The Universe smiling benevolently on me, which has the flavor of delight? Or pure, unadulterated coincidence, which also has the flavor of delight? You decide.

I decided to try carmelizing onions for the second time ever.

I read up on how to.

I got out the cast iron pan, having learned that non-stick does not have the proper effect.

I discovered we were out of butter (because my beloved made blueberry scones yesterday, a recipe that requires grated frozen butter and, apparently, all the butter in the house ~ listen, friend, I am not complaining, those scones are tasty: also the flavor of delight).

I decided to do this thing which required of me to not do what I too often do: put something on the stove, then forget about it, tending to the next thing on my to-do list, which leads a pungent insistence requiring my urgent tending to the ruin on the stovetop.

I decided on this particular activity

• because on other days, due to the capitalist grind (and also because of the deep purposeful call of ministry), I do not have the time for such a decadent venture.
• because I thought it would please the senses in the doing and in the being done.
• because on my one day off, it’s my turn to make dinner and I was already grooving for cooking (even though these onions will top tomorrow’s impossible burgers that my beloved will make because Tuesday is his night to make dinner).
• because I thought it would slow down time when my tendency is to efficiency complete as many tasks as I can in the time given which speeds up time. Or consumes time. Or consumes me.

These carmelized onions ~ these very ones ~ have seemingly conjured the book chapter I turned to all hour-long (that is how long it takes to carmelize onions), sitting in the room next to the kitchen, listening to the crackling on the stove, smelling the onion-y aroma reach the cozy chair where I planted myself.

The chapter I had been reading, having read earlier in the day about the author’s father dying, and then about the author’s abundant fancy for seeds (which is really about our mutual need for each other), is about time – the short and long of it, the clock and the hang of it, the longing to remove ourselves from the excruciating, profit-driven tempo of time… back to the body-directed, body-founded, body-born rhythm of time that gentles us in relationship to one another and this miraculous planet.

Which is what I think just happened in this hour of cooking down sugars in a fruit that makes me cry when I sharp~cut it, and now lets me savor a different nature, also its true essence, when tended to the just~right slow~heat of no~hurry.