What Is Real, Really?

So much of what we think is valuable is, in a sense at least, a figment of our collective imagination.

Human beings do not live merely as natural beings in a natural world; they live in a natural world overlaid with meanings they pour into it.

Our interpretation of things, events, motives of others – even of our own emotions – are often as real to us as any tree or bird. Thus, a robin is pleasant and a vulture is not. We can be as wise as an owl or as self-deceiving as an ostrich; stubborn as a mule or free as a bird.

Wisdom is the process of distinguishing between useful and delightful thoughts on one hand, and absolute reality on the other.

We live within a web of mental constructions that can seem as real to us as brick houses. In fact, most of us live in houses that others constructed. In many cases, the houses were here before we were born, just like the mental constructions that were given to us by culture, nation, family and religion.

The houses are made of natural substances. However, even those substances are prepared by human hands. Brick is clay that people have cooked according to recipes passed down and refined by generations of people since the days of ancient Babylon. Nonetheless, we soon invest these houses – at least the ones we actually inhabit – with affection, memory and meaningful artifacts and so, in time, these “houses” become “homes.”

The same sort of process transforms a piece of dirt into a “motherland” or a piece of cloth into “Old Glory.” It even transforms a nasty piece of cloth-paper into “money.”

It is all “art,” a shortened word for “artificial”: that is to say, “man-made”.

Art is the purposeful arrangement of materials in order to communicate emotion, idea or meaning. It is the imposition of human imagination upon nature. It is the process of transforming a piece of imagination into a piece of matter.

So what is imagination? The word means “image-making.” It describes the greatest power of human life: our ability to “see things that are not as though they were.”

Isn’t it great? Well, most of the time.

The Bible continually warns us against idolatry, which is the elevation of man-made things into the category of “absolute.” Idolatry erases the border between God-made and “man-made.” It makes the figments of our imagination as valuable, or even more valuable, than the world of nature. Thus, a national border, which human minds conceive and then project upon the natural world, can become more valuable than human beings, who bear God’s own image and likeness.
Our greatest president recognized the point I am making here when, in his most famous speech, he acknowledged that this nation was “conceived and dedicated to a proposition.” The proposition to which he refers is noble, even godly: “all men are created equal.” Nonetheless, the president’s assertion exposes the nation’s foundation: ideas.

The true borders of our nation are not latitudes and longitudes but ideals: a democratically governed republic, a portion of the world in which people make the most important decisions of life according to the dictates of their own conscience, a contract among all the generations that “this government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth,” a promise to “provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare for ourselves and our posterity,” and so forth and so on.

My mind is filled with all these phrases and customs, explanation and emotions, arguments and historical events. Every time I cross the border from another country into this one, this web of patriotic constructions shudders with delight. “This land is my land (not so sure these days that it’s your land) from California to the New York islands.”

This land is my home: “land where my fathers died; land of the pilgrims’ pride.”

My ancestors were all here before the revolutionary war. They fought and died in all its wars. They tamed a wilderness and left home places that I treasure.

It’s wonderful. But it’s not holy.

When patriotism becomes holy, the darkness of idolatry leads to purges, concentration camps and persecution.

The first two commandments are clear: we are forbidden to worship the things we create.
When we blur the distinction between creation and art, we get into dangerous territory.

Fantasy is another form of imagination; little private movies that we play for our own amusement, instruction or horror. When the fantasies turn dark, they can exert great power over our actions.

“May the words of our mouths and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Thy sight, Oh Lord.”

May we have the wisdom to discern the difference between art and nature, between that which is holy and that which only deserves respect, and between fleeting notions and ideas which need to be nourished, developed and imposed upon the world.

Scott Hord - The Next Julia Child?

“Julia Child wants you – that’s right, you, the one living in the track house in sprawling suburbia with a dead-end middle-management job and nothing but a Stop and Shop for miles around – to know how to make good pastry, and also how to make those canned beans taste all right. She wants you to remember that you are human, and such are entitled to the most basic of human rights, the right to eat well and enjoy life. “(Julie Powell, from Julie and Julia, Little, Brown and Company, P. 44, 45)

I bought the book!

