spirituality

Checking In- Don’t Let Monstrous Times Make You A Monster

/ The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Where are you Matt?
What are you feeling?
Check in- what’s happening now?

This is the litany of questions that has gone through my head on repeat for the last few weeks. It’s one of the tools I use to ground and re-center myself when I catch my thoughts ruminating or spiraling.

You don’t “hate everything,” Matt. You are tired and sad. Hate and anger are easier to feel and parse than pain.

This is the other mantra I’ve found myself repeating over and over when I find myself slipping into depression. That’s been increasing over the last few months. The usual anxieties and tribulations of life seem to magnify themselves when you constantly poach yourself in a broth of bad news. It feels like everything hurts, and the world is too hard and painful to keep being kind in.

I insist on continuing to be kind, though.
My core values remain Patience and Compassion.
My “Way of the Floured Hand” dictates that “I choose love, I chose love, and I will always choose love.”
“It’s Chaos; Be Kind.”

I know that ideals like this will always be worth it in the end, always me– but that doesn’t mean it’ll always feel good.

Bilbo Baggins from Lord of the Rings saying "I feel thin.. like butter scraped over too much bread."
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My Quiet And Crusty Ministry

/ The Black Hat Baker / 2 Comments

Thanksgiving in an American pie shop can best be described as the World Cup and the Super Bowl rolled up together- then stretched out over 21 days. Christmas, remarkably, tends to be less busy, but only slightly. I had to let my writing work slide for a couple weeks there because all my energy was being spent in the shop- physically, mentally, and emotionally.

The experience is always a trying one- I’m not complaining about that. My team and I handled it well, pulling off over 2000 pies in about a week. What it can mean, however, is exhaustion leading to strained nerves and losing sight of why the work we do is important. Not just to the world at large, but to ourselves personally.

You can’t blame a guy for not seeing the glory in the 500th pumpkin pie he’s made in a week, after all.

It’s almost providential then that, just before Thanksgiving, I rediscovered an important insight: “I chose this. I chose baking. I chose love. This is my calling.” Not many of us can say we work at our calling… but how many can also say their day job is their spiritual practice?

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