I initially shared this message with my email newsletter subscribers in my weekly email. However, it feels important enough, especially during this uncertain time, to post here on the blog too, so everyone has access. If you want to sign up to receive my weekly emails, you can do so here.
Each of us responds to fearful, challenging, and difficult times in our own ways. For me, it’s multifaceted–incorporating my spiritual life, savoring time with my family, and diving into the arts in various forms (including culinary). What’s lifegiving for you might look different and that’s okay.
Today, I’m encouraging you to take a moment to step away from the news–and the reality our world faces–for just a moment and ask yourself how you’re doing. Do you need a little time to take care of yourself (and your people)? Do you need to create a little beauty for yourself or for a neighbor? I’ve been writing about hospitality a lot in these emails, and truthfully it has nothing to do with entertaining. True hospitality is about letting another soul know they are welcome, they are accepted for who they are, that they belong.
As many people around the world are quarantined right now due to COVID-19, I’m considering this an invitation to challenge myself (and to challenge you) to think outside the box and consider ways you can love your neighbor, both literally and figuratively. What can you do to infuse someone’s day with love, a little bit of joy? I’m asking this of myself as well.
And now, because I really do want to offer you something that’s lifegiving, something to provide a little bit of delight in the midst of all the fear and uncertainty facing our nation and world right now, I’ll move on to this:
I’ve compiled a collection of Scandinavian cookbooks for you. It feels meager, potentially even meaningless in the face of a pandemic. But in light of what our world is facing right now, we’re all still human, we still need to eat, we still need to be fed. We still need to love and be loved.
And if this collection inspires you to feed your people with a good dose of love and nurture, then it’s not meager, it’s mighty.
