January

• Started my final semester of graduate school and thesis-writing!
• Considering how I might embody the counter-cultural, anti-materialistic message of Jesus in one of the most insanely commercial times of the year, I hosted a free sale at my house… and provided suggestions for yours!
• More community-building: hosted the Super Happy Dev Night with Nate!
• Moderated a discussion of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian leaders on the topic “Sacred Sexuality: What do religious texts really say about sex & sexuality?” as part of the Religious Emphasis Week at Earlham College
• Did a lot of organizing, awareness- and fund-raising for Haiti relief, with an emphasis on groups that would be around for community-building after the dust settled (Life & Hope Haiti particularly)

February

• Hosted a free sale at Amigos, advocating giving directly for building community
• Fell in love with RuPaul’s Drag Race – hosted weekly viewing parties
• Began the Lenten journey with Global Women’s Project’s Calendar and Amy Ritchie’s “Thirsting for God”
• Celebrated one year with cat Unix
• Attended IFYC’s Stranger to Neighbor training at Earlham College
• Was inspired by Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s talk on astrophysics and poetry

March

• My birthday! Had a great dinner with Anna Lisa & Seth on the 10^th and a Wonka-themed party the weekend after
• Was super proud of my little brother for organizing protests around GA budget cuts targetting education
• Happy memory: One day, while working at the church, I noticed three young boys (mid-elementary) circling the Peace Pole outside of the entryway. I went out, explained the meaning, and pointed out how people of every language wish for peace. The best part was when I quizzed them on the languages (after explaining what they are & where they’re spoken, of course!) and one boy referred to Arabic as “Iraqic!” We straightened it out and he seemed very happy with his new knowledge of that gorgeous lettering. When the elderly crossing guard came over, she said “I’d always wondered about that thing! Tell me about it, too!” And, of course, I did. She patted the boy on the back and said “We learned something, didn’t we?!”
• Supported my mom as she started her new gig as accompanist at Aragon United Methodist Church!
• Attended my first Passover Seder at Earlham College, hosted by friend & Rabbinic intern Aaron! I didn’t find the afikomen but I did throw open the door for Elijah!

April

• I hosted two interfaith dinners to test instructions offered in my Master’s thesis. Building upon an understanding that interfaith dialogue is about relationship-building, I provided theoretical and practical reasons, as well as clear directions, for bringing young adults of differing faiths together around food. The dinners – on April 13 and 23 – offered an opportunity to test my guidelines! They were extraordinarily well-received by the Earlham community: the second event, a middle-eastern themed picnic, had over 75 attendees!
• Presented my thesis to the seminary community at Earlham School of Religion’s Common Meal
• Took a break from thesis-writing to go see xiu xiu at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit
• Made seitan (that vegan staple) for the first time with Seth
• Defended my thesis on the 26^th – small crowd, but it was a great success!

May

• Submitted my thesis for approval! By the numbers: 150 pages; 43,495 words; 36,414 words in the body text; 20 words in the title; 2 inches – thickness in 100% cotton paper; 265 footnotes; 70 entries in the works cited section; 67 respondents to interfaith dinner questionnaire, results displayed in the appendix…
• Graduated from Earlham School of Religion on an unseasonably cold day!
• Happily moved from NW I Street to the sunny, if dilapidated, College Ave apartment
• Dumpstered at Earlham post-graduation and student move-out: recovered two car-loads worth of stuff for Goodwill and local charity. Discovered that students put actual trash, recyclables, and perfectly good items in the same trash bags. Opened dozens, sorting out the recyclables, removing what could be donated, and re-tying the actual trash. Full bottles of cleaning products, shampoos and conditioner, unused notebooks, a $22 SIGG water bottle, skullcandy headphones, multiple rugs, lamps, a pair of unopened contacts, several comforters, shelf-stable canned goods, unworn pairs of $100+ shoes … just a few of the treasures found.
• Helped worship-lead an incredible service at Richmond Church of the Brethren with Bob Hunter and Matt McKimmy – “Celebrating the Music of the African-American church” – ALL God’s children got shoes!
• Said goodbye to lots of friends as they left for new adventures – Seth & Jenny in Chicago, Jenna & Peter in Scotland, Benji, back to California, and all the other grads…

June

• Travelled to California for the first time – 2010 vacation!
• Ran into my interfaith hero Eboo Patel at Stanford!
• Served as a panelist at Richmond Church of the Brethren’s Faith and Food Panel Discussion

