But enough. The amateur is vindicated; let me proceed with my other qualifications.

For the second one, put down that I like food. As a child, I disliked fish, eggs, and oatmeal, but when I became a man, I put away childish things. My tastes are now catholic, if not omnivorous. My children call me the walking garbage pail. (On my own terms, of course, I refuse the epithet: All that I take is stored lovingly in an ample home — it becomes not waste, but waist. On their meaning, however, I let it stand: I am willing to try anything more than once.)

Admittedly, there are some delicacies that give me pause — prairie oysters, for example, or the eye of the calf in a tete de veau. But since I have never tasted them, my apprehension may be only the disenchantment wrought by distance. Even the surf is frightening when you lie in bed and think about it. In any case, it is part of my creed that there are almost no foods which, given the right cook, cannot be found delectable. Just so long as they are not corrupt — no, that is too sweeping: It will cost me pheasant and venison — just so long as they are not gracelessly corrupt, there is, somewhere in the world, an eye that can conceive them in loveliness, and a recipe that can deliver the goods. I am convinced that even shoe tongues, if cooked provencale or a la mode de Caen, would be more than sufferable.

I hated eggs, too, as a child. I hated most breakfast foods, to be honest. I’d eat lunch for breakfast, if I could. And I have done so when pregnant, when you could justify every out-of-the-ordinary choice under the general heading, “craving.”

And meatloaf. I still hate meatloaf.

Grant hates ranch anything, pastrami, and baked chicken. Isaac hates broccoli. Gavin hates . . . I haven’t met anything that Gavin hates yet.

But I’m not a gourmand. I am not an adventurous eater. Yet I have had goat, squirrel, rabbit, venison, pheasant, and dove. I liked the pheasant the best, but I’m told the squirrel is nearly a Missouri delicacy. One I’ll never fully appreciate, I don’t think.

Yes, when it comes to food, I’d rather stay in my yankee-pot-roast or moo-goo-gai-pan suburban provincialism. I know I could never pass the food challenge in Survivor, and I’m perfectly happy in my rut.

But Capon gives us more here than just how to prepare a shoe leather sandwich. He’s relishing that all things are lawful. All things are edible. All things are pure to the pure in heart. It doesn’t matter what the movie means really or what the menu item contains actually. God’s mercy doesn’t depend on what sin we committed technically.

Grace finds beauty in every thing!

]]> http://www.drslewis.org/camille/2010/03/a-time-to-feast-maybe/feed/ 0 http://www.drslewis.org/camille/2010/03/with-love-from-jesus/ http://www.drslewis.org/camille/2010/03/with-love-from-jesus/#comments Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:12:46 +0000 cklewis http://www.drslewis.org/camille/?p=2560

Click here to view the embedded video.

BJU’s rhetoric is more Lost Cause than we (especially Northern) 21st-century listeners might readily perceive. In their drama, God is not an active participant. He’s not even a goal that we might wish to reach someday. No, He’s he’s simply our pit bull — our vicious, Old-Testament force which will scare people back into shape for the sake of preserving that old patrician hierarchy. In sum, God god is not an actor, not an ultimate idealistic purpose, but simply the frightening and preservationist means for the socially successful.

And just this week, a new text plops into my inbox proving the same drama.

The BJU buzz this week swirled around two stories. One, Jim Berg is making a lateral move from the admin building to the seminary come July with Eric Newton taking his place as Dean of Students. Secondly, Bob Jones University finally sanctions its students to use Facebook — even on campus. The new liberty, however, comes with a set of regulations which I’ve cited below. Do you see the romantic drama that I see? Who’s the Actor in the text? What’s the Act? Where or under what conditions is s/he acting? And why? And how?

Another way of asking that is — where’s God in this? Notice that the reason for all the rules is to benefit Bob Jones University, not Christ or the Church. It all centers around BJU’s reputation and preserving that hierarchy.

Social Media Guidelines

Guidelines for Participating in Social Media

A Christian’s use of social media, like any other form of communication, can reflect positively or negatively on his Christian testimony. The guidelines below are common sense principles that will help a Christian maintain a consistent testimony when communicating with others.

