Dining with The Human Story

Last night Chef Linda demonstrated, with the assistance of dinner party guests, how to make simple, easy, vegan meals.

Chef Linda

My friend Michael invited me along and before showing up several serendipitous moments would occur. My home is being renovated so I’m staying with a friend. While on the couch, twenty four hours prior to this dinner, with laptops on each of our laps, she reads me a vegan recipe from an e-newsletter. I ask her to forward it to me and I begin reading about the vegan chef at which point I announce “I want to meet this woman.” She would be Linda Chef, our party’s instructor. I then opened a Meet Up announcement for a spiritual group in town and saw a Hindu monk who goes by the name ‘Swami.’  He too would be at this seven person dinner.

Pamela and Michael around the table

Six of us sat around a wooden dinner table with Chef Linda and a small demo table in front of us. As she prepared a dish, one of us would join her and support her in the preparation. Half way through the meal I went to the bathroom to find Swami’s book behind the toilet seat. I flipped through it seeing it was full of personal transformation stories; a beautiful book. I shared a few facts with those at the table when I returned. Then someone at the table said, “don’t we all share the same story anyway?” Whether it was Bob, the host and spiritual teacher, or his partner and marketing master Pamela, or the massage therapist Carol, or Michael, I don’t recall.

And they are right. We do.

As I basked this morning in the beauty of last night I recalled one of my favorite short stories by Theophane the Monk:

I’ve been going on retreat each year for the past forty years. Each time it’s the same, yet somehow always different. The first time I went I forgot to bring my Bible. When I asked the guestmaster if I could borrow a Bible, he said, “Wouldn’t you care to write your own?” What do you mean?” “Well, write your own Bible — something of your own on the order of a Bible. You could tell of a classical bondage

Bob with the potato fingerling dish

and the great liberation, a promised land, sacred songs, a messiah—that kind of thing. Ought to be much more interesting than just reading someone else’s Bible. And you might learn more.”

Well, I set to work. It took me a month. I never learned so much about the official Bible. When I was finished, he recommended I take it home and try to live according to it for a year. I should keep a journal of my experience. But I shouldn’t tell anybody about the project, nor show anyone the books. Next year, after Christmas I could come back for another retreat.

It was quite a year. An eye opener. Most certainly I had never put so much energy and alertness into living by the official Bible as I was putting into living by this one. And my daily medidtations had never been so concentrated.

Swami holding cabbage for nut taco shells

When I arrived back for my next retreat, he greeted me very warmly, took into his hands my Bible and my journal, kissed them with greatest reverence, and told me I could now spend a couple days and nights in the Hall of the Great Fire. On the last night of the year, I should consign my two books to the flames. And that’s what I did. A whole year’s wisdom and labor–into the Great Fire. Afterwards he set me to work writing another Bible.

And so it went, these past forty years. Each year a new Bible, a new journal, and at the end of the year–into the flames. Until now I have never told anyone about this.  Taken from The Magic Monastery by Theophane the Monk

My friend, I honor your unique version of the One Story that you embody and give thanks for who you are in this world.

Namaste’ (The God in Me Greets the God in You)