Dust-Swept Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

Greta Thunberg is on week 130 of her school strike. The U.S. has left and rejoined the Paris Agreement. In locked down cities, skies have temporarily cleared, but single use plastic bags and masks are unavoidable as ever. And despite calls for action from individuals, corporations, and governments renewed with the new year, we continue hurdling toward a non-hyperbolic climate apocalypse. A teacher at my school asked me recently why the U.S. could not as a bare minimum maintain a uniform stance on renewable energies between presidencies, and I struggled to explain how American politics is more about the manipulation of reality than the already insidious manipulation of rhetoric.

One frustrating aspect of this climate discourse is that the anti-climate-action side has positioned itself as human and caring (for example, by bringing up the plights of increasingly unemployed coal miners), while those who advocate for climate action often bring up the colder scientific evidence (melting ice caps? the global average temperature rising by a couple degrees? the disappearing ozone layer?) that is so impossible to visualize on an individual, day-to-day scale that we default to obliviousness, even when we consciously know the facts.

Imagining the earth as a whole, however, is not a new exercise for humanity, and nowhere is it more firmly entrenched than in religion. This week, I read the chapter “Eco-Espiritualidade: Sentir, Amar, e Pensar como Terra” from Leonardo Boff’s 1995 book Ecologia: Grito da Terra, Grito dos Pobres. Phillip Berryman, who like Boff is a liberation theologist, translated this book in 1997 for Orbis Books. It is evident from Boff’s passion about climate action that the possibility of disaster already seemed imminent over fifteen years ago.

Although Boff is a Catholic theologian, he does not only appeal to the Christian bible. In fact, he cites numerous different belief systems and not only does not rebuke them as shallow or heretical but actually embraces them as valid approaches to spirituality, and his proposed relationship between humans and the earth is broad and not based in any one religion or denomination. In his comparison of the universe to a harmonious dance, he writes, “A dança de Shiva Nataraja do hinduísmo quer representar o mistério do universo que é uma dança entre criação, preservação, destruição, descanso e redenção. […] A dança articula as duas mãos e os dois elementos que conferem movimento e harmonia ao cosmos e o círculo de vida e morte que marca todos os processos” (301). (The dance of Shiva Nataraja in Hinduism seeks to represent the mystery of the universe, which is a dance among creation, preservation, destruction, rest, and redemption. […] The dance connects the two hands; that is, the two elements that give the cosmos movement and harmony and the circle of life and death that marks all processes [198].) He also cites Taoism (“‘Seja um com o todo”, repete sem cessar a tradição taoísta’” [302]) and in this chapter refers twice to Gaia, a Greek goddess.

Boff implies that Catholicism is only one avenue to imagine the true nature of the universe. He writes: “Os cristãos usamos a categoria Reino de Deus, tema central da pregação de Jesus, para simbolizarmos a realização processual do projeto de Deus sobre toda a criação. Ele já está aí, mas ainda não totalmente implementado. Ele se realiza em nós e para além de nós. Todos participamos em sua construção como Jesus se sentia participante: ‘Meu Pai continua a trabalhar ainda hoje e eu trabalho também’ (Jo 5, 17). Vivenciar que toda nossa atividade, desde limpar a casa, produzir na fábrica e cuidar da educação dos filhos, é ajudar na fermentação do Reino e sentir-se um operador dele. ‘Varredor que varres as ruas, tu varres o Reino de Deus’, dizia um místico poeta.” (303). (We Christians use the category of the Reign of God, a central theme in Jesus’ preaching, to symbolize the gradual realization of God’s project for all creation. It is already there, but not yet fully implemented. It is being achieved in us and beyond us. We all share in building it, as did Jesus: ‘My Father is at work until now, and I am at work’ [Jn 5:17]. It means experiencing that all our activity—from cleaning house, to factory work, to caring for our children’s education—is to aid in the leavening of the Reign and feeling that each of us is involved in bringing it about. ‘Street sweeper out sweeping the street, you are sweeping the Reign of God,’ said a poetic mystic” [199].) The translation here is a little rough, as “cleaning house” and “caring for our children’s education” and “feeling that each of us is involved in bringing it about” have a stilted quality that is not present in the original, which might be better represented as “cleaning the house,” “educating our children,” and “know ourselves as its workers.” The bible quote is also slightly obscured, as “until now” (“even now” would be more correct) for “ainda hoje” is similar to the mistake that my students make with “hasta ahora,” which would most often mean “so far” and not the overly emphatic “until now;” NIV John 5:17 confirms this: “In his defense Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.’” Nevertheless, the gist of Boff’s message still does come through in Berryman’s translation, and it is that we need a sense of communal responsibility, of individual contributions making a tangible effect on something as grand as God’s plan for the whole world, a type of responsibility so inclusive that it cannot be limited to those who study the Christian gospel. He does not even find it necessary to identify the “místico poeta” as Dom Marcos Barbosa, a Benedictine monk, as his words stand out more than his affiliation. The reference to street sweepers also reminded me of another, content-wise quite unrelated quote by MLK: “If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures. Sweep streets like Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. And sweet streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of Heaven and Earth will have to pause and say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well’” (The Radical King 67).