• Social media are public forums; there are no private social media sites. Post only information that you are comfortable having many people, including potential future employers, read about you.
• Avoid posting personal information such as your address, phone number, etc., that could make you a target for identity theft.
• Post worthwhile information that adds value; avoid self-promotion and information of limited interest.
• Assume personal responsibility for what you post. Make sure it is accurate. Secure permission before citing another person. Respect copyright laws. Do not post proprietary information, including course syllabi, lecture notes or material on course pages. Cite references, and when you do so, acknowledge the source. Keep in mind that you are legally liable for what you post.
• Identify yourself by your real name and write in the first person. If you identify yourself as a student or faculty/staff member of BJU, be clear that you speak for yourself, not BJU. Keep in mind that what you post will reflect on BJU. As appropriate, add a disclaimer that indicates the content of your site represents your views and does not represent the opinions or positions of BJU.
• Respect your audience. Avoid abusive, slanderous, complaining, profane, irreligious, blasphemous or tale-bearing speech.
• Follow biblical principles when posting on your personal site: communications should be edifying.
• Do not post photos of children or students under 18 without prior parental permission in writing.
• Take the high ground and avoid picking fights. Do not respond to posts critical of you or the University if posting will prolong discussion. If you post information in error, be the first to correct your mistakes.
• Delay posting if you are angry or upset about an issue as this is the time when you are most likely to post information you later regret.
• If you alter a previous post, indicate that you made a modification.

Guidelines for Establishing/Maintaining a BJU Social Media Site

• BJU departments and pre-college schools wanting a social media site are to provide Internet Marketing with the goal(s) for the site, a brief three to six-month plan for how the site will be used and who will post and monitor information. Internet Marketing will launch the site, secure the handle and turn over the site to the existing department. This procedure will ensure there is a record of all “official” sites and that site names are appropriate and consistent. BJU Press departments should direct requests to Interactive Marketing.
• Official sites require time and people resources. In conjunction with setting goals, establish metrics for your site to continually measure its effectiveness. Keep in mind that effectiveness is not always measured by number of followers.
• Student groups such as the Collegian, UBA, etc., are free to establish sites as long as the faculty advisor monitors the site.
• Understand that a department site will bring negative and positive feedback; value the negative feedback and use it to improve as appropriate.
• Provide timely responses.
• In speaking on behalf of the University, be familiar with FERPA regulations and avoid disclosing personal information about a student.
• Avoid articulating positions contrary to the public position of BJU.
• Avoid using an official BJU site to endorse a cause, product or political candidate.
• Keep in mind that you may see student posts that reveal questionable activity or activity contrary to BJU student policies. Use this as an opportunity for dirtyhanded discipleship.
• Faculty and staff should limit access to personal sites during work hours to interactions with students.
• When posting photos, ensure people in the photos meet the dress code for the activity involved. Do not post photos of children or students under 18 without prior parental approval in writing.
• If a question arises you cannot answer, do not try to answer it. Find the appropriate person who can answer.
• Follow the University’s general guidelines for participating in social media.

Or, conclusively, peel an orange. Do it lovingly–in perfect quarters like little boats, or in staggered exfoliations like a flat map of the round world, or in one long spiral, as my grandfather used to do. Nothing is more likely to become garbage than orange rind; but for as long as anyone looks at it in delight, it stands a million triumphant miles from the trash heap.

That, you know, is why the world exists at all. It remains outside the cosmic garbage can of nothingness, not because it is such a solemn necessity that nobody can get rid of it, but because it is the orange peel hung on God’s chandelier, the wishbone in His kitchen closet. He likes it; therefore, it stays. The whole marvelous collection of stones, skins, feathers, and string exists because at least one lover has never quite taken His eye off it, because the Dominus vivificans has his delight with the sons of men.

I just had my hands wrist-deep in chicken grease. The house is smoked up because a stray drumstick wouldn’t behave within its rotisserie prison. The counter top displays my weapons — shears and tongs and forks and even a dismantled coat hanger I thought I could bend into a skewer. I was wrong about that.

I could just throw the whole bird in the oven. But I don’t. My better half despises baked chicken. Hates it. And so I wrestle with the legs, cutting off what is misbehaving, splattering my party shirt with poultry goo, tripping over a licking-the-floor schnauzer, and opening windows upstairs and down. I dream up the broccoli salad he likes. The cole slaw recipe he prefers. The carrots my boys would choose. We’ll see if my efforts are successful in 30 minutes or so.

My kids think I am the best cook in the world. I’m not. . . . Well, I’m okay. I rely on pancake mix and low-fat turkey sausage enough to know that I’m no Martha. But I regularly get, “You make the best sausage in the world, Mommy!”

You have no idea how wonderful that feels. Because I know it’s not the food that they are enjoying. And it’s not just Mommy. It’s both. It’s the combination: the full tummy and the full heart.

