St. Peter in St. Petersburg

On Christmas Eve I attended my second religious service for challenge #29, this time Episcopalian. Normally at 5:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve I'm elbow deep in some kind of pie, but this year I got all dressed up and went with Austin and his family to The Church of St. Peter in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida.

It was a very classy birthday party for Jesus. The entire church was adorned with Christmas trees, garlands, and bright red flowers, all of which played a supporting role to the cathedral's striking architecture. Little girls ran around in their Christmas dresses and bows, and only a handful of people showed up in jeans. Most wore their Christmas best, or at least their Christmas better.

The service itself was full of Christmas hymns, some pretty familiar and others rather obscure to me. There were various readings and prayers, a particularly short sermon that I will abbreviate later, and communion. The Episcopalian service has much in common with a Catholic one.

My absolute favorite part of the evening was near the end, when the lights were dimmed and we sang "Silent Night" by the light of the many candles throughout the cathedral. If I hadn't felt Christmasy before this point, it was poking at my heart during this song. To borrow from the hymn itself, "All is calm" is the best way to describe that moment. The flickering candles were the only things that moved.

My second favorite part was the organ and brass combo, which made every song sound a little grander than they would have otherwise.

Reverend Stephen Morris, the Dean, gave his message to an almost full crowd. He began by saying that despite how we sentimentalize the night that Jesus was born and make it so cozy, that barn was probably pretty stinky, those shepherds were at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale, and Joseph and Mary could have used a nice hot shower. A king is born! In kind of a gross situation! 

His point was that Jesus was born on the fringe (he used this word a lot) of everything, so far removed from the center of power, and that is where God stepped in and "changed our course." We each have our own fringe, that place where our hopes and our fears collide, where our center of power that we think we maintain so well starts to unravel, and we immediately want to be rehabilitated. "But God doesn't come to rehabilitate," the Dean said. "He comes to redeem." He comes to you in that place, your fringe.

"Tonight, celebrate Bethlehem," he concluded. The original fringe.

Okay, so it was interesting. Didn't really high-five my soul or anything, but I understood and appreciated the message, regardless if it lined up with my own beliefs, and it didn't drag on and on. In general, the beauty of the cathedral, the solemn but moving music, and the Christmasy mood of the congregation made this service pretty enjoyable. And it was all in English, which is a plus.

One Month In: Progress Report

It's been one month, and I've never written more, complimented strangers more, or meditated more than I have in the past 31 days. I'll be doing these progress reports on the 26th of every month. It's a good way to step back and see the bigger picture. So, the challenges in green are the ones that I've started. Eleven months to go! I still have a hell of a lot to do.

1. Do yoga three days a week. 
2. Give a stranger $100. Film it and post it on YouTube.
3. Eat 29 cupcakes in 29 days and write a review of each. 
4. Research and identify 10 procedural reforms that would help move congress and the executive office back to being a government of the people and for the people. Print these 10 reforms on handout cards and distribute to anyone and everyone you know. Post them on your Facebook page and website. 
5. Travel overseas, ride trains only, and put together a collection of photos titled "Window Seat."
6. Sit in silence and stillness each morning for 15 minutes before you start your day.
7. Write and direct your own short film and submit it to a film festival.
8. Spend one night in a women's shelter, make a connection and offer to take family portraits.
9. Make and bottle your own wine. Save it for a future birthday.
10. Lie down on your back in a NYC street and pretend to be a dead bug. 
11. Write a sad story about a girl who gets the things she always wanted -- on your typewriter. 
    
