To Save What Remains

   Who can live without conflict in his soul? Only the saint, the righteous man made perfect, and the purely evil. All have sinned, even if we know better. Some have been washed and redeemed. But everyone who is honest admits he still does things he knows are wrong, though he agrees with the law. Heaven contains “the souls of righteous men made perfect.” Such souls must think only what is right and good. There is no conflict in them. On the other end of the scale, though, would be the demonically evil. No conflict in them either.

     Cormac McCarthy got me thinking this with his book No Country for Old Men. There’s a movie too. A young westerner out hunting finds the remains of a drug deal turned massacre. The money left behind looks like a rainbow pot of gold to him, and he takes it. It isn’t long before he realizes he’s being tracked down. Running to Mexico won’t save him.

     The assassin who’s tracking him, “Sugar,” is pure, consistent and unconflicted. The imaginings of his heart are only evil continually. (See Genesis 6.) He intends to kill the “thief,” and if that means murdering his relatives one by one, it’s no problem to him. His incidental victims say to him, “You don’t have to do this.” Oh, but he does, he tells them. He has decided to kill them, and he will not change his mind. Consistent.

     The sheriff means to do his duty against this evil agent, but he struggles and doubts and laments. He knows the dike is broken; the dark sea is rolling over the country he once felt at home in and changing it. He traces the breech back to the loss of manners in the young: no more “sir” and “ma’am,” no more respect. Manners and murder? Yes. The law of God is all one piece. Break one little requirement, and you have broken the whole thing.

     By God’s “common grace,” societies carve out a Netherlands in a sea of evil. Their dikes are made of law, customs, standards. They require constant maintenance. Yet some take them for granted. This level of peace and safety is the norm, isn’t it? And some hate the wall. They want to be “free.” They work to tear it down.

     In the story, Sugar enters an office and shoots a man in front of a terrified bystander. The second man asks, “Are you going to kill me too?” Sugar says, “That depends. Did you see anything?” The man answers, “No, no, I didn’t see anything.” Sugar leaves him alone. As the sheriff investigates, he is sure people have seen the killer, but none will say so. They are too afraid of this concentrated evil.

     A little crack in a big wall can cause the whole structure to fail. I think it’s our job to spot the wrong wherever it turns up and to seal the cracks right away, in our culture, in our families, in our souls. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against  principalities, against powers, against  the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand  in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”

     The sheriff knew that. He needed someone to stand with him.

Pizza at Home

     Block after block of mozzarella whirred through the food processor. Son-in-law twirled his homemade pizza dough in the air. Darling daughter smashed roasted garlic with olive oil. It was Sunday pizza night at Cafe Morrison. For weeks now, we've been serving homemade pizza to assorted friends and family. During the summer, the crowd consisted of whichever friends followed our youngest son home from church. Crates of Mountain Dew primed them to devour unnerving numbers of pizzas. With son back at college, we invited a nice young couple and their little daughter, who took a shine to our gorgeous two-year-old grandson. 

     This week it was family: husband's brother, his wife and two grown daughters, and my mother-in-law, who denies that she has Alzheimer's and took the diagnosis as an insult. She can be difficult. In they streamed and were urged to try darling daughter's invention, a warm fig compote with onion, red wine vinegar, brown sugar and balsamic served with thin wafer crackers. The verdict: "Mmmmm." Similar approval greeted my sangria. I don't make it too fancy. This contained malbec wine, not-from-concentrate orange juice, triple sec, a few lime slices with juice from the remaining lime, a touch of powdered sugar and a sprinkling of cinnamon. A better summer drink I cannot imagine, unless it's the lemonade with homemade basil syrup. Especially if you grow the basil in your own back yard. 

     So darling daughter seasoned and sauteed chunks of chicken for a barbecue pizza and added bits of bacon that I had fried. This was the first one off the pizza stone. We gave son-in-law a couple of pizza stones and a paddle for his birthday. Now we know how much better a pizza bakes on a stone: beautifully crisp on the bottom, but nicely raised and tender on top. That first pizza vanished before the next one emerged from the oven-- roasted garlic with Italian sausage. Brother-in-law's introduction to roasted garlic. Love at first munch. After the third pizza came and went, I had no room for son-in-law's splendid "garlic knots." He rolled leftover bits of dough into small circles, put roasted garlic, a cube of mozzarella and a bit of sausage in the center and twisted the dough up like a dumpling. Baked to goldenness, they are ambrosial. We ate leftovers for breakfast.

     For dessert, I offered mocha shortbread with chocolate glaze, a recipe gleaned from Southern Living a couple of years ago. It's had audiences oohing and aahing ever since. And the whole meal had us all trading jokes and stories, teasing and laughter for a couple of hours. Even difficult mother-in-law seemed at least content. Part of that was due, no doubt, to our having placed gorgeous grandson's booster chair next to her seat. 

That face-- you can't look at it and stay crabby. 

     In the movie Babette's Feast, the general tells of the chef in Paris treating a meal as a sort of love affair. It does work that way when you do the best you can with your skills and materials to give people food you think they will like. It even works with family.

It's Just Mister

     I wish Americans would stop treating elected officials like royalty and stop using titles as though they are conferred for life. I read an article recently that referred to “five living presidents.” No! We have one living president. Those who have been president at some point are now Mr. Carter, Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bush and Mr. Bush, but you’ll hear every one of them called President. When Sean Hannity interviews Newt Gingrich on the radio, he calls him “Mr. Speaker.” No, people, no. The United States got out from under King George III and established a republic. We have equal standing before the law. We have no inherited titles and no Divine Right of anything. Anyone can grow up to be president. And I do mean anyone. Ba-bump.

