Impact > intent

My sister keeps laughing at me, but I have to take sexual harassment training before starting law school. I've periodically had to take this also for working for a government home care agency, so it makes me wonder why it wasn't required for working at the computer store or for university or even at my current job as an English teacher, given that these are both highly cooperative team environments. 

The premise underpinning this training is this: you may be engaging in inappropriate behaviors without even knowing it. There's this subtle judgment running through the whole seminar, that the viewer may believe they're not a perpetrator of sexual harassment, but the viewer is deluding herself, and therefore is a major part of the problem.

And I get that, because why is sexual harrassment such a prevalent problem unless it is, to an extent, condoned by the culture at large?

Inappropriate things were said at my university all the time. If it wasn't dirty jokes in the back room at my campus job, it was ignorant and insensitive things said in group projects or class discussions. Sexual harassment is regularly depicted in the movies, not condoned but not condemned. I think of Bumper tapping Fat Amy's chest with his "Riff Off" trophy; clearly unwelcome behavior, normalized by its appearance in pop culture. Is it an overreaction that my gut feeling here is that that's not okay?

So I initially rolled my eyes as I tucked into this training, but it seems to have accomplished its objective. I'm successfully indoctrinated. 

One thing that particularly surprised me is the principle that impact of an action matters more than the intent behind the action. The guy who slapped my butt at work wasn't intending to make me uncomfortable, the students who showed graphic content for their class presentation were only trying to make a point by way of negative example, and I didn't feel harassed in these instances. It was easy to take them in the spirit that they were meant. But if I had've been offended, if it had've upset me, I would have been perfectly justified in confronting the issue. Because, according to this training, impact matters more than intent. 

This is wigging me out.

Mostly I'm wondering if this can be a guiding principle for Christian behavior, too. I know how often I seek refuge in my intentions. I absolve myself from so much by pleading that my motives were pure. And yes, man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. He wants our intentions to be the best, He wants our actions to be motivated by love. Having our hearts oriented in the right direction is always the first step.

But what about when our actions aren't taken the way that our hearts meant them? 

My gut feeling is that Jesus would agree with this principle, this idea of impact trumping intent. It messed me up when I read the passage about meat sacrificed to idols more closely. Paul writes, "For if someone with a weak conscience sees you eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? . . . When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ." As a lover of liberty, it offended me to be instructed to restrict my own freedom to protect the (erroneous!) convictions of another, but in the very next chapter Paul goes on to talk about unity in the body, describing how we are responsible for building our brothers and sisters up. 

If I use my freedom without consideration for what it will cause my brothers and sisters to do, I'm sinning. I'm valuing truth over love. I'm putting intentions over impact.

I feel pretty free: to listen to top 40 music, to wear skirts that fall above my fingers hanging at my sides, to drink beer, to disregard both Calvinism and Arminianism, to use colorful language, to speak in church unconscious of my gender, to vote the way I do, to shop the way I do, to eat the way I do. I assume that I have a lot of stuff wrong, and I trust that He is showing me, piece by piece, the difference between the opinions I hold in arrogance and the convictions grounded in His truth. 

My intention is not to offend the consciences of believers who fall opposite my own convictions. My intention is not to persuade them to my way of seeing things. My goal, or rather, my weak but strengthening ambition is to give grace rather than judgment, and count others as more important than myself. (Their "rightness" or "wrongness" aside.) And yet, despite my noble (though admittedly inconsistent) aspirations, I still make people feel judged. I still manage to discourage or offend with my flippant approach in areas where I feel free. In freely doing what I feel is "right," I tell others who feel my actions are "wrong" that it's okay to do things that are "wrong." Oblivious in my freedom, I am baffled (and even angry!) when my great intentions get warped into a negative impact.

To connect the dots for you, I am the frat boy making obscene jokes from the back of the classroom and feeling misunderstood when I get written up for it. I am the person all my "judge not" posts are directed at. I am seeing, little by little, just how much judgment and not grace is part of my worldview. I am the harasser who doesn't realize her behavior is making people uncomfortable. I am hiding behind the intent of my actions rather than owning their impact. I have camped on the side of true, not love, but it's funny, because truth needs no warriors, and love is really short on ambassadors. 