12. Make a conceptual photo series, preferably a book. 
13. Your 27th and 28th years were characterized by massive life changes that included a move and job change; my challenge is make one more life change. I'm not going to define it, but some suggestions would be: take another step with Austin, get a friend for Dagmar, get involved with something you care about in an incredibly inconvenient capacity.
14. Take flying lessons.
15. Do 200 crunches and three 1-minute planks every other day. And assist your scared, almost-grad cousin in finding a job in Atlanta. 
16. End every day by writing down one positive thing that happened in the previous 24 hours.
17. Learn how to perform an authentic Japanese tea ceremony.
18. Get a photo (or photos) into a gallery/showing AND/OR sell one of your photos.
19. A year-long water challenge: Drink 1 liter of water per day, wade across a stream, swim across a pool, canoe across a lake or pond, and fly across an ocean. 
20. Make and bring your lunch 2 out of 5 days a week.
21. Manifest yourself in an act of humanitarianism that permanently and positively enriches the life of a child. The act may not be accomplished with direct financial, but must involve sacrifice of your time and attention.
22. Research your Jewish heritage going back at least four generations. 
23. Pay one compliment to a different person every day.
24. Raise a basil plant and name it Kyle.
25. Get up every morning at the same time and get to bed at a reasonable time.
26. Keep a Smash Book (scrapbook) for the year.
27. Write words (the grouping of letters that hints of story and promise), even if it's only one line or thought or idea, in a momentary embrace of lapse of reason, everyday, and incorporate these words into a future novel.
28. Learn to sew, design an outfit, make it, do a self-portrait in it.
29. Attend 10 religious services. Record your impression of each. 
30. Write the first chapter of your first novel and the outline. Submit to a publisher.

Sushi-ish

***Re: challenge #20 - make and bring your lunch 2 of of 5 days per week***

This was supposed to be sushi but ended up being more like nori burritos. Delicious nonetheless.

First I chopped up some crimini mushrooms and cilantro and shredded some carrot and zucchini. In retrospect I should have julienned them so that the rolls had some structure. I'm not saying I have sufficient kitchen smarts. I wasn't even following a recipe.

Then I made a nut pate using raw pumpkin seeds, almonds and a few Brazil nuts. I combined the nuts with some lemon juice, grated ginger, chopped garlic and salt. A food processor should have been used, but I used my little nut grinder and it did just fine.

When putting the rolls together, I laid the nori sheet out, first put down the pate, then the vegetable mix, and topped it with some avocado. It was pretty simple to roll up, but then as I tried to cut it into individual sushi rolls, the filling didn't stand up. Oh well. Nut nori burritos it is!

I'm Going to Help a Kid Read Good

I have officially landed on a program for challenge #21 (make a difference in a child's life without monetary contribution). After being rejected from the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, blasting their Facebook page with expletives and punching a few random kids just for good measure, I knew I still wanted that one-on-one opportunity to work with a child and turn them into a tiny confident goal-oriented genius.

Then I found Reading Partners. This program has been around for ten years but only recently came to the New York City area. Their goal is simple: Help kids read better. Being a writer of words, I'd prefer if people could read them. This program felt like a perfect match.

This week I attend my shadow session, where I will learn the ins and outs of the program and how a typical lesson goes down. Then I will be paired up with an elementary school student on the Lower East Side, meeting with him or her once a week for at least one full semester. The best part is, they provide you with the lesson plan and all the materials, so all I have to bring is my upbeat personality (working on that one) and philanthropic spirit.

Here is how I'm hoping the semester will progress:

 

And by the end of the semester they better be at least halfway through Game of Thrones.

**Reading Partners accepts donations, if you feel so inclined.**

茶の湯 (The Way of Tea)

I have utmost respect for Japanese culture. The way that nature, poetry and tea are infused into their way of life is beautiful. A different kind of powerful. I see a calmness in the Japanese culture. Patience. Respect. Harmony. Purity. Those values that we aren't so quick to value here.

Last Saturday I had my first Japanese tea ceremony lesson (per challenge #17) at the Urasenke Chanoyu Center on the Upper East Side of Manhattan:

I wish I could have taken a picture of the interior garden. It was spectacular. Silent. I was instantly mesmerized.  

My teacher, Greg*, was friendly, well-spoken, patient, and able to cover a lot of material in two hours. The amount of information I retained can only be attributed to his great instruction.

The first thing I learned was that every. single. thing. in a traditional tea ceremony has a purpose or meaning or a particular structure. The way you remove your shoes. The way you open the door to the tea room. They way you enter the tea room. The way you place the tea bowl in front of the guest. The way you fold the Kaishi (a Japanese style mini napkin; see picture below). Even the foot you use to take a step has to be a particular foot depending on the direction you are headed. And no, this is not how they drink tea every time they drink tea. These ceremonies take place on special occasions, such as when someone is returning home, or leaving, or for a graduation, etc.

