings to you all on the Moon of Long Nights. Following is a simple recipe for cranberry sauce, celebrating the gifts of this continent.

p.s. Read another version of this newsletter in the Advent edition of The Instrument, a publication of St. Francis Lutheran Church.

Cranberry Sauce for Giving Thanks

• 12 oz fresh cranberries
• 1 cup maple syrup
• 1/4 cup water
• pinch of cinnamon and cloves (optional)
• honey to taste

Wash the cranberries and put in a pan. Pour the maple syrup and water over them, add the optional spices, and bring to a simmer. Cook until the cranberries pop open, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool for about 15 minutes. Stir and taste. Add honey by spoonfulls, stirring, until it is a little bit sweeter than you want.

It will lose some of its sweet taste when you chill it. Allow to cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until ready to eat.