It's a really scary thing, to take on responsibility for how another person perceives the things you say or do. But that's the beauty of grace, isn't it? This heavy responsibility rests on the cross, and not on our shoulders. We can't bear the weight of how our sins and wrongs impact other people, but this is grace, to be responsible but not culpable, to be freed and forgiven so that we may be part of the gospel of reconciliation. There's no one better than Jesus. 

(Caveat: in sexual harassment training, the bright line is the reasonable person standard, and I think that can be adopted with respect to believers, too. Some things are just silly. And carrying guilt for things you are not responsible for can be incredibly damaging. That's a topic unto its own.)

Confessions of a wuss

It has long been a fatal flaw of mine how easily downtrodden I am by failure, or the simple disappointments of living. I don't have a lot of what the psychologists call resilience. I think maybe neuroticism runs in the genes. And lately, more than ever, I can't shake (transcend?) this self-assessment. That teenaged angst is back. And today especially, I feel like a basket case. For whatever reason, today I am overcome by dread, by fear, by defeatism. When I came home I crawled into bed and let the tears I've been holding back all day just sneak out of the corners of my eyes. Today I'm longing for wholeness but feeling so decidedly crooked. I feel as though I can see the tunnel looming ahead. I feel the warning, to hunker down, to take cover, to anchor myself, like a rheumatism lending those first aches before the rain comes. (And, I mean, that's the kind of thinking I keep freaking myself out with.) 

But the dull defeat of today unwittingly gave me a wish list, or maybe more appropriately, two fervent requests, things that I want so very much, with new realness and sincerity. 

The first? Gimme grace. Though I feel like a pansy for being overwhelmed in a life that is just so great right now, the reality is that I am overwhelmed. I'm going through a lot of change, and change is stressful, and there's grace for experiencing that. I'm back from a year in a new culture that changed something inside me. I'm starting a new job and a new school in a beloved but still mostly new city. I'm carving out a new routine and looking for new housing. Is it all great? Yes, I cannot suffer you with a complaint, it is all such a huge privilege. It's not that I'm justified in feeling stressed and overwhelmed. But I do feel that way. Does that make me a wuss, okay, maybe, totally. But so what? I'm a wuss. I am. It's okay. There's grace for that.

Which brings me to the more significant point: gimme Jesus. Though my pride howls, my regenerated heart rejoices in the steady revealing of my weakness. Because I am reminded, oh precious and painful reminder, that I need Jesus. I need Him. I want Him. I want Him so much more than when I feel whole and capable and together. In my wussiness I frantically root around for someone to bail me out, and who is there but Jesus? And oh fickle heart, what joy I have to know that wanting, that panicked and desperate desire for the only One who loves me so unwaveringly. The storm that rumbled around me today crept into every moment, and so in every moment there also was my life-line: Jesus, You are near, thank You for being near.

Lying in bed with the tears leaking out sucks, honestly. I don't like being a wuss, I don't like being neurotic, I don't being so easily buffeted but things that are so insignificant compared to real suffering. I don't like this frailty. I don't like this grim anticipation of a stormy season. But as real as this angst and stress is, so is the trust that it cannot overcome me. I need not fear. For when I am my own worst enemy, His faithfulness will not cease. 

Trouble is always on the horizon, if we're not already in the thick of it. Maybe I'm cynical, or maybe it's true. But, dare I bless the trouble? Dare I thank Him for the angst that has me clinging to Him? As Keith Green sings, "Up comes the strongest wind that He sends to blow me back into his arms again." And so there is peace in the calm before the storm, not that the angst won't ache and not that the darkness won't be difficult, but in the promise that my weakness doesn't change the fact that He loves me and He fights for me and He will never ever leave me.

Gimme more of that Jesus. 

Poetry and blogging are totally different though

Hello blog. Why am I still here? For years I've blogged with consistency about nothing in particular, and for what? I don't think of this blog as a creative outlet; I think of it more like therapy, catharsis, my way of pursuing humility in community, as weird as that sounds. But this still reveals the reality that much of what I post here, in a public forum, is deeply personal. And in this respect it is similar to art: personal expression shared with the masses.

I've been thinking about this because of brief snatches of a conversation I overheard between my sister and my friend. She was talking about her fears of sharing her music with me, familiar as she is with my excellent taste (WINK).