I’m not going to tell you to rush out and buy it though.

It’s full of profanity. Also, it oozes with secular angst from a young lady born after most of the great events that molded my life and values.

Still, I had to read it. I think I am intrigued because young Americans without God are searching through aesthetic, sexual, and relational experiences to find solace for their soul and meaning for their lives. The book Eat, Pray, Love told the same sort of story.
What an opportune time to reach real seekers!

A seeker is someone whose soul is hungry.

This morning, as I walked into our church building, I heard the young students of Artios Academy singing. I stopped. I listened. Then I went to join them. My soul had been awakened by the sound of their tiny voices praising God. I doubt that they were as deeply moved as I was; most of them were just obeying their headmaster who wants them to sing every morning to begin their day.

But whatever their experience was about, I was moved.
By what?

By one small opportunity to feed my soul.

I had been hurrying to my office from my car.

Why?

Who knows? Perhaps because that is what responsible adults do; we hurry, rush, work at something that seems responsible all day and then return to our families speaking in short sentences until bedtime. Not much room for soul in all of that.

“All Thy works shall praise Thy name in earth and sky and sea,” the young voices sang.
Stop. Listen. Sing. Drink in the experience that may connect my soul to God and to His people. Take advantage of a moment that may remind me that I am a creature of eternity.

Julia Child doesn’t offer all of that. Julie Powell certainly does not offer it.

So what do they offer? They offer an opportunity to remember that we are not Homo-economicus after all. We are Homo sapiens. We think. We reflect. We create. We acknowledge meaning. We have a soul.

Julia child knew that working class people needed this knowledge. She knew that people are not created to sit hours inside some cubicle filling out forms. They are not meant to spend their lives churning a wheel like a hamster, day after soul-numbing day. They are not meant to be expendable economic units of Behemoth International Inc.

People are made in the image and likeness of God. They are creatures of infinite worth. They are made to commune with God and to relate to their fellow human beings. When they forget those things, their souls get sick.

It’s all in the 23rd Psalm: “He prepareth a table before me. He maketh me to lie down. He restoreth my soul.”

Rest. Eat. Feed the soul. Find renewal. That’s why the 23rd Psalm is the most beloved one.

Scott Hord will not be pleased that I compare him to Julia Child. I will admit that I am doing it partially to irritate him, which isn’t kind. But he’s tough. He can take it.

Scott Hord manages our physical fitness center. He works hard all day helping people find God through physical activity and conversation. He talks about basketball and soccer until the conversation takes a turn that reveals the soul. It takes time. Men are terribly afraid to reveal their soul. They often are even unaware that they have one. When it starts shouting for attention, they may go search for porn, or, if they are healthier, go watch big trucks demolish old cars. Men need noise, arousal, action and even conflict to drown out the cry of their soul. When that fails, they may use a drug to put their soul to sleep.

Soul hunger can inflict a lot of damage on men. That’s why, when Scott talks about basketball, he listens for that moment when the conversation turns to “life just sucks,” or “I can’t figure out what my wife wants; she’s driving me nuts.”

He hears the soul speaking. He then searches for a way to feed the soul, to strengthen it, to do something that will help the man he is speaking with realize that the soul is not dangerous – that it must not be denied or numbed – that it is our very being.
He shepherds men’s souls, in other words. And that is a very important thing to do.

Scott doesn’t cook, though, so I am struggling to find a way to fit him into a blog that has been about cooking for the last week.

Ahh, but he does roast coffee!

So what does coffee taste like when it has been roasted by a man who shepherds souls? Well, for one thing it tastes very, very good! There are two reasons why; he started roasting coffee because he wanted a way to support orphans in Africa. However, Scott also studied how to roast coffee. Had he not learned how to roast coffee from people who know how, he would have had to resort to emotional manipulation to sell bad coffee. A few people would have bought the coffee out of a sense of guilt. Then they would have sworn at him behind his back!

Compare Scott for a moment to Julie Powell. She sounds like a smarty-pants spoiled little girl who took a long time to grow up. Her book reveals this even more than the movie. Also, she is not a believer – she makes that clear from the start. That means she has no Bible.