My dear 86-year-old Dad insists that his mother was the best cook ever. My mom always retorts to me quietly, “She really wasn’t, Camille. She was terrible!” But Dad still goes on and on about the steak that was as tough as shoe-leather and the fried chicken Grandma made after she boiled the bird for its bone-broth value.

I realize that Mom’s right. But Dad’s right too.

Our world is an orange peel hanging on God’s chandelier. It’s good because He loves it and us. Just like boiled-and-then-fried chicken. Just like that dissected rotisserie project smoking up the downstairs. . . . at least, I hope.

There, then, is the role of the amateur: to look the world back to grace. There, too, is the necessity of his work: His tribe must be in short supply; his job has gone begging. The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of a pack of trolls. Indeed, the whole distinction between art and trash, between food and garbage, depends on the presences or absence of the loving eye. Turn a statue over to a boor, and his boredom will break it to bits–witness the ruined monuments of antiquity. On the other hand, turn a shack over to a lover; for all its poverty, its lights and shadows warm a little, and its numbed surfaces prickle with feeling.

Isn’t it amazing how God loves us when a pack of trolls were bored to tears with us and let us fall into disrepair?

I rediscovered this little song recently by Mr. Rogers, “It’s You I Like.” Remember it? If we can put aside the Gen-X visceral gag reflex we have to all children’s programming, this is one beautiful song. This is “being incarnational.” This is love!

Therefore, the man who said “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” was on the right track, even if he seemed a bit weak on the objectivity of beauty. He may well have been a solipsist who doubted the reality of everything outside himself, or one of those skeptics who thinks that no valid judgments are possible–that no knife can in reality be pronounced sharp, nor any custard done to perfection. It doesn’t matter. Like Caiaphas, he spoke better than he knew. The real world which he doubts is indeed the mother of loveliness, the womb and matrix in which it is conceived and nurtured; but the loving eye which he celebrates is the father of it. The graces of the world are the looks of a woman in love; without the woman they could not be there at all; but without her lover, they would not quicken into loveliness.

So it’s neither objectivity nor subjectivity — a wholly ridiculous dichotomy. Neither is possible and both extremes are the stuff of meaningless and endless grad-student-level “discussions.”

No, it’s intersubjectivity.

In other words, it’s not about you. And it’s not about them. It’s about us.

As Steve Brown said recently, “I know it’s about God. I’m a Calvinist. . . . But it’s about you too.”

Have you ever spent any time considering that our eternity will not be spent on a cloud somewhere strumming a harp? God’s not a Gnostic. Our eternity will be here, on this earth — all made new.

God’s stuff is very good. Not as opposed to our stuff, but including our stuff. Somehow.

It’s not God v. me. It’s God and us. Somehow. And that’s beautiful!

In such a situation, the amateur–the lover, the man who thinks heedlessness a sin and boredom a heresy–is just the man you need. More than that, whether you think you need him or not, he is a man who is bound by his love, to speak. If he loves Wisdom or the Arts, so much the better for him and for all of us. But if he loves only the way meat browns or onions peel, if he delights simply in the curds of his cheese or the color of his wine, he is, by every one of those enthusiasms, commanded to speak. A silent lover is one who doesn’t know his job.

Ah, Capon. This paragraph speaks for itself, doesn’t it? You speak not because it’s right or is a right. His admonition is much stronger than that. You speak because you love.

Love is. And the speaking comes next. It’s not some Erasmusian, highly attenuated and stylized, Praise of Folly kind of speaking. It’s not covert. It’s full-throated and known. Otherwise, it’s not love. Or it’s at least incomplete.

So like Luther to the overly sagacious Melancthon, Capon to us is saying “love loudly.”

First, I am an amateur. If that strikes you as disappointing, consider how much in error you are, and how the error is entirely of your own devising. At its root lies an objection to cookbooks written by non-professionals (an objection, by the way, which I consider perfectly valid, and congratulate you upon). It does not, however, apply here. Amateur and nonprofessional are not synonyms. The world may or may not need another cookbook, but it needs all the lovers–amateurs–it can get. It is a gorgeous old place, full of clownish graces and beautiful drolleries, and it has enough textures, tastes, and smells to keep us intrigued for more time than we have. Unfortunately, however, our response to its loveliness is not always delight: It is, far more often than it should be, boredom. And that is not only odd, it is tragic; for boredom is not neutral–it is the fertilizing principle of unloveliness.

