A Week in Seattle

Last Monday night around midnight in Oakland we got on the "Coast Starlight" train, north to Seattle - about a 24 hour trip. We arrived after midnight the next day, stumbled into a taxi and then into bed.

When we woke up, we realized what a nice little studio flat we were staying in.
Something about the low ceiling, cement floor, the simplicity, and the quiet here has been very comfortable and restful this week.
It's helped our brains feel quiet somehow.
The entrance, off a backyard parking lot.

A parishioner recommended a tour of Pike Place Market with "Savor Seattle", which we just loved. We visited 9 vendors and got to sample their wares! Yum. Including: clam chowder, spice tea, a smoky salt, tiny cinnamon & sugar donuts, three kinds of smoked salmon, chocolate-covered dried cherries, local nectarines, cheddar cheese, piroshky, and crab cakes. Oh my.

Here's the manager at "Chukar Cherries" talking to us about their stuff:
(note gorgeous flower booths in background)

Love the hot pepper mobiles! So much is beautiful for your eyes, mouth, and nose at Pike Place.
Here's me with two BIG, $5 (!) bouquets that I schlepped 1.6 miles back home - uphill. Along with cheese, tea, salmon jerky, and postcards.

We went to Pike Place three times this week - we just loved it.

We've had dinner with wonderful friends:
Keith and Ellen
Edmund and Michael

One of the goals of my sabbatical is to be a pilgrim of good food. Chez Panisse and other restaurants have been a real treat, but so has food we've shared in people's homes. Jesus celebrated his time at table with friends, and shared good wine, grilled fish, and what must have been some tasty bread, with his disciples. We are savoring the food of the West Coast and discovering that food can be as transcendental and sacred as mountains and redwoods. That taking time for meals and food is important, and that sharing food with others is a wonderful, sacred, and life-giving thing.

My aunt came to stay with us for a day, and we went up to the Space Needle and saw the Chihuly Glass and Garden museum on a grey, rainy, Seattle day (which was also our anniversary).

We lingered for a long while at a gallery of Pacific Northwest Indian art.

We've also spent a surprising amount of time just sitting around, being quiet. Letting out souls catch up with our bodies. Soaking up some silence. Trying to just BE.

Our last night, we went to Compline at St. Mark's Cathedral, which was one the reasons I wanted to come to Seattle. For decades, a men's choir has sung the office of Compline (COM-plin) at 9:30pm on Sunday nights. The cathedral fills up with all kinds of people. They bring blankets and pillows to cozy up in a pew or lay on the floor. They sit all around the altar, in corners, and along the side aisles. It was an amazing image of being a church that welcomes people to come be with God, no questions asked, and to truly make themselves at home in a church space.

The 12 or so men are robed, process in, and then sing and say the office from the back.
(Thanks to Edmund for this photo.)

Everyone just listens. (We did stand for the Apostles' Creed.) It's very powerful and the music is so beautiful!

These blog posts have been action-packed because we started the sabbatical with so many adventures, which I think was a good decision. But now we'll be in a more quiet phase. Home, and then I'll be spending a month at the monastery in Wisconsin where I'm an oblate. That will be quite different.