The tea rooms are impeccable, the tatami mats soft underneath your feet. I felt myself slow down and my senses heighten.

People who want to master the Way of Tea -- chanoyu (茶の湯) or chadō (茶道) in Japanese -- study for decades, if not an entire lifetime. What I learned in two hours was merely the tip of the tip of the iceberg. But still, I feel like I learned a lot. Will I be performing my own tea ceremony anytime soon? I would hate to disrespect the Japanese by hosting what would probably be the most deplorable tea ceremony in history, but I am hoping that by the end of my 29th year I will know enough to give it a beginner's go. What makes things more difficult is that even the guests must have a knowledge of how to attend a ceremony, so part of my challenge will be teaching a few of my friends the steps. And of course I must obtain the proper equipment. This challenge includes shopping? I'm in.

I'll also need to obtain a (cough) guide book (cough).

For more on this topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_tea_ceremony. 

*Name not changed to protect privacy. What? We're you expected a teacher of the Japanese way of tea to be Japanese? Settle down.

Doing Nothing is Hard

My most challenging challenge to date disguises itself as a simple, totally doable activity: Sit. Be silent. Do nothing. For fifteen minutes.

But the fact that I must do this first thing in the morning (before I shower/walk Dagmar/check email/sing good morning from the rooftops) is proving problematic. First of all, I have just woken up. And I am not a good waker-upper. To sit in silence and stillness when my eyes are still half-closed just tricks them into thinking we are going back to sleep. It looks a lot like this:

I wear a tie when meditating, too.

Secondly, one can never truly experience silence in Manhattan. Us non-millionaires anyway. The few times that I have maybe achieved some sort of meditative state lasts for about five seconds before some cab starts honking or a truck hits a pothole or some crazy on the street starts yelling about how someone stole his jello.

I will keep working on this challenge, and I am confident that by the end of my 29th year I will have figured out a way to make the most of it. But in the meantime, any suggestions on effective sitting in silence are welcome.

Big Sister

To be honest, when I received the "make a difference in a child's life without throwing money at them" challenge, my mind immediately went to a swift good deed that I could do in one day and knock off my list. But that's not much of a challenge. So after some quality time with Internet, I made my decision to apply to be a Big.

As in, a big sister in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program of NYC. The commitment is pretty substantial (two times a month for at least a year), but it's a chance to spend time with one kid who got dealt some crappy life cards and establish a positive relationship that will stick with them for the rest of their life.

I submitted my application online and exchanged some emails with one of the representatives. I was already beginning to imagine the things I could do with my little sister around NYC. After a few weeks of waiting, I finally received an answer:

Damn. Back to square one with this challenge. If anyone has any recommendations for programs where I can help a kid one-on-one, feel free to share.

SMASHing

You can go ahead and get used to the bad pun titles. I have to get them out of my system somehow. If I use them at work they beat me with a sackful of doorknobs and call me names.

I didn't know what a SMASH Book was when I received the challenge to keep one throughout my 29th year. But then I found this adorable video:

And THEN I received a package containing a SMASH Book and assorted goodies, including stamps, tags, little envelopes, paperclips and bookmarks.* I cannot wait to get started. This might not be the easiest year of my life, but I'll be damned if it's not the cutest. 

*Thank you Judy!

The Eggplant Sandwich

One of my challenges is to bring my lunch two out of five work days per week, and so far I've been keeping it simple with salads and soups that I've made many times before. But today I tried out a new recipe. The eggplant sandwich.

Yes, it's raw and vegan, so go ahead and get your eye-rolling out of the way. But look! It's pretty!

The flavor is great, but mine was a little hard to eat. I attribute this to not getting the eggplant crispy enough. The recipe comes from an iPhone app called Do Eat Raw.

Ingredients:

• 1 eggplant, sliced into circles
• 1 avocado
• 1 shallot, sliced
• 1 tomato, sliced
• Grated carrot
• Alfalfa sprouts
• Sea salt
• Black pepper
• Garlic powder

Directions:

Place the eggplant slices on a dehydrator tray and dehydrate for 8-9 hours at 105 degrees. You could also just use your oven but I'm not sure of the time and temperature. You just want to get the eggplant crispy and easy to bite into. The less done they are, the chewier they'll be.

