I’ll begin with a confession. Whenever I’m asked what I happen to be reading these days, the answer is usually a tall order. Because I’m an ordained minister, I’m expected to read “religious” books — and I do. It's just that my religious books are so academic (maybe nerdy is the better word), they are hardly of any use to anyone outside the guild.
Adding to my problem is my opinion that when it comes to many popular “religious” books, they are either repetitive or written by people who are far too nice to be interesting. And besides, it's hard to work in a church all day and then read more stuff about church.
So, this little reflection on spiritual health and wellness for the new year will include thoughts on two “other” books in my library: books that weren’t written to be religious in the way often expected, but still full of courage and optimism and hope, which is the stuff of faith, after all.
I’m a big fan of author Sebastian Junger, an Academy Award-winning combat reporter who wrote a small but important book called, “Freedom.” It’s a funky book; the memoir of a yearlong hike with three comrades along the railroad lines of the east coast.
This is an illegal activity by the way, making it a most unusual religious book (I like interesting people, remember?), but with the sharp prose of a reporter, the author weaves together many stories that are ultimately the same story—his hike, early colonial settlement, Apache raids, resistance movements. All of these point to a lesson we learn at some point or should learn — that as much as we cherish our freedom, our autonomy and our rights, these must always be held in tension with our need for each other.
In recalling a 1996 commuter train accident, in which the engineer gave his life for the passengers and crew, Junger writes:
“The temptation to ignore reality while believing in a benign benevolence that will protect you from harm has gotten a lot of people killed over the ages. What truly is benevolent, though—what will save you over and over, or often die trying—are other people.” (p.76-77)
That will preach. According to the Gospel of Luke, the first story Jesus tells after his decision to travel back to Jerusalem to die is the story of the Good Samaritan, a story so often told and well-worn we are apt to forget the Samaritans were the enemy of the day. But sometimes, all of us find ourselves in the ditch to the point that anyone will do as a helping hand. I have a friend in Maine who says he doesn’t care about your politics, as long as you have pair of jumper cables and are willing to stop.
So maybe this gets us to a new start in the new year — to find wellness in reconnection, to get to know our neighbors, to help someone and maybe even to apologize. It's been a cranky time, after all.
This brings me to another book I love, which is actually a cookbook titled “Jerusalem,” by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi.
As best I can tell, the idea for the book started when Sami, a child of Palestinian East Jerusalem, and Yotam, a child of Jewish West Jerusalem, discovered how they grew up eating the same food. OK, that’s not quite true. A dizzying number of cuisines exists in Jerusalem, along with cultures and subcultures to make one think there is no such thing as local food. I have an Israeli friend from Jerusalem who lives in a neighborhood populated by Jewish immigrants from India, so that the street smells like curry before the Sabbath meal.
Still, there are common threads. Everyone, and this means everyone, uses chopped cucumber and tomato to create “Arab” salad or “Israeli” salad, depending on your point of view. Stuffed vegetables, pickles, olive oil, lemon juice and olives are everywhere. And in this intensely fought over and divided city with 4,000 years of history to boot, food — and by this I mean good, fresh, healthy food — becomes the unifier.
I have my own story. Just a few months before the big lockdown of 2020, a local chef joined our church and began not only cooking for us, but changing the food culture of our congregation. Chips and cookies were now absent from the church kitchen, and if you weren’t hungry enough to eat an apple, you weren’t hungry. Seasonal vegetables and local greens appeared on the menu, and bins of fresh potatoes replaced frozen french fries. We began to take a closer look at our relationship with food and what we ate and why, admitting that something wrapped in plastic with no expiration date is really not food.
As we look toward a new year, perhaps our health and our waistlines will take care of themselves if we eat the food that God made in creation and not the food that we made in a factory somewhere.
And who knows; food can become a catalyst for new friends and new relationships. I got to see my Israeli pal last summer; we conduct tours together, and although the country was then in COVID lockdown, he wrote a letter to the government saying I was “an essential business,” which was a polite fabrication, but it got me into the country.
And one day, while traipsing around and looking for new stuff to show Americans, he took me to lunch in the Arab village of Abu Gosh. You could smell the kitchen before you saw the place, and the line was out the door. Naji’s kabob joint attracts Israeli businessmen and Arab construction workers, farmers and families, soldiers and anyone you might imagine. And over it all presides a smiling Naji, ringing up kabobs and pickles in a peaceful corner of a divided world. A reprinted report from CNN acts a welcome on the door: “The problems of the Middle East could be solved by Naji.”
Is all this religious? Some thoughts might differ, but I wonder if it isn’t all the same story: that we are all children seeking a right relationship with God and with each other. This much I know — that harmony, dignity, sympathy, humility, a willingness to help or even say we are sorry will all keep us safe and well in the year ahead and beyond.