"Oh, don't worry," my friend encouraged her, and offered by way of comparison, "Hayley's writing is just mediocre."

And I think what he meant was not so much that I don't say much that's worth saying, but I think he described the biggest pitfall of my blogging, namely, that it's not for anyone else. My writing is self-indulgent; I am decadent in the way I gratify myself through my writing. In more blunt terms, it's selfish. I write for me. My writing is mediocre because its goal is not constructive, I just write, and for what? If I felt any pressure or motivation to write for anyone else, I probably wouldn't write. 

Sure, I hope others are edified by the clumsy way I process reality, and I hope that my struggles to understand faith are an encouragement to others, but I would be dishonest if I claimed this was the reason I blog here. 

But maybe it should be? 

I've been considering this after being spectator to an unexpected conversation inside Grolier Poetry Book Shop between my friend and the artist manning the shop. They compared notes on who they liked, who they didn't like (they disagreed on Billy Collins), and who their "gateway" poets were. During the course of the conversation Elizabeth remarked, "I like poetry that whacks me, that shows me what it is I don't see." And speaking of some poet guy (so many names, guys, I was so out of my depth) Michael said, "I find he really thinks about the reader, like his work is really user-friendly." 

And as a novice when it comes to consuming poetry, I appreciate poets who are conscious of how their art will be experienced, who don't rest on intentions but make their work accessible to the pedestrian reader, who make it clear what they want their work to do for you. And I also like art that lends me awareness, that transfers experience from the artist to the observer, one showing another what each was previously unaware of. It's edifying, and I'm such a junkie for stuff that has that kind of purpose to it.

Apparently, according to this conversation I witnessed, there is a lot of poetry like this! Isn't it wonderful that there are poets like that out there? And not all art ought to be like that; art's variety is its impetus. But I marvel at the thoughtfulness of it, perhaps because my "work" is entirely the opposite of thoughtful, and it seems to me to be a very noble way of creating art, particularly poetry, a medium so well-suited to explaining unexplainable things.

When it comes to art, I instinctively know what I like. And like I said, this blog isn't art and it isn't meant to be anything close. I'm not on that level. It would be silly to aspire to it. But cannot the same spirit be applied here? The servanthood latent in that thoughtfulness and intentionality that artists bring to their crafts, can't I apply that to my self-indulgent bit o' blog? Can I consciously curate my little place on the internet that serves and edifies others even in my own self-expression? (And shouldn't that be the goal of all my words anyway?) 

Jesus shows me new way to follow Him all the time. And He is desirous for every part of me to be devoted to Him.

FAQ on Teaching in Karaganda

How was it?

The only word that works to describe it is privilege. In the sense that, it was entirely a blessing and it was entirely undeserved. Extended exposure to a different culture gave me an appreciation of the culture that shaped me; it grew in me a patriotism I didn't know I had. The hospitality and warmth we received was baffling; with openness people welcomed us into their lives. I went to this frozen land to serve others, but abundantly I was served. It's funny how these things get turned around. 

Do you speak the language?

Usually I respond, "Я не могу говорить по-русски, потому что я была плохо учился." We took Russian lessons once a week, and . . . yeah. Everyone did their part to help us practice, from strangers at the bus stop to students outside of class, but at the end of the day it was my job to speak English, so, that's what I spoke. So I'm still a beginning in Russian, but I can say a reasonable number of things. And I know some basic phrases in Kazakh. I'm planning to continue studying Russian in the fall.

What was the food like?

Kazakh food is all about the meat. Russian food has a lot of dill and mayonnaise. The Russian definition of salad is very different from the American one: green leafy vegetables are almost entirely absent and brings to mind 1960's cold potluck dishes. GMOs are a hot topic in Kazakhstan, and I think that explains the cabbages bigger than my head and carrots as thick as my arm. It was also great to live in a place where very little of the food was industrialized and for the most part was farm-to-table. I came to really love the cuisine, and now I definitely eat sausage more than I ever did before. I learned how to make lipioshka, plov, and borcht, all really tasty. I'm also an even bigger fan of some more atypical proteins like duck, rabbit, mutton, horse, and dog.

What was the culture like?