So Boff’s solution to the climate crisis seems to be to envision God’s kingdom and the natural world as one and as intra-connected. He writes that “Mais que uma ética, um rito ou um corpo de doutrinas, a religião supõe uma atitude pela qual o ser humano re-liga todas as esferas do real, o consciente con inconsciente, o masculino com o feminino, a sociedade com o indivíduo, Deus com o mundo. Disso se deriva uma vivência de totalidade que não é a soma das experiências humanas, mas uma realidade originária, dinâmica, holística e de grande poder de convencimento. […] Não é pensar sobre Deus, mas falar a Deus. Na espiritualidade se tem a ver menos com idéias religiosas do que com convicções, menos com a razão teológica do que com emoções da verdadeira ‘pietas’” (294). (More than an ethics, a ritual, or a body of doctrines, religion means a stance whereby human beings connect all realms of reality, the conscious with the unconscious, the male with the female, society with the individual, God with the world. Out of religion flows an experience of wholeness that is not the sum of human experiences but something original, dynamic, holistic, and the source of deep conviction. […] It is not thinking about God but speaking to God. Spirituality is less about religious ideas than convictions, and less about theological reasoning than the emotions of true ‘pietas’ [193].) In a break with a form of casual Catholicism in which the most important events are ritualistic and passive (Mass, baptism, confirmation, etc.), Boff advocates for an active religious experience that includes climate activism.

Through the trinity of holidays that are happening this week (Lunar New Year [the Chinese Spring Festival], Valentine’s Day, Carnaval [Antroido]), and because of my discovery that powdered sugar is sold here in little shaker bottles, I decided to make some desserts to share with the other teachers at my school (in sealed baggies, of course, and no in-person snacking occurred). And wouldn’t you know, the cocoa powder and powdered sugar even give a nod to the idea of sweeping (the reign of God). These little cookies are super dense and soft and fudgy and a far cry from the macaron recipe they were adapted from.

Dust-Swept Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

Ingredients:

• 2 cups dry chickpeas
• 2/3 cups cane sugar
• 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
• 3/4 cups cocoa powder
• 2 cups almond flour
• 1 1/2 cups ap flour
• half bar of dark baking chocolate
• 3/4 cups coconut milk

Directions:

1. Soak chickpeas for 6 hours.
2. Add chickpeas and 6 cups water to a pot and simmer for 2 1/2 hours, adding 3 to 4 more cups of water along the way to keep chickpeas covered.
3. Drain chickpea liquid into a container and refrigerate. Use chickpeas in another dish.
4. Preheat oven to 130 C.
5. Beat cold chickpea liquid by hand for as long as your arm(s) will allow. I lasted 50 minutes. It should be light, white, and foamy, but still very much liquid, momentarily holding lines that you draw through it.
6. Add in both sugars, cocoa powder, almond flour, and ap flour. Fold gently until just incorporated.
7. Spoon cookie dough onto a lined sheet. Bake for 30 minutes, and allow to cool.
8. In a double boiler, melt the dark chocolate (I used 80%) and whisk in coconut milk. Remove from heat.
9. Spoon a generous portion of filling onto the underside of a cooled cookie and place a similarly sized cookie on top. Sprinkle generously with powdered sugar.
10. Refrigerate to best keep them, but I didn’t have room in my refrigerator so it’s been out on the kitchen table for a couple days and are still doing fine, so you do you.

Makes 20 sandwich cookies.