July

• Sustained my first accident as a bike commuter – a transfer truck ran me off the side of the road while on my way to work at the church! If I recall correctly, July was a month of bad/weird Thursday mornings…
• Went to see Jujubee in Columbus, Ohio with Nate and Michael!
• Visited Jina in Ann Arbor; went to see Lightning Bolt with Wolf Eyes at the MOCAD
• Served as a delegate to the South/Central Indiana District yearly meeting of the Church of the Brethren

August

• Moved into the most beautiful house in Richmond, 447 College (no offence, other Richmond houses :))
• Hosted a Perseid meteor shower party
• Briefly got really into making Perler crafts – hope to pick this up again soon!
• Focused on raising awareness and money for Pakistan flooding (at final count, a little over $200 one Sunday with a home-made bulletin board and short presentation before worship at RCoB) – the larger Church of the Brethren did well, too!
• Cooked a lot of yummy vegan food for Nate’s sister & brother-in-law, when they visited from New York
• Started volunteering at Earlham’s Office of Religious Life – first task, building Lady Gaga eyewear for the Director of Religious Life (a skit!)

September

• Successfully trained to drive a 12-passenger van at Earlham College!
• Inspired by my friend Tim Brauhn and his blog practicalraw.com, I bought a fancy-schmancy blender and an Ani Phyo cookbook and started doing more raw foods! (A little late in the season for Indiana, I know…)
• Participated in a moving interfaith vigil (in response to the Qu’ran burning controversy) – “Holding Our Holy Texts in the Light”
• Presented at Peace Forum, “From the Full Plate to the Wide World”
• Went to hear my dear friend Aaron give the Rosh Hashanah sermon at Temple Israel – Dayton !
• Attended Rosh Hashanah, Kol Nidre, and Yom Kippur services for the first time; drove Earlham students to these services
• Attended Eid services for the first time at the Islamic Society of North America in Plainfield, Indiana – drove students to this service, too!
• Helped build a sukkah for sukkot, the happy Jewish harvest festival!
• Volunteered and attended services for the International Day of Prayer for Peace in Richmond
• Because I went to a school that officially issued credit/no credit instead of letter grades, I had to petition my professors to convert their narrative evaluations of my work into letter grades. This takes some time. I was thrilled to finally learn that I made a 3.92 GPA in graduate school overall, and a 4.00 in my concentration! The A’s in Greek surprised me more than anything else…
• My cat Unix escaped and returned hours later covered in poison ivy, which she bestowed upon me – thus commencing my second-worst poison ivy attack

October

• Went to hear xiu xiu and deerhoof in Bloomington
• Went to hear xiu xiu and deerhoof in Columbus
• Helped friends Aaron and Mel move to Ithaca! :-(
• Started the second season of “Spiritual Snapshots”, a story-telling class I started with the help of Matt McKimmy at Richmond Church of the Brethren! Inspired by an Sunday class gathering at Atlanta Friends Meeting, I proposed we gather as a community before worship to hear stories – “snapshots” – from our journeys of faith. From October – Dec 2009 AND 2010, it provided a way to get to know folks in the congregation better and make new friends.
• Gave a great big Mario-themed birthday blow-out for my sweetie Nate
• Travelled to Chicago for Nate’s MongoDB conference, hung out with Jenny and got thrift plague
• Attended the American Academy of Religion annual conference in Atlanta
• Visited the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan mandir outside of Atlanta!
• Supported Nate as he started the application process with Amazon (which would culminate with an offer in early December)
• Helped spread awareness of the pernicious “vampire power” – when plugged in electronics continue to leach power, even when not in use – with a silly presentation at Richmond Church of the Brethren

November

• Celebrated two years with my darling Nate
• Celebrated a year with baby cat Perl
• Made enough home-made barbeque sauce to feed well over 100 people for Peace Forum’s Thanksgiving meal!
• Went to hear dear friend Aaron’s senior sermon at Hebrew Union in Cincinnati!
• Did all of the cooking for and helped host (with Charlotte-Anne M.) my third interfaith dinner, a benefit for Genesis of the YWCA and the kick-off to Earlham’s IFYC Better Together campaign. We fed over seventy people and raised $401 (not including material donations of food and household items) for Richmond’s only domestic violence outreach resource! Official video here.
• Flew back to Georgia for my brother’s beautiful wedding to Sarah
• Enjoyed a ridiculously delicious vegan Thanksgiving meal with Donnie and other Earlham vegan friends at Teetor House
• Travelled to Chicago to see Jenny and celebrate vegan ThanksLIVING at Chicago Diner