The wonderfully reassuring thing about crossing cultures is that people are people, anywhere you go. You will always have basic humanity in common with others. And because I lived in a city and worked with people who had a lot of exposure to foreigners, the cultural divide did not loom as wide as it could have. I noticed mostly little things: the habit of greeting others when entering and leaving a room, the social acceptance of snot rockets, the phenomenon of Russian lines, the scapegoating of exposure to cold temperatures for illness, Kazakh courtesy and hospitality, and grocery store etiquette. Most of all I loved the emphasis and priority placed on community and relationships, on knowing people deeply and growing together through time.

Do you miss it?

At first, no. Not at all. Sure, my heart flip-flopped when I thought of the dear souls I might never see again, and I sighed a little when I watched my students' lives on social media, but I was too contented with being home to possibly want to go back. Now that I've settled back into life in the USA, and am confronting scary things like law school and moving out and The Future, I want to be back in Karaganda so bad. I miss being able to take public transportation everywhere, or grab a cheap taxi where the buses didn't go. I miss discovering new cafes and marveling at a developing country exerting its economy. I miss eavesdropping on conversations around me and rejoicing when I understood snatched phrases. And I miss teaching, a lot, the preparing of lessons and watching my students relish their linguistic acrobatics.

How have you changed?

This is the hardest question for me to answer. I ask it shyly of my family and they don't know how to answer it either. The shift is subtle, and difficult to describe. I was shown in new depths many of my weaknesses over the year, and in cowardice I avoided confronting them. That has changed my soul somehow, but in ways that have yet to finish playing out. I gained some bad habits, sure, and picked up some new recipes, but more substantially, I think I've become more comfortable with uncomfortable social situations. This is the result of exposure therapy: when you're a foreigner your life is one long uncomfortable social situation, and so I've acclimated to it.

What did you learn?

Reflecting on the past year always leaves me wanting to impress upon anyone who will listen this exhortation: just go. I am the opposite of an extraordinary person. I am not brave. I am not wise. I was not the ideal person for this job. I am completely and entirely average. And yet . . . I had an amazing year. I had the opportunity to be a cultural ambassador, to teach eager students a useful skill, to speak the truth about Jesus to people who had never known a follower of His. Just go. These privileges did not come to me because I deserved them, but because in His grace He freely gave them to me. If I learned anything this past year is that His grace never runs out. He gives it so abundantly you can never reach the end of it. And you can't encounter that grace and walk away unchanged. 

Suitcase Mood

I was talking with a friend at our language center graduation after-outing (context, man) and he asked the question our students seem so curious about, “So what do you do now that classes are over?” Great question. Dolefully I explained to him the slow death the week is shaping up to be, how I had already done a casual preliminary cleaning and had begun taking decorations down around the flat, and how unpleasant it was to be caught between going and not being home yet.

“Ah,” he says, “Yes, we have a word for this in Russian, suitcase mood.”

“Huh?” I was intrigued.

“Yes, чемоданое настроение. Your feelings when you are preparing to leave.”

“Yup,” I affirmed, “It’s exactly that.”

All these months I have clung to the assumption that these last two weeks would fly by. Full of tying up loose ends, cleaning the flat for the new team, visiting our favorite places for the last time, packing, shopping, saying good-bye to our friends. We are indeed doing all of those things, and yet, time seems to be dragging by slower than it ever has before. And this in-between-y-ness sucks so much.

We’ve been doing some mental preparation for going back. Bet and I listen to Top 40 music when we do the dishes, we’ve been reading American news. We are practicing talking about our experience here, we are guarding against attitudes of comparison and criticism. We’re doing our re-entry homework even though our organization doesn’t exist anymore and nobody’s making us! And while all of this prep is probably wise and a good use of time, it doesn’t help me now. 

I was overcome with a wave of jealousy when Skyping with some of our friends from here who have arrived in the USA for the summer. They showed a quick view of the ocean (the ocean!) and told about drinking black coffee at McDonald’s. (They didn’t know cream and sugar were on the condiments table, and I feel their pain so much!) I’m so happy that my friends whose culture I experienced all year are now experiencing my culture; it’s cool and it’s awesome and it’s really interesting! But I am so jealous that they are in my country and I’m still here.

