Slow-Cooker Psalms

a devotional for autumn

CORRECTION: Advent Begins on December 3rd, This Year!

If you’re looking for a poetic, daily journey through Advent—steeped in both biblical truth and a passionate love for the natural world—I invite you to explore my devotional, Pilgrim God, now available on Amazon!

This daily Advent companion is $2.99 to purchase outright as an ebook, or Kindle Unlimited users can download and read for free.

I hope it blesses your Advent season!

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in the morning
the magic of the night before
is present, still
in the air—

yawning,
lungs filling with scent,
I stir the broth
while waiting for the kettle to boil

and consider how long it takes
for a good thing
to alchemize;

that Creation itself 
was handcrafted 
over time;

(stewed, slow-cooked)

that nothing healthful
or lovely
or good

is created
in an instant.

It’s bone-broth season. Soup-pot season. The hymn-of-the-whistling-kettle season. The rains move in and the darkness falls like a curtain, and our homes fill with scent, savory and calling the sweetness of Heaven to mind.

I have written before about the crockpot censer, the holiness of food as fragrance. As I meditate over the first batch of bone broth for this year, brooding like the Spirit over the face of the waters, I bring my words—slow-cooker psalms, echoes from the past—forward into today:

(The following is from this meditation, from last October.)

In some cultures, in some faiths, scent is used to create a sacred, holy space.

Golden censers swung from side to side, pendulous, down to the altar. White sage burned by some of the Indigenous people of this land. Sticks of incense sending lines of smoke rising in eastern temples.

The right scent, a great cloud of unknowing, can fill the space so full of holiness that no evil may enter. We think of smoke and mist as obscuring, but in these spaces, sacred scented smoke purifies. It clears away the wrong and sets the table for the righteous. It cleanses, it cleans, it resets. Scent can be holy, in the right setting. Scent can lift us to Heaven on its shoulders. Scent can invite the Divine.

But I have no ornate censers, and I save the white sage for those who understand its true spiritual value, and incense sticks make my nose itch.

Instead, I have a crockpot.

Within, it holds the bones and skin of a chicken, or a turkey, or sometimes a duck or a wild rabbit. Boiled for one whole day and night with herbs and a dash of vinegar it fills the house with the scent of goodness, of nourishment.

A great cloud of unknowing, the fragrance of home.

And in the morning, those bones have transformed, collapsed. They become soft. They give up their secrets to the broth. The herbs have vanished into tiny flecks. The fat rises like clouds, like mist atop the sea.

For days, the holy scent of broth and bone lingers, pleasant and rich. Long after the liquid has been strained, the solids returned to the earth or crushed into the dog’s bowl for a seasonal treat. Long after the broth has been jarred, labeled, and frozen for the cold days, the harsh days.

The scent lingers. It cleanses. It cleans. It resets. It reminds us of the goodness of home, the softness of bone when it releases its secrets.

Later, we will thaw the broth and its scent will fill the house once more, alchemized into nourishment, bone to bone and skin to skin, keeping us filled and whole until the spring returns.

This great cloud of unknowing, clarity and mystery married in scent, is holy. This crockpot censer clears the path, removes the wrong, and sets the table for righteousness.

Soup and Spirit, smoke and soul.

Our home, a tiny cathedral.

Discussion Question

What scents of the season evoke holiness, for you? Aside from scent, what other ways do you feel that God appeals to your senses to slow you down, bring you close, remind you of things you might otherwise forget?

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