Take the avocado, cut into two pieces, scoop out the pulp and spread on the eggplant slices.

Put on some sliced shallot, tomato, carrot, alfalfa sprouts, and sprinkle some garlic powder, salt and pepper. Lay another eggplant slice on top and you've got yourself a sandwich. 

Saturday Morning Shabbat

*This post contains religious bits. I've tried to be as objective as possible.* 

Last Saturday I began my "attend 10 different religious services" challenge with Shabbat Service at Town & Village Synagogue in New York City. I considered a Jewish service to be appropriate as I am currently researching my Jewish heritage per challenge #22. From the Town & Village website:

Traditional, participatory, and egalitarian, T&V has members from throughout the New York area. Our members look to T&V, as did our founders, as our sacred space, our spiritual home, a place where Conservative Jews, lay and clergy, men and women, adults and children, together, create community and commitment.

So, yeah. Almost the entire thing was in Hebrew. New experiences! 

It started at 9:30. I arrived at 9:31 and opened the door to a large, beautiful sanctuary. There were four people inside, including the Rabbi. Curse my punctuality. It could not have been more awkward. My plan to hide in the crowd and quietly observe now foiled, I immediately attracted attention. The Rabbi came over to introduce himself and make me feel as welcome as possible. That was nice. I settled into the pew and tried to follow along as best I could. Slowly but surely, people trickled in. By the end of the service (ahem...three hours later), the sanctuary was more or less at capacity.

Here's my completely green, religiously-uneducated account of what took place at Shabbat Service:
An hour of praying/chanting/singing (my apologies as I do not know the legit term) in Hebrew with English translation provided, followed by the opening of the Ark, where a large scroll (the Torah) was extracted and laid upon a large table. An hour of reading from the Torah in Hebrew by multiple readers, young and old. A brief sermon from the Rabbi. Closing prayers and songs. Announcements.

And here is what actually took place:

It was long, yes, but there were some rather enjoyable parts, the first being the Prayer for Peace, the only prayer spoken in English:

May we see the day when war and bloodshed cease
when a great peace will embrace the whole world

Then nation shall not threaten nation
and humankind will not again know war.

For all who live on earth shall realize
we have not come into being to hate or destroy

We have come into being
to praise, to labour and to love.

Compassionate God, bless all the leaders of all nations
with the power of compassion.

Fulfill the promise conveyed in Scripture:

"I will bring peace to the land,
and you shall lie down and no one shall terrify you.
I will rid the land of vicious beasts
and it shall not be ravaged by war."

Let love and justice flow like a mighty stream.

Let peace fill the earth as the waters fill the sea.

And let us say: Amen

Without tapping into my own religious beliefs, I would argue that the above prayer has a particularly universal appeal, despite a few nuances. No one shall terrify you? That sounds nice. Let peace fill the earth as the waters fill the sea? That's just good writing. I read this one out loud.

The second enjoyable part was the weekly Torah portion. I followed along via the English translation provided. The excerpt told the story of Jacob's journey to Haran, Jacob's Ladder and Jacob's marriages to his uncle Laban's daughters, Rachel and Leah. Not only did the Torah in the pew have English translations, it included footnotes galore so the story was easy to follow. I learned quite a bit.

The third enjoyable part of the service was the Rabbi's sermon. Apparently he is a psychic Rabbi and knew I was coming, for the sermon was about advertising. He spoke of a recent Israeli government campaign designed to entice Jews living in the U.S. to "come home" to Israel. Outrage has ensued amongst the Jewish community as a result. It was the Rabbi's opinion that this campaign was created out of fear that Jews will become more casual in their faith outside of the mother country and the belief that Israel is the only place where Jews can both "survive" and "thrive." Ending on a positive note, the Rabbi argued that Jews have the ability to reestablish and redefine themselves wherever they go, just as Jacob had done in that day's reading from the Torah.