But I have these moments. When I step into the shower, when I sit in our reading nook, when I wait at the Tourist bus stop, when I climb the steps in our apartment building. This life has become normal, and in a few days it’s going to stop. It’s going to be a memory. A weird memory of that time life in a different place became normal. I try to remember the former normal, my routines back home. How it felt to step into the shower there, how it felt to walk up the stairs in my house, what Providence Place Mall is like, what walking in the woods behind our house is like. It too is a memory, because even home will not be just the same as when I left it. 

So I have the same problem I always have. Different context, same heart issue. The ache of change. 

I like having a word for it now, though. All week, the answer to the question “How are you?” or “What’s new?” has been the same: “Suitcase mood.” And maybe the all the details and complexities of that mood are difficult to understand, but one thing is understood: leaving is a process, and that process is hard. 

And that’s okay.

"Giving isn't easy, but neither is the rain"

It's been a dreary past few days here in Karaganda. And between wishing I was on vacation with my family in Colorado, and ending my work at the public school I taught at four times week, my mood has borne an uncanny resemblance to the cloudy sky and the drizzly atmosphere. I have been cold and damp almost all week, both emotionally and, you know, literally. 

After a day of struggling through a lesson and struggling through a bank transaction and struggling through a wet walk to the language center, in mix of my pity party I made an "at least" list. You know: at least I had remembered to wear socks, at least I was able to get past the language barrier at the bank, at least got to sit on the bus instead of stand, at least I had a fun lesson planned for my adult students, at least the lilacs had bloomed and were smelling great, at least, at least, at least. 

As I walked I looked up at the sky. It's become a habit, because the sky is usually so beautiful here. Due to obscene amounts of pollution, the sunsets are a ridiculous technicolor display. And during the daytime usually all you can see is a deep, soft, cloud-less blue. But because of all this rain, when I looked up instead I saw blue-gray wall of clouds shielding any sunlight from view. The sky was a curious violet color and the texture of the clouds reminded me of a computer art program I had as a kid, how you could paint the sky in thick, puffy strokes. 

I thought to myself, "Hm, the sky is actually quite beautiful like that." Unbidden, the thought popped into my head from Elsewhere, "I think so, too." 

It reminds me of my favorite Switchfoot song, "Rain, another rainy day / Comes up from the ocean / Give herself away / She comes down easy / On rich and debt the same / And she gives herself away."

I want to pity myself. I want to wrap myself in my hoodie and sweatpants and watch Friends under the covers until I'm warm and toasty and feel medicated enough that I can finish this painful process of saying good-bye (for now?) to this city I love so much. I want license to withdraw, glum and moody, into the comforts of my two favorite vices: chocolate and television. 

But that's dumb. That's so dumb. Why? 

Because good things don't just happen. 

And yet, somehow, good things happen to me every day. 

It's no crime to be sad. It's normal. Maybe even good. Of course I should miss my family, and grieve leaving Karaganda, and repent of the stupid selfish decisions I indulge each day. And I ought to hurt for a world that is full of broken systems, and broken relationships, and broken people. But in the darkness a light shines. In the steady drip of unrelenting rain, there is still beauty. Grace still waters this broken place. Grace, those undeserved good things that happen every day. Grace, the hope that overpowers cynicism. Grace, the source of the joy that wipes out my self-pity and my lethargy. We don't deserve it, but it comes down everywhere and always. 

Grace like rain. 

The Posture of a Seeker

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

I've believed that for a long time, but I'm coming into a fresher understanding of it.

In his book Speaking of Jesus, Carl Medeiras shares the testimony of a friend who worked in a tree-planting camp, and how this friend started a group that read the Gospels and talked about Jesus. In essence, a Bible study, but it wasn't called that for semantic reasons. The thesis of his whole book is something like, evangelism is a lot more about loving Jesus, following Jesus, and speaking of Jesus than it is about sharing proofs, doctrine, and a defense of church history. He warns against the danger of leaving Jesus out of the gospel.

I really love Jesus, but I also love ideas, and so I am more often than not more entranced by trying to think about things the right way than I am focused on following a Person who is the Truth, period.

I've been thinking about the disciples.

Peter and Andrew are on the beach, and He says to them, "Follow me."

I take it for granted that Jesus is Jesus, and there was some strange look in His eye or manner about Him that somehow persuaded Peter and Andrew to be crazy and follow Him, but I think it's noteworthy that they didn't get some length theological explanation. Jesus didn't sit with them and lay out His whole plan. There was no, "So, hi, I'm the Son of God, I'm going to die for your sins because I love you, and I'm going to rise again, and if you trust in Me I'll spend eternity with you." Boom, gospel in a sentence, but no, there was none of that. Just, "Follow me."