Ah, neutrality. This sounds like something Richard Weaver might have written in mediating the spirit of Plato. But Capon likes the awkwardness. I’m not sure that Weaver or Plato would relish the “clownish graces,” as awkward as those dudes were.

But yes, Capon’s right. Neutrality is boring and unlovely. Being an amateur and doing something just because you love to is clownish but beautiful.

I made V’s day gifts for the ‘rents this week. I overdid it. It took too long. It was too extravagant. It was full of love and sentiment and memory-making. But . . . still too-too.

I love like an amateur. Like Mike pronking out of his crate ready for the day. Like a forgiven prostitute who crashes the church social. Like Elaine Bennis dancing.

Is that a problem?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Let me begin without ceremony.

Lamb For Eight Persons Four Times

In addition to one iron pot, two sharp knives, and four heads of lettuce, you will need the following:

For the Whole

1 leg of lamb (The largest the market will provide. If you are no good with a kitchen saw, have the chops and the shank cut through. Do not, however, let the butcher cut it up. If he does, you will lose eight servings and half the fun.)

For the Parts

I (A)
Olive oil (olive oil)
Garlic (fresh)
Onions, carrots, mushrooms, and parsley
Salt, Pepper (freshly ground), bay leaf, marjoram
Stock (any kind but ham; water only in desperation)
Wine (dry red — domestic or imported — as decent as possible)
Broad noodles (or staetzle, potatoes, rice, or toast)

I (B)
Olive oil (again)
Garlic
Onions
Salt, pepper (keep the mill handy), and thyme (judiciously)
Oregano is also possible, but it is a little too emphatic when you get to III.
Wine (dry white–even French Vermouth–but not Sherry. Save that. Or drink it while you cook.)

II
Spinach (a lot)
Cheese (grated: Parmesan or Cheddar; or perhaps Feta–anything with a little sharpness and snap)
Mayonnaise (not dietetic and not sweet)
Sherry (only a drop, but Spanish)
Bread (homemade; two loaves) and butter (or margarine, if you must)

III
Oil (peanut oil, if you have any; otherwise olive)
3 eggs
Onions
Shredded cabbage (bean sprouts, if you have money to burn)
Sherry (if you have any left)
Stock (as before, but only a little)
Rice (cooked, but not precooked)
Soy sauce (domestic only in desperation)

IV
Onions, carrots, celery, turnip
Oil, fat, or butter
Barley (or chick-peas or dried beans–or all three)
Water
Salt, pepper, and parsley (rosemary?)
(Macaroni and shredded cabbage are all possible. A couple of tomatoes give a nice color.)

Recipes fascinate me. In fact, the book series that started this recipe obsession with Perfection Salad is the series that is republishing Capon’s book. Recipes are a gustatory snapshot into another life. Like driving past homes at dusk and peeking into their yet-to-be-shaded windows. You see quirks, taste (or lack there of), humor. You see humanity.

I can honestly say that part of me likes reading the recipes more than preparing and eating the menus they describe. But I am the one who learned to swim from a book, ectomorph that I am, hidden in this endomorphic-looking costume. I fool no one into thinking that I’m a mesomorph, that’s for sure.

But this recipe — Capon’s “Lamb for Eight Persons” — this is a poem. There are no measurements, only instincts. There are no brand names, only small jabs at modern movie-sets-of-flavor like dietetic mayo and oleo. ::shudder:: There are not even any instructions, only a gathering of good things.

This is the way Babette cooks, I think. And Jesus. I really think that Jesus would cook like Capon.

I’m shutting the door. For now. I’m going to take that fight to a different place, with a different audience. My teachers told me that the best scholarship speaks to the public at large. That was a big part of my goal — to see if I could explain theoretical stuff in a common voice. I did that. And I was successful. This is a good blog with good stuff on it that will continue to help the hurting. But it’s time to turn my research into a more academic conversation behind closed doors. It’s just that important.

In sum, I need to let these wounds heal instead of getting eaten alive. I’ve been blogging for six years. So I’m ready for a little Sabbath rest. A little feasting.

::deep breath::

I picked up a book a few weeks back that I have to put down. Funny way to put that, I know. But each paragraph was like a Godiva chocolate, and if I consumed too many, I’d miss out on the joy. It’s a savory book. About God and cooking. And I want to relish each paragraph. Out here. In the open. Because good books — like a good meal and a good God — are meant to be shared.

Would you like a bite? . . . of the book, mind you. Not me. I’m not on the menu.