December

• Celebrated Hanukkah with my first kugel, latkes, applesauce, and home-made vegan dill sour crème!
• Trained my replacement at the church
• Enjoyed a great going-away at Richmond Church of the Brethren – so many sweet messages!
• Stayed with Elizabeth and Dustin Hartman and all their animals (cats and raccoons) while we searched for a new home in Atlanta. Super-awesome Elizabeth runs Tails from the Hart, a wildlife rescue outside of Atlanta.
• Squeezed in a trip to New York for Christmas between packing up in Richmond and moving to Atlanta with the gracious help of Nate’s parents!
• Applied for the Faiths Act Fellowship, an extraordinary opportunity funded by Interfaith Youth Core and the Tony Blair Faith Foundation that brings young adult bridge-builders together from all over the world to work on furthering the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG).

Year-long

• Served as a study buddy mentor in Richmond Community Schools
• Involvement with Earlham Animal Advocates United, from hosting and cooking lots of dinners, co-op meals, Nathan Runkle presentation, helping prepare the debaters, promoting VegPledge, and much more!
• Served as Office Manager at Richmond Church of the Brethren, which included making weekly bulletins, monthly newsletters, the yearly directory, as well as serving as a central point of contact in the church and between the church and Richmond-area aid/outreach organizations.
• Continued to be involved in the campaign to save Richmond’s Human Rights Commission and, once it was cruelly defunded by the Common Council, supported the burgeoning Equality Richmond Group

What a wonderful year! Here’s to 2011!

Pathetically, I haven’t yet come to terms with this fact. Now it’s not like I’m wandering in some delusional haze towards a non-existent Richmond Caltrain station, but I am still majorly wistful. It was just such a serene, paradisiacal place, where all my nasty stereotypes about California livin’ (erm, i.e.) were swept away as I was loved & well-fed in the company of friends & kind-hearted strangers alike. When I wept secretly on the connecting flight back from San Jose to Phoenix, it wasn’t, for the first time, because I was afraid the plane would fall out of the sky–it was because I was overcome with sorrow at leaving.

But ssshhh, let’s keep that our secret. As the sweetly-sleeping cats nearby remind me, it’s okay to dream of the next visit–but taking time to document the trip now means I’ll have a great resource for the future. Photoblogging the first day, shall we?

Landing in San Jose after a nearly four hour flight from Minneapolis.

Thinking the faraway green bits were maybe cacti, and overly worried I wouldn’t see any more of it, I snapped this shot.

Vegan tofu & corn soup at Garden Fresh‘s Palo Alto location, with the delightfully muggy consistency of egg drop soup.

Our dear, beloved friend Ben–who made our trip (and this first meal) possible! We are forever indebted.

The lady at Garden Fresh loves Ben, and it’s clear the feeling is mutual–she jotted down his standard starter, scallion pancake, before he’d even mentioned it! New to my scallion pancake experience was the thick, savoury black sauce that wedded the crispy sections of fried dough. Not to be missed.

Another one of Ben’s favorites, number 35: Orange Veggie Beef: Pressed shiitake mushroom beef, sautéed with Chef’s special orange sauce, served with broccoli

The hostess smiled approvingly upon Ben’s choice, but when Nate & I attempted to order, she clucked her tongue and ordered for us. If you are honored by the same treatment when you visit, roll with it–she knows what she’s doing. Here’s number 29, the Veggie Duck: Pressed shiitake mushrooms, tofu skin, onions and assorted vegetables with Chef’s special light sauce.

Her choice for me, 37: Basil tempura, arrived in a foil packet accompanied by a carved vegetable rose.

Tempura-style soy protein, red peppers, chili peppers and basil in Chef’s special sauce. Crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside, in a coat of many flavors (dominant: spicy). Fulfilled my need for FRIED!

After lunch we drove to the heart of Stanford’s campus and bumbled around. We discovered part of a bike wedged in a tree.

I took a lot of pictures of trees. Here, detail on some interesting, never-before-seen conifer.

Ben & Nate made like monkeys.

