December 2, 2012
First Sunday in Advent

Advent . . . is a time of awakening, as from a deep sleep, and seeing the same persons, places, and situations in our lives in an entirely new light.
— Barbara Benjamin, b. 20th century, and Alexandria Vali, 1924-2011, Anerican authors
in The Advent Kitchen

“You’ll never guess what we’re making for dinner!” said the text. I had just placed a ball of dough into the bowl I think of as my grandmother’s big kitchen bowl (I remember it from my childhood, sixty years ago now), the bowl I have had possession of for more than forty years and which I use almost exclusively for bread baking.

The text was from Lynn. She and her fiancé, Matt, live in West Chester, Pennsylvania, about ninety minutes from me. They got engaged just before Christmas last year, and this is their first holiday season sharing a tree, a table, and two sets of traditions.

I wondered what she would be so excited to tell me she was making. Probably something she’s professed not to like before, something her maturing palate has suddenly found attractive. Tortellini en brodo? (When she was nine she said it looked like eyeballs and was oogie.) Fusilli in walnut cream sauce? (When she was seventeen and found that being prepared for her supper she wondered why we couldn’t eat like normal people.) I finished with I’m making mulligatawny, and pressed send.

That’s it! came her reply.

Well, of course, I responded. It’s the first Sunday in Advent.

I think it was probably in 1998 or 1999 that I started making soup and bread for supper on the Sundays of Advent. I developed a routine: mulligatawny and naan for the first Sunday, tortellini en brodo and Italian bread for the second, my Holiday Open House Extravanganza on the third, and spaghetti with Ron’s special homemade sauce (not a soup, but a simple, albeit delicious, dish) on the fourth. Some years I invited guests, subjected them to the ceremonial watching of the 1953 Dragnet Christmas episode. (If you haven’t been reading me for a long time and do not know what that means, trust me, you will. I tell the story every year.)

I haven’t had the party since 2006. I don’t know when I stopped the simple suppers. In 2007 I was in Wyoming at a writer’s residency until just before the fourth Sunday. I can’t remember without looking it up what I did after that. And of course, last year I didn’t do much of anything.

This year, I determined that things would be different. I would do the things about the holiday that I enjoy the most, even if I had to do them in nontraditional ways. Today, I installed the crèche, and made my favorite soup.

Mulligatawny is a curry-flavored soup of Anglo-Indian origin. Its name, from the Tamil “milagu thanni,” means “pepper water.” In 1999 I wrote of it, “You start by slicing whole carrots and onions and green bell peppers, then sauté them in butter, add broth, some shredded chicken that you’ve cooked separately, and some diced tomatoes, a pinch of mace and then just a little curry powder. Finally, at the end, the thing that makes the difference: chopped green apple for a little kiss of sweetness. It’s a rich and complex set of flavors, and every ladle full pulled up yields a different mix.”

The 1999 essay, given here, is an exploration of one of those rare moments when I thought God spoke directly to me. And of course, he spoke to me through food, in a grocery store. Reading the piece again today, I was reminded who I am, and whose I am. That’s what Advent is all about, remembrance and renewal.

Oh yeah, like we knew that! Lynn said about this being the first Sunday in Advent.

Lynn is not active in any congregation, never found a good fit at school, probably hasn’t even considered seeking one of late, especially now that she’s moved to a new town. At this time in her life, she’s out of touch with the day-to-day life of the church, with the cycles of the liturgy, although I don’t think she’s lost her spirituality. It lies dormant, and something in her psyche led her to consider mulligatawny today.

We exchanged texts again about a half hour ago. Both of us had excellent outcomes with our soup. She and Matt put up their tree. I couldn;t muster the energy for that last year, but I think I’ll be getting to it this year, not tonight, but this week. It is good to have wakened from the sleep I was in.

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