Monday, April 19, 2010

Walla Walla


Given the number of favourite or at least oft-visited restaurants that have either burned down or shut in recent months (I think of Slickity Jim's, Koni and Annapurna Vegetarian Cuisine of India, as well as Kishu), I feel like my usual haunts are getting a shake-up. Which one will be next to go?

Well, there's always new places to discover: And not only in Vancouver, but elsewhere. With the Wine Bloggers Conference hitting Walla Walla, Washington in a couple of months, I don't mind mentioning some of the places that caught my attention when I was there in February (and it keeps my mind of the local losses).

Those include the Walla Walla Bread Co., where I not only picked up a couple of decent pastries, but enjoyed a good conversation with the owner. I had seen her in the window of the shop packing up bread on my first night in town, so it was nice to meet her in person. The shop is relatively new, but it takes pride in natural and local ingredients. The down-to-earth chat was one of the highlights of my visit to town this year.

The other stop was the Colville Street Patisserie, kitty-corner to the corner where I snapped the above photo (the less glamorous off-Main side of Walla Walla). Again, there were some good down-to-earth conversations taking place around me, but the place was definitely more upscale than your average coffee shop (say, the nearby Cookie Tree). Where else could I find a kouign amann?

Saturday, April 03, 2010

Holy Saturday

One of the enduring memories from the trip I made to Milan last November is that of the crypt beneath the altar in the Basilica di S. Ambrogio. The remains of Ambrose and the martyrs Ss. Gervasius and Protasius lie here resting, waiting till all shall be raised to new life. Above, at the altar, Mass is said regularly and the sacrifice that won the promise of the new life they’re awaiting, is re-enacted until their hope is fulfilled.


Reading today in John Terpstra, Skin Boat (Gaspereau, 2009), a reflection on the community life of those in contemporary Canada who wait in hope with Ss. Ambrose, Gervasius and Protasius, I am reminded that the enshrinement of these remains is no glossing over of death or a simple desire to affirm life. Rather, it’s a grappling with the human condition, a visceral acknowledgement of loss. Ambrose, Cuthbert (the English saint of whom Terpstra writes), the martyrs are individuals, irreplaceable to those who love them. “These people who were alive and walked among us once, are not entirely gone – no more than our love for them,” the community says by caring for their remains. “[What it] is not, is a denial of the body,” Terpstra writes, critiquing funeral services that celebrate lives lived without acknowledging the pain of loss.


The pain loss brings is something we know, whether discovered through death or discord. Our blood family, our spouse and in-laws, our friends: So far as they mean anything to us, we know they are irreplaceable. They are not mere commodities, items we can fetch at the grocer’s when they have run out. We may not enshrine or venerate what remains of those we knew or the relationships we had with them, but we cannot ignore the unique, irreplaceable contribution the individuals we love make to our lives. We feel pain, hurt at their departure. We await restoration to the life we knew with them.


It is this acute sense of waiting that characterizes the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter, for those who mark these days. It is an acknowledgement of the pain of death, discord, separation from what is irreplaceable. And a moment to acknowledge that, in our sorrow, it is difficult sometimes even to hope.

Yet the world goes on.

“You have to trust the rhythm,” Terpstra writes of life in relationship, in the community that waits with Ambrose, Cuthbert and the martyrs. “You learn to trust that you will make landfall.”