Month: January 2011 (Page 6 of 7)

“Plato formulated what he named the “universals” as the True, The Good and the Beautiful. He held that if we are to live a whole and mature life, the three had to work together harmoniously in us. The Amercian church has deleted Beauty from that triad. We are vigorous in contending for the True, thinking rightly about God. We are energetic in insisting on the Good, behaving rightly before God. But Beauty, the forms by which the True and the Good take shape in human life, we pretty much ignore. We delegate Beauty to flower arrangers and interior decorators. Plato, and many of our wisest teachers who have followed him, insisted that all three – Truth, Goodness, Beauty – are organically connected. Without Beauty, Truth and Goodness have no container, no form, no way of coming to expression in human life. Truth divorced from Beauty becomes abstract and bloodless. Goodness divorced from Beauty becomes loveless and graceless.”
(-Eugene Peterson, In Practicing Resurrection, page 7)

I think this is why I love story. Truth and Good come to life and play out before my eyes. Perhaps also why I really dig the incarnation concept. Some see it in a still frame, others hear in notes and harmony and rhythm. I experience it in plot and characters.

I’m curious of the many containers of Truth & Goodness that others experience…

For a bulk of my 20s I went meatless. Not necessarily “vegetarian” as I still enjoyed birds of the air and fish of the sea. I differentiated between species created on the 5th day vs. species made on the 6th. My objections were sheer preference. I just didn’t enjoy meat. I found it quite simple to navigate around it, save for the occasional church potluck, so I always went for the bird.
During that same period of my life I was introduced to Patty B by way of mutual vocation. She avidly avoided the meat, even in a “who-double-dipped-from-the-taco-meat-into-the-sour-cream?” kind of way. But she didn’t simply hold a distaste for the product, she abhorred the process.
Hailing from the cornfields of Iowa, at some point in her life Patty came to feel strongly that the food being produced might better serve us by feeding humans rather than cows, but our over-meated society, with its operations based on supply-and-demand, tilted the scales otherwise. Patty’s plate preferences were about much more than cut and doneness… they were about how our decisions affected the greater good.
In my many years sharing ministry time with Patty, I learned so much. She practiced a kind of patience that I could only dream of when it came to jr. high kids. But she could savor the humor that came with it and toss in a bit of sarcasm or irony when needed. And she was influential in my transition to understanding that salvation, while a personal decision, is also a corporate gift. All of creation matters to God.
Patty signed her emails “peace, Patty B.” And not just in a jiving-hippie kind of way, though the girl does play the oboe, has her nose pierced and regularly practices yoga, so she holds that license. But when I received an email from Patty signed “peace”, I was reminded of something of the inner and the outer. Shalom… making things right. I was reminded that peace was a concept of personal and corporate responsibility, and by knowing Patty, I was exposed to what that might look like.
From her participation with the abstinence-ed work to talking about faith and life and what it means to follow God, Patty lives out loud the idea that there’s something beyond the finished product. How we arrive matters. If you were to cross-stitch Patty B into a wall hanging, perhaps it would say, “joy is the journey and not a destination.”

So I’d like to make good on my aspirations to add a variety of focus to this “space”. I’ve got one post written, only 51 more to go. Actually, I don’t have 51 more leads, so we’ll see how this progresses.

Over time my conviction has grown that what and how we eat serves as a reflection of our life at large. A majority of people in our culture eat “fast food” in the car and on the run. Family dinner is on the decline. And I believe it to have deep implications for our society and our social nature in general. We eat food devoid of nutrition as a filler in the same way we lead lives devoid of relationships that offer sustenance, and instead fill up on whatever snacks we find along the way, be it destructive habits, addictions (including workaholism, perfectionism and other socially acceptable -isms) and patterns of behavior. I’m not saying that people that eat healthier are automatically happier; I am say that how we come to the table and what we find there waiting might be a deeper reflection into our hearts.

So in an effort to illustrate this conviction, I’d like to draw upon some of the food-inspired life lessons that have emerged in my meager 30 years of existence. Realistically, the grand majority of them came about in the the last decade.

Not only do my stories focus on the food, but the people that I associate with them. Because it’s not about the consumption of food-like matter, but rather the sharing of a meal. Some of the people may opt to remain a bit more obscure (and if you figure out who they are, then lucky you for knowing them as well! Call them for a dinner date!). Maybe that’s what I’ll call the series… Dinner Date. Because everything in my life needs a good title or theme, and I have yet to be able to come up with an acceptable slogan for this series.

So, that’s the hope. Stay tuned.