i’m loving: sensual reading, ramped-up comfort food, loving the unlikeable, and, well, Oprah actually

Here are just a few of my favourite things right now–sharing with Libre Living readers because they might become faves of yours, too, if they’re not already.

1. The Gift: Poems by Hafiz
When I read these poems I get flashbacks of devouring them like cake last summer, lying on my back beneath a startling blue sky on a dock over the Pacific ocean.

“You need to become a pen
In the Sun’s hand.

We need for the earth to sing
Through our pores and eyes.

The body will again become restless
Until your soul paints all its beauty
Upon the sky.”

2. Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living by Pema Chodron

“When we work with pain by leaning into it and with pleasure by giving it away, it doesn’t mean that we “grin and bear it.” This approach is a lot more playful than that–like dancing with it. We realize that this separateness that we feel is a funny kind of mistake.”

3. Rebar: Modern Food Cookbook
From the famed Victoria, BC resto known for veggie-friendly fare, mostly organic and locally-sourced–and the best chocolate cake you’ll ever order–comes a cook book you’ll never regret. I just made the roasted vegetable struedel, and am in love with the Greek red lentil soup.

4. Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
The cover is boring. The book is anything but. As my beautiful friend Sara Mullin put it, “Tom Robbins is a fantastic story-teller. He writes amazing story lines–and he knows what we know.” i.e. He’s tuned into the reality that this is not the whole reality.

5. O magazineNot even a guilty pleasure, when I settle in for a good O mag sesh “what I know for sure” is I just feel plain ol’ good about myself. What other magazine can boast that? Plus, O Mag has the highest percentage of spiritual content of all mainstream women’s lifestyle mags.