My 2024 Favorites

(and the sun came out today!)

After weeks of snow and frigid cold, Goshen hit a sunny 39 degrees today and we are all walking around like giddy, coatless fools. Arctic air returns on Sunday start of the week could be cold enough for schools to close. But for now, the light has returned and we congregate in its (relative) warmth. Counterweights, baby!

This week month has felt a bit liminal, not in the cool, spiritual sense, but more like the “frozen in time” way. I can’t really account for yet another week. I holed up for several days to work on a project, falling back into my old ways of consuming luxury citrus and talking to no one. When I sent a voice note to Emily yesterday at 11 a.m., my voice cracked like I’d just been jarred awake.

Sometimes I worry about my capacity for being silent and alone. It feels almost perilous. But also, delicious. To wind down from machine-mode in the evenings, I splurged on gigantic, insane Whole Foods salads that cost the equivalent of 3.3 Taco Bell Five Buck boxes.

Current salad ethos: a scoop of hummus makes it feel like a main course, balsamic forever, heavy on the feta.

I’m sure you didn’t need me to tell you this, but I also enjoyed several luxury La Fermiere yogurts like I’m the Duchess of Sussex or MacKenzie Scott. I tried the Jasmine flavor for the first time. It was good, but Orange Blossom + Honey is exceptional.

I also, obviously, spent some wind-down time with my nose in various books. This line from Liz Charlotte Grant’s new release, Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis after Losing Faith in the Bible (page xiv - she wastes no time!) helped put my jumbled feelings into order. “I trusted the people who trusted the book.” For years I’ve struggled to make sense of how someone like me, who still loves Jesus and tries to orient myself around his Way, came to almost avoid the very Bible I’ve kept close at hand my entire life. I have lost faith in some of the people and institutions that taught me to trust the Bible as inerrant and above questioning. There’s a sense I couldn’t articulate fully until now - that if they were wrong about certain things, what if they’re also wrong about the foundations to which they nailed the floorboards of my life? For a kid encouraged to suppress doubt, it’s a scary thought.

Spoiler alert: I’ve found myself gravitating back towards the Bible lately. More to come on this. (Does this scare you? Excite you? Tell me everything.)

providing this image from yesterday to provide visual contrast to the! sun! shining! today!

I met a new friend for coffee this afternoon. She’s a Black woman, and we talked about, among many other things, how racial identity shapes our daily experiences whether we want it to or not. We also chatted about how we feel heading into Monday, with Trump’s inauguration falling on the same day as Martin Luther King Jr. day like pure dystopian fiction. It looms like a specter of my worst fears, one of which - maybe the least of which - is the genuine fear that nothing bad will happen and I will be proven to be the drama-queen I’m seen as by some. Please hear me, I desperately do not want more harm to fall on vulnerable people. I am not wishing for chaos or the fracturing of democracy. I also (selfishly?) don’t want to look like a fool. sigh. Life is intensely complicated. However you’re feeling, I hope you care for yourself in meaningful ways. Listen to your body. Regardless of what happens in the years to come, we will still be here together. I find that so comforting.

Next topic!

Because of the disarray of the past month, I’m still knee-deep in the typical New Year’s life exercises. I jotted this list of some of my 2024 favorites. A sunny January Friday feels like the right time to share.

Shannan’s 2024 Faves