OVERALL IMPRESSION:
Shabbat service felt more like an interesting class on Judaism rather than an uncomfortable preachy experience. The singing (accompanied by occasional foot stomping) was pleasantly hypnotic at times, and there was a distinct feeling of community amongst the members. Not sure if I'll be converting to Judaism anytime soon, but I do have a greater appreciation for the Jewish faith, and I am now able to imagine more clearly what my Jewish ancestors might have been doing on a Saturday morning more than a hundred years ago.

Meet the Challenges

Here they are, folks. The official challenges that I will be attempting to conquer before I turn thirty. In random order: 

1. Do yoga three days a week. 
2. Give a stranger $100. Film it and post it on YouTube.
3. Eat 29 cupcakes in 29 days and write a review of each. 
4. Research and identify 10 procedural reforms that would help move congress and the executive office back to being a government of the people and for the people. Print these 10 reforms on handout cards and distribute to anyone and everyone you know. Post them on your Facebook page and website. 
5. Travel overseas, ride trains only, and put together a collection of photos titled "Window Seat."
6. Sit in silence and stillness each morning for 15 minutes before you start your day.
7. Write and direct your own short film and submit it to a film festival.
8. Spend one night in a women's shelter, make a connection and offer to take family portraits.
9. Make and bottle your own wine. Save it for a future birthday.
10. Lie down on your back in a NYC street and pretend to be a dead bug. *There's a back story to this one.
11. Write a sad story about a girl who gets the things she always wanted -- on your typewriter. 
    
12. Make a conceptual photo series, preferably a book. 
13. Your 27th and 28th years were characterized by massive life changes that included a move and job change; my challenge is make one more life change. I'm not going to define it, but some suggestions would be: take another step with Austin, get a friend for Dagmar, get involved with something you care about in an incredibly inconvenient capacity.
14. Take flying lessons.
15. Do 200 crunches and three 1-minute planks every other day. And assist your scared, almost-grad cousin in finding a job in Atlanta. 
16. End every day by writing down one positive thing that happened in the previous 24 hours.
17. Learn how to perform an authentic Japanese tea ceremony.
18. Get a photo (or photos) into a gallery/showing AND/OR sell one of your photos.
19. A year-long water challenge: Drink 1 liter of water per day, wade across a stream, swim across a pool, canoe across a lake or pond, and fly across an ocean. 
20. Make and bring your lunch 2 out of 5 days a week.
21. Manifest yourself in an act of humanitarianism that permanently and positively enriches the life of a child. The act may not be accomplished with direct financial, but must involve sacrifice of your time and attention.
22. Research your Jewish heritage going back at least four generations. 
23. Pay one compliment to a different person every day.
24. Raise a basil plant and name it Kyle.
25. Take an art class and create an original painting.
26. Keep a Smash Book (scrapbook) for the year.
27. Write words (the grouping of letters that hints of story and promise), even if it's only one line or thought or idea, in a momentary embrace of lapse of reason, everyday, and incorporate these words into a future novel.
28. Learn to sew, design an outfit, make it, do a self-portrait in it.
29. Attend 10 religious services. Record your impression of each.
30. Write the first chapter of your first novel and the outline. Submit to a publisher.

A big fat thank you to all of the challengers. It means a great deal that you would put so much thought into my little project.

I've already started a few of them, so stay tuned. Posts coming on the regular. 

Insanity is the best policy. I think.

Thirty is a big milestone, and I would prefer to end my twenties with a bang. 

So I stole someone else's idea.

The original idea involved choosing thirty friends on your thirtieth birthday to each give you a challenge that must be completed by the age of thirty-one. I altered it to completing thirty challenges before the age of thirty.

There's just so much out there in the world to experience, and sometimes the everyday business gets in the way of the epic, life-changing, delightful, memorable business. I needed a nudge. Or maybe I'm just a crazy masochist.

Hopefully through this experience I will learn something new, overcome a fear, explore my altruistic side (if I have one), and/or do things that I'd otherwise keep putting off until the window of opportunity disappeared. Yes, some of the challenges are going to be tough. But I suppose I asked for it.

I'm still waiting on a few remaining challenges to trickle in. Upon the arrival of the 30th challenge, I will post a complete list of the thirty in all of their glory. Until then, here is the challenge card I issued to my friends and family. A special thanks to Jessica Giles for lending a much-needed design hand.