Au Chocolate A Celebration of the Delicious
When I was a kid, there was an ad on TV with a woman facing all kinds of life stresses and it ended with her in a bathtub filled with bubbles, her head back, eyes closed, looking blissful, while the narrator said, “Calgon, take me away!” I didn’t know then – nor am I entirely sure now – what Calgon was, and the idea of a bath being something indulgent made no sense to me at all, but the line has been embedded in my head my entire life.
I’d like to think of this service as our Calgon moment. Inside a life of profound stress, maybe even grief, this is our hour of bliss, our moment for indulgence, or at least of rest.
Things are looking bleak. Our city mayor manipulated his way out of accountability by agreeing to support politicized cruelty. The executive branch of the government is dismantling the structure of the nation as laid out in the constitution. The Department of Education is being slashed within an inch of its life endangering millions of children as well as our collective future. Food and medicine created to serve the poorest of the poor has been diverted and left to rot by the richest man in the world while millions of our fellow Americans cheer. Every regulatory agency has been hollowed out to ensure the end of oversight or consequence for the billionaire class. Our phones beep and howl constantly bringing us the latest in bad news, the next step in the dismantling of our democracy, the new face of incompetence being put in charge of some massive agency that does critical work this person knows nothing about. And the mid-February cold doesn’t help. Those with kids at home are also stuck without school this week adding to the stress. People are getting viruses, major and minor, all over the place, coughing and sneezing and adding to the “under the weather” “not up to the task” “I can’t do any more than sit on my couch” feeling that seems to have taken hold.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not willing to just put my head down and hope my loved ones and I survive, watching rom-coms and reading mystery novels. But, with that said, I’m also not willing to devote my life to doing nothing but fight, to resist, to live like a punching bag getting slammed from every angle over and over until I’m bruised and broken.
If these are our only two options, the future we’re building will either be defined by profound disengagement or broken bodies and spirits. But, the future we want to build is bigger than that, more dynamic, more beautiful, more fulfilling. And that future is built on joy.
The method is the message. How we respond to the current crisis will frame how we design the world we’re fighting for. So, we need to bring everything we have – our bravery, our restfulness, our playfulness, our balance and ability to engage all of it. We can’t allow our ongoing state of shock to ossify, turning us into screaming banshees permanently fixed in a state of alarm.
The new world requires moments of soft, of pleasure, of entertaining, of delicious. It requires us to live lives filled with joy, not only because that’s how we recharge, but also because we are dreaming a world that is magnificent and that world is filled with wonderful.
We pray. We dance. We mourn. We protest. We eat chocolate. It is a full life. Complete. Balanced.
I’ve told you the story of Emma Goldman before; she’s been a guide for me for many years, so here it is again, this time with a caveat and a warning.
Emma Goldman was an anarchist, which for her and the left-wing activists of the early part of the 20th century, was about liberation. There were rules, especially for women, that bound them into very small lives. They were fighting for the vote, but also for an end to the conventions that dictated who they were allowed to be. One day, Emma received a letter from a man after her attendance at a party had been noted by some others in the women’s rights movement. The letter told her that in a time of such distress, it was unseemly for her to be seen dancing. He went on to note that her frivolity would hurt the cause and that her behavior was undignified. There were, after all, very serious matters at stake, and if they were going to be successful, they needed to reflect the urgency, especially in public. In her response she said, (I’m quoting from her memoir) “I did not believe that a cause which stood for such a beautiful ideal…for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy.” She then went on with a version of the now famous line, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”
The revolution isn’t separate from the joy. The revolution – the dramatic upheaval of the conventions that have brought us to the brink of destruction – the revolution has to include dancing.
But, I have an addendum which has become critical in my understanding of the work of the activist.
Rev. John Haynes Holmes wrote about Emma Goldman in his autobiography. He admired her work and was very excited to meet this larger than life character. She was known to be a bold and charismatic speaker, so he invited her to Community Church. The morning before she was to speak, Rev. Holmes and a friend of his went to Grand Central Station to meet her train. Expecting to be captivated, he described her like this: “Such storms had swept over that face, so weather-beaten was it in every line and feature, so unutterably sad and stern, so weary and forlorn, that one wondered if this countenance had ever been softened by a smile or graced by love... Emma had fought in so many battles, faced such dangers and endured such ills, been so unfairly and cruelly treated…known such suffering in body and mind, that she had no time to give to those gentler and serener aspects of the soul.”
He goes on to say she was exceedingly nervous, timid, and suspicious. She apparently blew the roof off the place anyway, but he was taken aback by her disposition, one that had been permanently altered by the abuse she had taken in the fight she so willingly entered.
I want to go back to the other Emma Goldman! The one who didn’t want to be part of a revolution that didn’t include dancing. And, I think we can. I think the older woman is telling us the same story. If we forget to dance, if we forget indulgence and sparkle, we become nothing more than exhausted soldiers at the end of a battle whose lives are limited to the fight, never again to live with unfettered joy, regardless of whether we win or lose.
That’s not for us. We are going to dance. And sing. And sleep. And eat. Because, without the joy, what’s the point? What are we trying to save if all we have is empty, desolate, gloomy shells of a life? We need delight.
Our lives are full. We pray. We cry. We protest. We organize. And we indulge ourselves in the things our bodies and our minds love.
I want to make sure I’m being clear. This isn’t about doing one thing so we have energy for the other. Our activism and our restfulness, our fight for justice and our drinking hot chocolate, our chanting in the streets and our singing in the shower, are connected. It’s not about needing one to continue the other. What I’m saying is that these things are the same. We are building a new world while engaging all of it. Eating chocolate, taking baths, calling senators, it’s all part of one full life, one engaged and awake life, one balanced, beautiful life. We aren’t betraying one with the other. It’s interconnected, interwoven, one whole cloth that is us in our fullness.
There is no “here” and “there” or “this” and “that”. It’s all one thing, one place, one life - Ours -and we’re living it as whole beings. The method is the message. So, if we want to build a world of radical inclusion, we have to live into that vision now. If we want systems of accountability, and communities that prioritize care for the whole, if we want everyone to be included, and justice to be the law of the land, we have to normalize that with our words and actions. If we want love at the center of everything, we have to put it there now.
Joy is the point. It’s not a by-product. It’s not an aside, a way to rest to go back to fight. The pleasure, the fun, the love that makes our days possible – that’s the point. That’s what we’re doing here. We’re creating a world of THAT. A place everyone has that. A place everyone can safely play and dance and read romance novels.
And that’s why I brought chocolate. And strawberries. Things of indulgence. Life is sweet. It’s smooth and soft and yummy. And, it’s shared.
Chocolate communion may not be considered a holy act in some religious traditions, but it is here. Communion literally means “with together”. Our shared faith is grounded in the idea of community, of god being known within and between us. The sharing of food, of flowers, of water, is how we express in concrete terms the sacred nature of our relationships. We don’t have to know each other to share the objects of joy.
Unlike cornbread communion, you don’t have to wait. Come up. Take chocolate or strawberries or chocolate covered strawberries. There are also dates and the scattered hearts are nut free, the X ones are vegan, as is the chocolate on the strawberries. Come, take. Eat. Indulge. Enjoy. Life is sweet and yummy and altogether delightful. Dig in.
