End-of-Year Reflections

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When exactly does a journey end?

If you are looking to go somewhere new or better, ideally you find yourself in a different place, put down your stuff, and start about the task of living a new life in your new location. Joseph Campbell’s famous “hero’s journey” structure includes The Return- our brave hero, having crossed the border of the known into the unknown on their grand quest, returns across that border to the world they knew significantly changed.

Maybe they brought the “Magic Medicine,” as Campbell calls it, to solve a problem and the quest of seeking and finding the Medicine was only the first (albeit largest) part. Tripitaka, having successfully reached India and received the sutras from the Buddha along with his assistants Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy, must now complete the quest by returning to China with them. Frodo, having seen the One Ring destroyed and the quest complete, returns home to free and rebuild the Shire.

For Tripitaka and Frodo, though, that still wasn’t the end of their stories. Tripitaka and his friends are magically whisked back to India after finishing their delivery and receive their ultimate rewards: Buddhahood for Tripitaka and Monkey, and sainthood for Pigsy and Sandy as their undertakings on the journey expunged the sins that set them on the road in the first place. Frodo, forever wounded and traumatized by his quest and prolonged exposure to the evil of the One Ring, realizes that he “can’t go home again” and leaves Middle Earth to seek peace and healing in the uttermost West.

Returning home but returning differently is just as much a journey as finding yourself in a new place- you set down old ways and start the process of living again as someone new.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels.com
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Real-World Questing- “If It’s Silly But It Works, It’s Not Silly.”

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(Full Disclosure: I wrote this post last week, but then… well, last week happened and I was exhausted, and this week is Christmas weekend so my brain is pretty much an electrified potato right now. Thank you for your patience!)

If you follow my Instagram, you’ve noticed I’ve been posting a lot of stories about beer in Portland lately. Not unusual in general maybe (#drinkerwithawritingproblem,) but just especially lately.

I found out casually while getting a post-shift beer at Von Ebert Brewing that they and several of my favorite local breweries decided to do a holiday “ale trail” called “The 12 Days of Gristmas”- “grist” being the term for the milled grain and mash bill used to make beer.

12 breweries.
12 holiday beers.
Get a stamp for each one, turn them in at the end for up to 12 raffle tickets to win swag.

It’s silly. I probably don’t need swag. No one needs beer enough to strategize how to hit as many breweries on the list as possible in one day on foot. I certainly don’t.

I love beer though.
I love supporting my local businesses that make good things.
I love walking around through Portland.
and I didn’t mind questing for something where the only thing at stake is my liver… but that’s what the walking is for.

Whatever breaks the despair and gets you out and moving is worth it.

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Find The Light So You Can BE The Light

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Hello, everyone.

My name is Matt. I am a Jewish-American baker, writer, and raconteur. I love food, beer, whiskey, mead and meadmaking, the taste and smell of good pipe tobacco, talking to strangers, and telling stories.

If you are in Beaverton today, you might see a guy in an Irish sweater with a copper-shod walking stick, a tweed hat, and a long tan cloak sitting at a bar with a pint of dark beer, typing on an iPad disguised as a very beaten-up composition notebook.

There is a lot of darkness and sorrow in the world right now. I’m keenly aware of it- too keenly, maybe, according to my therapist who’s been reminding me to keep off of social media. I’ll probably write something later summing up my personal attitudes about it all, but I’ll just as likely keep that to myself. The world is not short of opinions right now.

It’s also not short of doomsaying, chest-beating, and heartstring-wringing. There’s plenty of people who will take it upon themselves to remind us of all the horror in the world, and that’s a good thing. We can’t go about with our heads in the sand, pretending the problems of others aren’t our concern and then getting indignant when “no one did anything” when they become our concern.

What goes too far is when these good-intentioned messengers take it upon themselves to berate others or themselves for finding joy where they can. “With so much suffering and pain in this world, how dare anyone be happy?! Don’t you care?!”

There are plenty of who don’t or are ignorant of the plight of others, to be sure- but so many of us do. Here’s the truth though: Denying yourself joy and happiness does nothing to help others, and it weakens YOUR resolve to endure.

Photo by Johannes Plenio
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How To Serve A Season: Winter

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If you go through world folklore- from places where winter is a thing- you’ll find the connection of Winter and Death.

In Norse Mythology, Idunn, goddess of youth, falls from the branches of Yggdrasil while picking the apples she feeds to the gods to keep them strong. She plummets- like a falling leaf- all the way to Niflheim and Hel. Niflheim and Hel are at the very bottom of the tree, the realms of ice and the dead, respectively. When the gods find out and Hela (goddess of death) refuses to let her go immediately, Odin gives her husband Bragi (the god of poetry and song) a white wolf skin to keep her warm until Hela lets her go. Odin (the sky) sends a white blanket (snow,) song and poetry to keep Youth comfortable until she is freed.

We can see it again in the well-known story of Persephone and having to stay with Hades for part of the year, during which her mother Demeter won’t let anything grow.

The trees lose their leaves. The snows, rains, and winds come. Animals hibernate, and wait for the world to live again.

Fall slowed everything down. Winter is when we are meant to stop and rest. Humans aren’t so good at that though, so we adapted. When the Earth retains and nurtures its bounty, we have gotten VERY good at relying on when it didn’t.

Photo by Adriaan Greyling
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An Object Lesson in What Matters

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I was sitting in the break room at the winery, having just finished my lunch. It was a chilly, sunny day, and the break room has a really nice window that looks out on the terrace, the waterfall feature on the grounds, and beyond that over the valley.

I was debating how to best pull off the rest of the week, crank out a new bread recipe for my chef’s latest special, and what kind of desserts I should do for the seasonal menu change. I was grateful for the distraction. The toxicity of social media around the Israel-Hamas War was still trickling through despite me pulling back. When that many lives and that much culture is on the line and the generational trauma of two entire peoples is simultaneously triggered, there’s too much at stake for it to be managed through TikTok videos, memes, and idiotic flame wars- but here we are.

It made my heart hurt, and my mental health required me backing off, so I’d resolved to do what I’d always done when feeling pained and powerless- feed people, and put good things into the world that weren’t there before.

Then my phone rang. It was my wife, nearly in tears. Life was about to provide an object lesson in Pain, Powerlessness, what we do in the face of it, and the things that mean more than posting “the right things” on social media.

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