Here it is at last, the secular equivalent to Easter Sunday: Super Bowl Sunday! I would reflect (emphasis added) on that, but at the moment the notion seems self evident. What other non-religious day or holiday generates as much excitement, interest and as much money? Controversy at times too, remembering "deflate gate," from last year. And you can even celebrate Super Bowl Sunday legitimately without leaving your house or bed, as long as you have a TV. Etc. etc. etc. As Yul B as the king of Siam once memorably said.
A Reflection too: I was at the sink doing yesterday's dishes this morning when I noticed the empty but clean small Spiced Honey Mustard (8 oz) jar bobbing around in the soapy water. That condiment is so good that last night I had to run my finger around the inside of the jar just to get that taste into my mouth for the baloney/provolone sandwich I was eating. I had forgotten that we needed to stock up on the stuff again, and I did not have enough to finish covering my bread. Anyway, there the empty jar was, gleaming in the soapy water with its black and gold soapy label. The jar is truly beautiful, in a commercial, secular sense, and I became aware of an overwhelming urge within me to grab the jar and save it, keep it, put it on my shelf. Whoa, I thought. Not that the jar isn't delightful, beautiful and collectable. It even contains a bit of "poetry" on one section, starting at the top of the jar: "Dip your pretzel/This stuff's hot,/Baste the ham/But not a lot.//Smear your eggrolls/Very light./You've never had mustard/With such a bite!" The background of the entire label is black with much of the lettering in gold. There's a monogram, KC, for Kentucky Collection. And a statement in gold signed by the owner or CEO: "Our search for a mustard spice blend has finally ended in Central Kentucky. We're pleased to present Kentucky's S.G. Grande Reserve for your enjoyment." Indeed! And the jar is beautiful, as I said. Unfortunately it awakened in me that collector's urge that has for so long ruled over my common sense. If Purgatory truly exists, as we Catholics believe it does, this desire to have, possess, and display, as one of the passions that has stood between me and God, will need to go; that is, the desire will have to be eradicated. After all, would you rather have a somewhat lovely spicy mustard jar or God? How many other desires or passions deep in my psyche need to go? In old age I have realized that life itself is Purgatorial; I, at least, am here to get myself cleaned up and God knows there is so much stuff in here. I say I hadn't known, but in truth, I think I had always known. The passion that drove me to collect and possess things, too many things, was excessive. Naked we come into the world; naked we go out of the world. Mary and I are planning our funerals, buying our caskets, choosing a funeral home. We already have the plot, as I mentioned at least once before. We hold onto nothing, finally. Nothing.
Reflection three: As I was standing at the sink with the dishes, looking up from the bobbing jar and out the kitchen window, I could see the small water fall in the far corner of the backyard with the sunlight reflecting off the water, making it sparkle. What a difference running water makes on the land as it ripples and splashes over the rocks. On our street, when the snow melts, the water runs along the side of the road, down the street, to a concrete trough that lets it flow to the creek that runs west to east across the land, through the golf course, into the large creek that courses through east Berea. The city built a solid bridge over it on the hiking trail we use when we walk the dogs. Mary likes to take her three dogs down to the water so they can drink. Frollie likes to swim and wade to the other side, and little Schuster bravely follows, though he has to swim all the way since his legs are so short. It is fun to watch him.
Literature is filled with rivers, creeks and streams serving as literal land marks and frequently as images or symbols of spiritual concerns, as it does in Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter where Hester and Pearl have gone into the forest to meet Dimmesdale in a kind of reenactment of their original sin. The problem occurs when Hester removes the letter in an effort to make it as though the sin hadn't occurred. Pearl has gone off and is on the other side of the stream that runs through the forest. Pearl will not cross the stream as long as the letter is off, and in fact there is a reflection of Pearl in the stream, and Pearl's real nature has never been resolved by Hester. Is Pearl evil, an imp of the demonic, as the Puritan towns people believe, or a human child capable of real love? The notion of Pearl as spirit cut off from the center of life, thanks to Hester's desire to keep the preacher, Pearl's father, all for herself (the nineteenth century's romance image, so to speak), comes to the foreground in the forest, with the presence of the two Pearls, nature (natural) versus spirit (spiritual) and will not be resolved until the end of this brilliant novel when Dimmesdale, Hester and Pearl join hands and form the real human family on the scaffold in the city.
Everything in our lives is charged with meaning, whether we see it or not. Eliot's Hollow Men are hollow precisely because their minds ("headpiece filled with straw") see only facts, things capable of being studied and manipulated, as scientists must do if they are to know that dimension of our lives, but to think that water is only the hydrogen and oxygen that make it up is to miss its most important value as image, pointing beyond itself to the spiritual dimension of life, no less real because that dimension can't be touched or measured. Consider the water of baptism and what it means as a central image of rebirth in the Christian Faith. The real value of things is their value as images, their intangible element or aspect. The tangible must be there or their function as images would not exist, but to say that their only value is the material, the tangible, is to miss the real nature of the cosmos in which we find ourselves. Pearl without an acknowledged father is simply nature; Pearl with her father and mother is the mysteriously human creature created to be loved.
The mustard has a web site: online@kentuckysmokingrill.com
You can buy a case of 3 jars for 8 dollars, but the shipping is 15.69. Triple Fold Meats in Berea sells them by the jar for 3.69 each. Somehow the glow the jar had for me has vanished and into the recycling bin it goes. When I was growing up in Tiffin, Ohio, there was a long alley behind our house. I think I mentioned the alley before. In any case we kids used to go up and down the alley before the garbage truck came and look for treasures. This jar would have been a treasure. There was also a junkyard two blocks from our house. They bought scrap metal. Yes! We would haul it there in my American Flyer red wagon, and use the money to buy candy at the corner store three houses down the street. The store was on the bottom floor of a large building that housed apartments on the upper floors. In the sixties two of my Heidelberg Society buddies rented one of the apartments. I had never been inside one till then, though ten years earlier we would climb the wrought iron stairs to the upper levels and run through to the other side while playing chase. Of course we got scolded from time to time, but the risk was always an added attraction. Like so many other things I can see an image of the interior hallway in my mind's eye. It was a little dark there and steep as it rose to let us out on the back side. Oh, the little grocery store became a drive-through liquor store with some groceries. I don't think the change from grocery to liquor drive-through had occurred when my friends were living there.
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