However, she does have a soul and her soul is perishing from neglect. It is numb from the battering of modern urban life. She has forgotten that she bears the image and the likeness of God. She is soul hungry.

The Art of French Cooking is not a sacred text. Julia Child can’t save her soul. But Julia Child can remind Julie that she has a soul. Julia Child knows that an artful and meaningful meal with friends is good at awakening our souls. That’s what the oohs and ahhs are all about when we eat good food. The soul is being noticed. It responds like a neglected child who is suddenly noticed. It perks up with a sense of anticipation that perhaps it will be restored after all, even in a go-nowhere job, or on an every day journey to work through traffic jams.

Julie’s mitzvot, her commitment to cook for a year through all of Julia Child’s recipes, awakens something that had been asleep in her for a long time. That is the reason I enjoyed this movie: I was delighted watching her soul awaken.

However, when someone takes on a mitzvot like Scott Hord did, something even deeper occurs. Scott’s coffee feeds hungry children. That’s a big deal. It is also growing the effectiveness and leadership abilities of a good man. That’s another big deal. It is developing a business that I believe is going to go very far indeed. That’s another good thing. Finally, Scott offers a moment of relaxation with a cup of coffee that possesses the sort of quality we used to expect from YOUKNOWWHEREBUCKS.

“AHHHHH!” the souls says, “ Life is too short to drink swill.”

How can I end this blog? Oh, I know: why doesn’t someone think of cooking one of those soul-awakening meals from Julia Child’s cookbook?

Then, that blessed person can serve ABBA Java coffee with a small French pastry?

Wouldn’t that be nice?
I would support such a person with my presence and my wholehearted participation!

www.abbajava.org

More About Julia Child

I never, ever thought I would be writing about Julia Child, and certainly not twice in one week!

However, so many of you wrote me about my last blog, I knew that I should to do a follow up.
So I began thinking last night about all the chefs and cooks I have known. In fact, I called a couple of them yesterday. I wanted to thank them for the attention they have shown to food preparation and what that has meant to my life.

Food must be important; the Bible certainly talks a lot about it.

Just think: the first thing that goes wrong in the Bible is when someone eats the wrong food. Adam and Eve caught cosmic food poisoning and passed it on to all of us.

Then, the last thing that goes right in the universe (according to the Revelation of St. John) is a great meal with all the saints of all time.

Now, in between those two events the Bible talks about hundreds of generations divided into two great spiritual eras – the Old and the New Covenants. The most intimate and holy ceremony in both of those covenants is a sacramental meal. Passover and Holy Communion are invitations to human beings to eat a meal with God!

All this has made me think about how a fine meal relates to our awareness of ourselves as creatures made in God’s image and likeness.

We can, after all, survive as animals, just eating crap out of cans. We may not stay very healthy doing it, but we could actually survive on dog food. Then we wouldn’t need forks, spoons, napkins or butter dishes. We certainly wouldn’t need candles and crystal.

The fact is, we don’t carefully prepare our food or worry about its presentation because of our physical needs. We fuss about food because we are spiritual beings.

When we rush about stuffing junk in our faces as we run out the door, we are forgetting that life is about much more than surviving. We forget that we are creatures of dignity. When we forget that, we get into all sorts of dysfunction and grief.

(This is not the time or place to talk about spiritual fast food – about worship reduced to on-the-run funny stories by clever preachers and fuzzy worship songs. I won’t even try to address the unbearable flip top communion cups with their attached wafer thingamabob, from which one guzzles reconstituted grape water and devours pressed hydroflorinated reprocessed monosodiumcrapanate mash into one’s mouth while the preacher mumbles something sweet and we all rush to the parking lot. One day, if you will actually read it, I will write about all of that “worship” foolishness…but not today.)

This issue for today is that quality, reflection, attention, and respect for one’s self and one’s colleagues does not naturally occur. Please read this again: these attributes do not naturally attach themselves to anything or to anybody; they are deliberately (and usually incrementally) developed by some person who cares.

Someone like Julia Child. Seriously!