     The story goes that when Teddy Roosevelt attended the funeral of Edward VII in England, he was offered a fancy carriage for the procession through London. He declined. As representative of a republic, he thought he should walk. When Harry Truman and his wife left the White House, they caught the train home. Compare that to the loads of limousines that American presidents have been flying to other countries for decades. How about Pres. Obama using an enormous black bus and a 40-car motorcade to tour a few Midwestern towns? (I couldn’t help thinking of Strelnikov’s scary train in Dr. Zhivago.)

     Anyway, there’s nothing mystical, nothing divine, nothing permanent about any elected office. They say some wanted to make George Washington a king, but he declined. Good on him. Now if only our elected officials, journalists and citizens generally could remember that we have a constitution and not a hereditary nobility, I think the body politic would be a whole lot healthier.

Where's Middle C Again?

  

     A couple of weeks ago, the mix of ideas in Sunday school and sermon worked like a combination of chemicals in a beaker, boiling and glowing and producing something I’d never quite seen before. When I tried to talk about it that day, my brain tied itself in knots, but here’s an attempt to put it down on… I want to say “paper,” but you get the idea.

     Righteousness. It isn’t just good behavior and avoidance of “R” movies, and it’s certainly not the attitude of “I’m behaving so much better than you” that sometimes goes along with such strictures. Instead, explained Pastor Bill to his adult class, righteousness is a desire for complete justice and fairness in every circumstance, every exchange, every relationship.                                 

     Then he poured in a sermon on the tenth commandment, not to covet anything that belongs to your neighbor. As usual, there’s more to it than it sounds like. Keeping the commandment doesn’t start with the neighbor’s new car and your struggle not to hate him for it. It starts with being content with what God has decided to give you. ^“For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content,” says 1 Timothy 6: 7.8. The epistle goes on to tell how much trouble we can get into by lusting after money and possessions. So, instead of coveting, be content.

     Now, back to righteousness. It seems that if I am content with what I have and equally content with others having what they have, I ought to desire justice for them as well. I ought to object to any unfair treatment of my neighbor just as strongly as I object to unfair treatment of myself. More, even, if I claim to follow Christ. “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but  in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. ^ Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of  others.^”  (Philippians 2: 3, 4)

     God combines all these characteristics perfectly in His own being, like a great symphony. I listen like an ape hearing Mozart played on the savannah. He tells me, “put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:24) “In these last days,” (Hebrews 1:2) He has spoken to us in His Son, Who cared so much for us, and so little for Himself, that He sacrificed Himself to give us life. He plays the music of the spheres. I think I may be closing in on middle C.  

 

Fecundity

     

Fecundity. You could look it up, but I already did. It means reproducing, especially in abundance. It’s the only word for the asparagus beans, aka yard-long beans, growing in a couple of raised beds in my back yard. I’ve picked them fresh for several dinners, frozen a couple of pounds and given a bagful to my daughter. Now I’m harvesting the dry pods, which contain the black-eyed red beans you see on the plate. The plants are producing new fresh pods even as the older pods gradually fade and shrivel and harden. I picked both the green and brown pods in the photo at the same time.

There must be a trick to harvesting the dry beans, but I don’t know it. Sometimes the pod will split down the middle, and I can peel the halves apart so the beans drop into a dish. Other times, it just breaks, and I have to split and twist the pod at each bulge to release the bean. I feel very pioneer when I sit down to shell the beans, even though I am doing it at the Formica island in my air-conditioned kitchen. I do know how easy I have it. If my little garden were our only food source, we’d be real skinny, but I think I’m at least getting a hint of what it’s like to eat from the earth “in toil…all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and  to dust you shall return.” Sounds pretty discouraging, but the one who cursed the earth also gives us life “more abundantly.” You might even say with fecundity. I have a hint of that too.

Purple Dragons to the Rescue

I might have run for the insecticide soap-- or a blowtorch-- at the sight of these little monsters on my bean plants if I hadn't heard earlier about the purple dragons. A speaker at our church's garden seminar told us about his daughter's bean tepee, where she would sit and read and be a little girl. Aphids invaded. He didn't want to spray the tepee with chemicals, so he proposed that they wait a few days and see what happened. When he asked later how things were with the bean plants, his daughter said, "It's all right, Daddy. Purple dragons are eating the aphids." Ladybug larvae are purple dragons. 

I had sprayed soap on the aphid hordes on my bean plants, but it scarcely made a dent in the population. Then came the purple dragons, about half an inch long, and voracious. They slithered over the bean blossoms, nibbling aphids as they went, and left the plants perfectly clean. 

Today, voila, ladybugs. While picking some yard-long beans, I was astonished by the intense color and the size of this ladybug. It looked like a drop of red enamel, still wet. I ran for the camera, which I suppose I will have to start keeping on the tripod. It's tricky to take a close-up photo with a breeze moving the leaf and instinct moving the subject. Its less flashy cousin, lower down on the plants, was a little easier to capture. 

Sew?

I like to sew. This surprises people, I suppose  because I come across as intellectual for the most part, and most folks don't connect that with cutting and stitching. But here I am, making bibs in unusual fabrics for my little grandson. Sometimes I giggle a bit over such projects and hug them. Is that weird? I love picking the fabrics and patterns and putting things together  to give to people I love. Since my oldest son was born 36 years ago, I've made vast numbers of overalls and jammies and Easter dresses. I've made pillows in the shape of letters of the alphabet and pink fleece bears and baby comforters. When I see someone wearing or using something I made with my own hands, I'm proud and happy. It seems to me an important part of being human to design and produce something real. 

 An old-fashioned fireman print with wavy red stripes made a nifty comforter for the new son of a young lady I've known since she was a girl. She seemed to appreciate having something made by hand.