And they were like, "Sure. Okay. If you say so." Presumably because they saw the power in Him.

Along the way the disciples are always asking questions. And I love this. They are always asking the same questions I'm asking. And sometimes Jesus is like, "C'mon guys, you don't get it?!" I love that the disciples don't understand. I love that Jesus explains stuff to them. And I love that there's still so much He keeps from them. They don't even realize that He's the Son of God until the middle of Matthew. Apologetics emphasizes that that's a pretty important theological point. Jesus has to be God. It's the only way all this atonement stuff adds up. But Jesus doesn't lead with this information. Why?

I'm discovering how much I want my relationship with Jesus to have the posture of a seeker. As in, that Christianese word we use to describe someone who is interested in Jesus and wants to know more. Seekers don't take doctrine for granted. Seekers don't do things because it's the "Christian" thing to do. Seekers are concerned with getting to know Jesus. Maybe because they think He's freaking weird but maybe also because there's just some strange look in His eye or a manner about Him. They don't care about the religion crap or Christianity's baggage, because they are compelled by a Person and they want to know if He's legit.

There's that Misty Edwards song, "I don't wanna talk about You like You're not in the room," and I'm beginning to understand now what she means. I don't believe in Jesus because it makes sense to believe in Him. I believe in Jesus because He has made Himself real to me. And I don't want be a person who calls herself a "Christian" just like she calls herself "libertarian" or "introverted" or "melancholy." Jesus is not another idea that defines me. Ideas are important. But He is more than an idea. He is more than a definition. He is a Person I am seeking, following, and unlike an idea that is a daily equilibrium, I want more and more and more of Him each day.

How to make lipioshka

I finally did it! After weeks of internet searching, polling the locals, and one failed attempt, I finally successfully made lipioshka! I must've asked every single one of my students the same question, "How do you make lipioshka?" and they all gave the same abstract answer, "My mom knows!" My Russian language teacher, Katya (who is married to Kazakh and a bomb-diggety cook), finally put me out of my misery when she shared with me her method for lipioshka which took some of the guesswork out of the ingredient proportions. (Ask Bethany about that failed first attempt; salty!)

Lipioshka is a round, unleavened Central Asian bread. The kind described below is, I think, a little bit different than Uzbek lipioshka: it's not prepared in a tandr, the center is not thicker than the edges, there's no design in the middle, and it's fluffy, not dense. Maybe this is a Russified version of lipioshka? Nevertheless, it is the kind sold at the magazine next to our language center, the kind my students brought me on Kurban-ait and Easter, and is second only to baursaki in my heart. I'm so excited that I'll be able to recreate this favorite even when I'm back state-side.

You will need . . . !

500g kefir*

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

As much flour as it takes (a little more than 4 cups)

Some amount of cooking oil (I used sunflower)

Then you should . . . !

Empty your kefir into a mixing bowl. Add the salt and the baking soda. Begin mixing in the flour, and continue adding flour until a dough forms. Then let it sit for a half hour or so.

When you come back to it, split the dough into five parts. (Or more, if you'd like, but probably not less.) Roll each segment out on a floured surface into a circle, a little smaller than the diameter of your pan. It shouldn't be so thick.

In your pan, heat the oil on medium-low. When the oil is hot, add one of your discs of dough. Cook around five minutes each side. You'll notice as it cooks it'll puff up; if it doesn't do this then it's possible the dough was too thick. If you don't want to deep fry the lipioshka, you need only a little bit of oil.

*A note about the kefir: Katya, who is well-versed in assisting foreigners with finding specific food products, told me to buy the small green carton. I chose one at random and it worked like a charm, but I'm not sure about a conduit for this kind state-side, as it appeared much thicker than I kind I usually see back home in New England. On the carton it specifies 2.5%, which I think is referring to the fat content. So if possible, opt for kefir that's just a touch runnier than yogurt. 

I doubt I'll be able to master piroshki or pelmeni or manti before I leave (to be frank, stuffed breads and pasta sound like too much work), but I can content myself with the simplicity and the memories this bread conjures up.