Moses and Christ both wanted worship to require our time, evoke our attention and provoke our transformation. Both of them would have been aghast by our “fly-by” worship. We know this because of the two sacramental actions they instituted. Neither Passover nor Eucharist can occur quickly or haphazardly. Likewise, the things Moses and Jesus wanted to occur in our lives can’t actually happen unless we do the spiritual services they both asked us to do. Modern substitutes just don’t deliver the same spiritual life.

Julia Child longed for Middle America – or “servantless Americans,” as she put it – to have the same opportunity as Parisians to enjoy quality cuisine. She wasn’t against our hamburgers or hot dogs; she just wanted us to experience something that took more time, more attention, quality ingredients and so forth. She knew that experiencing fine cuisine would enrich our lives.

People like Julia Child, who champion quality -- particularly aesthetic quality –, have an uphill climb. Many people will even ridicule the quest for the aesthetic qualities of music, food, clothing and so forth. They think aesthetic quality is frivolous and vain. Indeed, the pursuit of aesthetic quality can become idolatrous, as can all human endeavors, including religion. However, aesthetic quality is one of the ways that human beings separate themselves from animals.
Without aesthetic life, we sink into barbarism and social chaos. So it is important – vitally so – to our emotional and spiritual health to recognize and celebrate quality.

There are some ‘Julia Childs’ in my own life, people who have tried to show me respect through the way they prepare food. Will you take a moment and read a sentence or two about each of them?

Denise Palma cooks Italian food; great Italian food. She should open up a restaurant. Someone should invest some money so she can do just that! She unites people with her food. She invests time and talent into a meal, just like Jesus and Moses asked us to do. Her house is like the house of God (because we know that God probably lives in Italy). Go eat there sometime – if she invites you!

Robert Hill did some research about my life. That’s why he decided to make Ecuadorian cerviche when Trish and I went to visit him and his wife Maren. I appreciated his efforts. However, I figured it wouldn’t be authentic. Americans just can’t make Ecuadorian cerviche. I was wrong! He prepared cerviche just like it would have tasted in a good restaurant in Quito. Then we ate fennel. Fennel! What the heck! Not fennel seed, some exotic garnish. Full blown fennel! And then… trout. Not just regular old trout. Oh, Lord have mercy. Trout that he had caught and prepared himself! Finally, he served grilled pineapple and covered it with some sauce that is evidently a secret recipe from some distant ancestor. (I made that part up, but I want to keep you reading my stuff.) All of this effort and care produced a magic meal. And to think, the man who did all of this serves the immigrants of our church with his time, love and prayer for untold hours every single week.

Barbara Dyson, the high priestess of Martha Stewartism, is a force of nature. She is the queen of the kitchen. If she ever invites you to her house for dinner, go. Yea, I say unto thee again, go thou with haste! She prepares her home, her food and herself to make wonderful evenings for all her special guests. There will be great conversation, well-seasoned and interesting foods, and regionally appropriate beverages. (Also, her husband John will catechize you as you eat, unless she makes him stop.)

Maria Maciuk has an Argentine/ Ukrainian heritage. Her unique background deeply affects her mouthwatering cuisine. Her presentation leaves you wondering whether it would be a sacrilege to actually eat her food. Then you do and burst forth into tongues of men and of angels. Her pastries have made grown people just break down and weep. Her food is an altogether spiritual experience, may her tribe increase.

Finally, my sister-in-law, Lisa. She can cook from Julia Child if she likes, and she does sometimes. However, in the last few years, she has poured her talents into preparing the traditional foods of the American Southeast and making them available (and affordable) to the people who keep our city alive. She and Marty run a restaurant called The Sweet Tea Dinner. They serve catfish and fried chicken there that will ruin your diet but bless your soul. They learned to cook by preparing midweek dinners for poor people in their church. When the season of working on a church staff came to an end and God delivered them, they opened their diner. But the lessons they learned in the church about community and relationships flowed into their business. They serve home cooking with a heart – and a soul.

Julia Child wanted to teach – and Julie wanted to learn – what constitutes the soul of cooking. All the people I have mentioned in this blog have been life-long students of that certain something.
What does one do to nourish the souls of those who eat the food one prepares?

Indeed, how does any work touch a soul? Can sheer business structure and bottom-line thinking do that?

It’s a great question.

I wish more pastors would ask it.