We ambled into Stanford’s free Cantor Arts Center, where I fell in love with Wu Changshuo’s Drunken Zhong Kui (above). Part of the “Tracing the Past, Drawing the Future: Master Ink Painters in 20th-Century China” exhibit running now through July 4, his accompanying placard read as follows:

Wu Changshuo, 1844-1927; Drunken Zhong Kui (1921), Ink and color on paper; Zhejiang Provincial Museum

In Chinese folklore, Zhong Kui is a mortal turned deity who expels ghosts and devils. An impoverished student from Mount Zhongnan in the early Tang Dynasty (618-907), Zhong Kui was honest and talented, but his repulisve facial features provoked the judges to invalidate his outstanding scores in the civil service examinations. Crazed with anger, Zhong Kui committed suicide by smashing his head into a pillar. The emperor appointed him Exorcist God posthumously and buried him according to the rituals reserved for the first-placed winner of the highest imperial examination (zhuangyan).

Wu Changshuo’s fondenss for Zhong Kui is expressed in his inscriptions on portraits of Zhong Kui by artists friends, as well as in his own paintings of the subject. We might have felt an affinity with Zhong Kui’s anger and disappointment, but he also likely identified with the folk deity as a figure who sought to save the world.

I also enjoyed this one, of vultures.

The outrageous foyer of the museum.

A presiding Buddha with hundreds of miniatures, tucked into a nook beside the lobby.

Tree appreciation outside Cantor.

Further tree appreciation. Palm trees! They are as impossible-looking in person as they are in print!

What a way to end our visit: walking across Stanford’s ostentatious heart to the car, I spied a familiar figure. Is that… is that…Eboo Patel? Is that Eboo Patel? Oh my goodness, that’s Eboo Patel! Having overheard my hyperventilating, he stopped & introduced himself with a flummoxed “Do we know each other?” We’d only spoken twice before, the first time in the fall of 2008 at Candler School of Theology’s fall conference on leadership, and again at Interfaith Youth Core’s 2009 Annual Conference in Evanston, so I didn’t expect him to remember me. (I also looked extremely busted from the fifteen hours of travel, which is why I’ve cropped myself from the photo–I’d like to think he didn’t recognize me.)

But who am I kidding. Eboo Patel, hero to thousands of interfaith youth activists, sees tons of bright young adult faces every day. He is my hero, and I unabashedly told him so–joking that a happenstance meeting, for me, is like the average person’s running into a major celebrity. (He cutely demurred to Nate & Ben, calling himself a “three”/ten.) But as founder & executive director of Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core, he directly inspired my graduate work at Earlham, especially my 44,000-word magnum opus/Master’s thesis, ”From the full plate to the wide world: engaging young adult development through interfaith hospitality.” Indeed, an entire chapter is devoted to IFYC’s methodology. Since you’re probably not going to be checking out my thesis anytime soon, you must pick up his interfaith autobiography Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation–it’s splendid.

He was at Stanford a day early to check some things out–he’d be giving the University’s baccalaureate address the next day. Noting Nate’s google shirt, he mentioned he’d just given a talk there that morning. Fawning all around.

Only in California!

These pictures were taken when Nate & I visited our friend Catherine (and, to a lesser extent, the Interfaith Youth Core Annual Conference) in Chicago last October. Let me tell you about Arya Bhavan! Just a short bus ride from C’s place in the historically German Lincoln Square Neighborhood (where a piece of the Berlin Wall resides in a bus station), Arya Bhavan is located on Devon Avenue in “the heart of India town in Chicago”. A night view from the other side of the street:

The food was delicious, the setting serene:

You might not expect to have too much contact with wait staff at a buffet restaurant, but Arya Bhavan is different. We were immediately greeted by a polite, kind young host who led us to a table, provided drinks, & invited us to the buffet. I have no idea how he guessed, but it’s a testament to his extraordinary hospitality skills that he immediately confirmed our veganism–and then thoughtfully took us through the the large buffet, pointing out what was “suitable”. (Happily, over 80% of the offerings were vegan!)

I was over the moon for his hospitality at this point–but then he secretly notified the kitchen of our presence & asked the cooks to prepare a special vegan garlic & onion naan! We felt like royalty when our special surprise arrived:

Make no mistake–I later lavished praise upon him in front of the management.

