Notes of Rest through Cooking

and that time White musicians surprised me

Photo by Calum Lewis on Unsplash

What’s good everyone,

I’ve missed you these past few weeks. I’ve been working hard on various fronts, and realized I didn’t have time to do this post justice - so I rested, ha.

I conclude every Notes of Rest session with this charge and blessing: “May we give and receive notes of rest, one to another. Amen.” That benediction principally refers to the 5 notes I teach: Salvation, Sabbath, Sleep, Stillness, and Sanctuary. However, as I keep harmonizing these notes in my life, I hear other notes resonate. (If you too are a music nerd, you might think of this like the overtone series.) Cooking is one of those sidebar notes. God is bringing cooking into my life because of how central it is to caring for my family with whom I celebrate Sabbath, and for how it helps me practice Sanctuary, namely by protecting my kin through healthy food choices. It has been a gift to provide rest for my wife Carmen - and transitively my daughter, Lydia - through food.

Cooking so consistently at home also helps me see just how much I’ve contributed to restlessness through my consumption habits to date. Mindless eating is a lot harder to do when you’re cooking that food. For as much as urbanization has been a blessing - and I certainly love jazz and my beloved Chicago! - I see how the hustle of elite city-living can foster the idea that only work matters and that good home cooking is a luxury (or certainly not meant for ambitious men). But my Notes and parenting journeys have shown me the irony that focusing more and more on work leads people - perhaps especially men - to be more distanced from that which sustains us most - food, fellowship, and even faith. You also really slow down. (The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer brought this to light.)

For most of human history, the human species has spent most of its time searching for food. But since the advent of the modern era, we have sought to minimize that in order to develop other interests. While I don't want to romanticize the past (freezers are amazing inventions), I do find it telling that so much of modern-day slavery in the US and around the world exists in order to distance key populations from the procuring of basic necessities - food (e.g., tea and sugarcane), shelter (including clothing), and communication (like cobalt farms in the Congo for our phones).

What does our sense of ambition do to our regard for basic necessities? What devolution is baked into being a “developed” nation?

A few weeks ago I was playing with Isaiah Collier in Jacksonville at a music festival. It was primarily a White rock hang so at one point I thought “why were we here?” But when our set finished, not only did the crowd go crazy, the punk rock group following us, Osees, wanted to hook us up with venues in LA. Even more humbling than that was just how open the Osees were to congratulating us on our set and how much they knew about our influences. That backstage exchange was a tender moment of surprising grace. I have rarely felt such mutual respect amongst musicians, and certainly wasn’t looking for it there. Who would’ve thought? I guess God did.

abundantly,

Julian

What’s Next

Mar 15 Notes of Rest at Suwanee Worship Center UMC (Suwanee, GA)

Mar 16 Notes of Rest at Our Lady of Lourdes (Atlanta, GA)

Mar 17 Notes of Rest at Immanuel Anglican Church (Decatur, GA)

Mar 23 Winter’s Jazz Club with Denise Thimes (Chicago, IL)

Mar 25 and Apr 8 Notes of Rest at Dominican University

Mar 28-31 Isaiah Collier and the Chosen Few at Black Cat (San Francisco, CA)

Apr 2 Notes of Rest at McCormick Theological Seminary (Chicago, IL)

Apr 10 Notes of Rest at Endicott College (Beverly, MA)

Apr 11 Notes of Rest at Boston Theological Interreligious Consortium (Boston, MA)

Apr 27 Notes of Rest at Princeton Theological Seminary’s Center for Contemplative Leadership (virtual)

Apr 27 Isaiah Collier & the Chosen Few (Los Angeles, CA)

Other Happenings in the Contemplative World

• Really excellent presentation on Christian African mysticism and Very Rev. Michael Battle. If you haven’t sat under his teaching yet I strongly recommend! This Saturday 9a-3p Mountain Time, put on by Contemplative Outreach Colorado. Sign up here.

• I’m one of the faculty teachers for the Academy of Spiritual Formation hybrid model, an 18-month spiritual formation journey held here in Mundelein, IL. My module will be on Spirituality and Creativity. I invite you to sign up today!