Lessons for life learned in the kitchen
By Bridget Bearss, RSCJ
In the long run, there are no shortcuts. The experience of taste is more reliable than the precision of measurement. Remember the recipe, not just the list of ingredients -- it's what you do with what you have that creates the result...good ingredients left unused are wasted. If you resent the process, the outcome will follow. Clean up your own mess and don't leave the sugar bowl empty (a translation of do unto others as you would have others do unto you). Be patient with the rising. There are no great mistakes, only great recoveries.
In our family, we like to eat. And, as a farm family, we like to eat real food...until my mother died, there was not a microwave in our house. She thought it was unnatural --" Real food needs heat and time, like real people. People and food do best when the are at a full boil," she told me in a two sentence sermon for life. Good food got great when it was given the time to go from good to great..."Everything needs time to find the way to blend together in to what it has the potential to be. Just leave it alone and let it grow" she told me one Advent as the suet pudding marked the beginning of the second week of Advent. The weeks of Advent could be marked by the wreath, but even more visibly by the refrigerator.
Over the weeks of Advent, the waiting escalated as the fare for the 12 days of Christmas became evident. The suet pudding on the back porch with the towels draped over it...for three weeks of waiting. The refrigerator cookies rolled and in the refrigerator ready for the last week of advent baking. The small balls of powdered sugar cookies rolled and waiting until the time was right. The drying fruit for the toppings on nearly everything...and the whistling tune in the kitchen, along with the hours of standing at the kitchen counter and listening to the wisdom baste life lessons.
Inside of each of us there are recipes for life...some of them create delicacies and some of them bring the familiar scent of what it means to be "home" -- to ourselves, in the presence of God, in the creation of the time of waiting. Advent brings us a chance to come home to the life within us that gets lost in a text message world of microwave speed.
We forget what it means to simmer the ingredients before the full boil takes the good idea and makes it great. It takes too long to let the empty hole on the inside take form, so we fill it up with mindless television or 24 "traffic and weather together." Sometimes, Advent needs us to just stand at the kitchen counter again and listen for the wisdom...to hollow out the center so that some voice besides our own can be heard...to remember the recipe, and not just the ingredients.
(Sister Bridget Bearss is head of school at the Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She shares reflections with her school community each day during Advent. We're glad we can share them with you, too. View her blog and sign up to receive notices of future posts.)