The meal itself was divine, though we both needed Tums later. (Spicy!) Here’s a shot of Nate’s plate:

I highly recommend Arya Bhavan for all of the reasons described (pictured!) above–and particularly for the price. The dinner buffet was $11/person not including drinks (but we just got water). Next time I’m in Chicago you bet I’m showing up with an empty stomach, a handful of antacids, & a few hours to spare.

As a bonus, here are a couple of embarrasing shots of Nate & me enjoying vegan avocado bubble tea in Chinatown:

greasy hair, gigantic grin, tapioca tooth.

“But what Foer most bravely details is how eating animal pollutes not only our backyards, but also our beliefs. He reminds us that our food is symbolic of what we believe in, and that eating is how we demonstrate to ourselves and to others our beliefs: Catholics take communion — in which food and drink represent body and blood. Jews use salty water on Passover to remind them of the slaves’ bitter tears. And on Thanksgiving, Americans use succotash and slaughter to tell our own creation myth — how the Pilgrims learned from Native Americans to harvest this land and make it their own. And as we use food to impart our beliefs to our children, the point from which Foer lifts off, what stories do we want to tell our children through their food?”

This section stood out because I just returned from Interfaith Youth Core’s Annual Conference, Leadership for a Religiously Diverse World, where I met and learned from lots of folks from different religious traditions–Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, and Sikhism, among others. My favorite part of the conference was the “speed-faithing” sessions when, for about an hour, a young leader of faith offered a kind of 101 from her or his particular tradition.

I was particularly taken by the Jain and Sikh students who described how their eating choices fit within their entire way of looking at the world. The Jain student taught that his commitment to the fundamental Jain principle of ahimsa (non-violence) persuades him to see veganism as the most coherent choice within that ethical framework. (Jains at large reject all flesh and eggs, but take dairy products; however, in today’s increasingly factory-farm (read: suffering) laden marketplace, many are totally vegan).

Similarly, the Sikh presenter said she is vegetarian because her faith teaches her that taking life is totally wrong. (She consumes dairy but is careful as to the source.) “Life” is not confined to human life, as Harvard Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein persuasively illustrated during his talk on engaging Humanists & Atheists in interfaith work. Because we humans depend on the earth for sustenance, we must make conscious decisions to promote its health, too. (You’ve probably already read how much fecal matter from farm animals is destroying our water, so I’ll spare you any statistics here.) Humanists may not believe in a supernatural higher power who exists and acts from beyond the laws of physics, but they do believe in community and the fact that the right “community-based actions and decisions can lead to a more fulfilling and purposeful existence“.

The way we eat says something about what we believe…and most of us (at least, among my readership here at cracktheplates.com) have the blessing of at least three times a day, guaranteed, to live out those beliefs. That’s a better way of getting at the meaning of that tired and kind of obscurantist “You are what you eat” adage, isn’t it? I eat vegan (and frequently local) because, while I am definitely not in the business of deluding myself into thinking that I can eat in such a way that no living being will suffer or die because of my choices, I do recognize that I can take steps to minimize my impact. (Reflecting on the Jain concept of intentionality helped me with this one.) It may not be a perfect choice, but I firmly contend that it is a better one than eating animals and their “products”. (And, aside from that, it’s not like I’m losing out–have you read this blog lately?) This is one reason why I don’t insist everyone go vegan immediately; more constructively, I try to be encouraging and serve as a resource when folks tell me they’re trying to be more conscientious about what they eat.

For me, it comes down to the admission that eating involves making a moral choice that ought to reflect who I am and what I believe. In selecting food at a market, cooking at home, serving others, and picking up my own fork, I see moral choices for well-being or for ill. (Thanks, beloved Peter Singer!) I’m a privileged first-worlder with the choice to buy food that is demonstrably better for myself, neighbors, and planet–and so I do. This choice to minimize the negative impact on my own body, my neighbors’ bodies, and my planet’s body is one that is in line with my steadfast commitment, framed within a relational theology, to do what I can to promote the well-being of neighbors near and far, sentient and non.

Working from a Christian persuasion, I recognize that Jesus’ concerns were for the least of these. He was a radical who touched to heal the most outcast; who teaches us to feed the hungry, to quench the thirst of the parched, to welcome the stranger, to clothe the naked, to take care of the sick, and to visit the imprisoned. (Matthew 25:31-46) One of the ways I choose to embody these teachings follows from acknowledging that the way I eat is a moral choice that affects others and ought to logically cohere with how I view the world and my place in it. So acknowledged, I choose veganism.