Layers of Taste

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

I love cooking shows on television. There, I said it. I don’t know why except there is something about a master cook putting just the right amount of butter into a sauté pan, and then adding the precise amount of onion and—can you believe it?—cinnamon and basil leaves together to make a simple glaze in such and such a recipe. ‘Oh, and don’t forget the pinch of sea salt.’ All this effort ends in layers of nuanced taste designed to stimulate a three centimeter flap of real estate we call the tongue.

To be honest, most of the layers of taste are wasted on us hungry souls. Many of us don’t have the capacity, or the patience, to drill down through the layers of taste to appreciate the dishes we eat. It is a little bit like a friend of mine who brings a very clean and experienced pallet to his wine drinking. I don’t know how he does it, but he can smell and sip and observe a vintage and, in a moment, tell the degree of pressure the grape was crushed under during the second week of September of such and such a year, grown on the south side—the sunny side—of certain area of south of France in a specific type of soil. For me, the wine is purple and wet. For him, it is musty and bruised.

Most of our lives are lived in this twilight zone of taste. But, to hear us talk on most days and most subjects, you would think that life and all it has to offer us is painted in big bold strokes of black and white. Perhaps we have been watching too much cable news. We like to make our comments on life large and brash. Perhaps our life of faith takes on this strident sense of self-assurance as well, as if God weighs in on His providential work in our lives always with complete clarity.

But, God rarely pronounces the final word on what he is doing with us before it happens. What if living a life of faith requires more of us than making bold declarations about His whereabouts. Maybe it requires that we live patiently in the midst of the quiet ambiguities of our lives, instilling faith in us that is not so much timid as complex. Now…do you see how the cinnamon mixes ever so nicely with the basil leaf?

The Christian Virtue of Patience (but I digress)

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

I caught myself banging on the side of my computer yesterday. Can you believe it? It’s a MacBook Pro. Only two years old, which, in dog years now, is like driving around in my dad’s old 1964 Buick Electra, the dark blue one with the big fenders and the automatic windows (but I digress).

Perhaps it was the sound of the banging that jolted me back into the Middle Ages when seven deadly sins and the great seven heavenly virtues ruled the day. Patience. That’s what I need more of. (Patience…and a better memory. Upon further research, patience is not one of the original virtues, but for our sake here, let’s say it is one of the great eight heavenly virtues…but I digress).

Imagine, the Christian virtue of patience is now being defined by the length of time that it takes for me to blink my eyes. My entire psychological makeup—to say nothing of my sense of spirituality—now hangs on the thin mili-second thread that strings together my past to my present to my future. My understanding of God and His omnipresence is being redefined. My ability to trust patiently in Him is being reworked.

And then I thought about my grandfather, the potato farmer from Minnesota. What did patience look like to him during the early part of last century? How did he live up to his moral obligations to God and his friends and family during those lean years during the 1930-1940’s? For Enoch Bjork, patience was like a long-legged farm dog stretching out before a fire on a cold winter night. Once the dog got down on the floor it seemed like it took an entire day for him to untangle himself and throw his long appendages into all corners of the room.

For my grandfather, patience was measured by the seasons. In his mind, it started in spring when he put in his corn and it was tested all the way to the fall when he—hopefully—saw some fruit from his labor. The winter in between stretched out as a long, cold interlude that never seemed to end.

I wonder what it was like before clocks when Middle Age man lacked the capacity to look down at his wrist, at any given moment, to measure with precision how his day was passing. Imagine how he ordered his day—as it moved from past moment to present to future—without this basic technology that allowed time to pass before his very eyes. More to the point, I wonder what it meant for him to be patient without an instrument to measure patience.

Neil Postman has it right in his book, Technopoly, when he says that all technologies possess inherent ideological biases. They are not neutral tools but they shape us in ways we cannot begin to imagine. Just imagine, the presence of a simple piece of technology like the watch has altered our ability to be patient. Just imagine, I am banging on my computer because time is no longer fast enough. Just imagine (but I digress).

Penguin Prayer

By Dr. Jeff Arthurs, PhD
Professor of Preaching & Communication and Dean of the Chapel

Have you seen the film called March of the Penguins? It is a marvelous documentary about the breeding cycle of the penguins of Antarctica. Every year they march 60 or 100 miles into the interior of that continental ice box to mate. You may have noticed that penguins are not built for marching; they waddle and squirm for all those miles. After mating, the male returns to the sea to feed, while the female produces an egg. Then the male returns to care for the egg while the female makes a dash for the coast. Daddy penguin has to hold the egg on his feet, an inch above the deadly frozen ground, and shield it with a flap of belly skin covered with warm feathers. The poor father eats nothing for months, moves no more than a few inches a day because he’s got an egg on his feet, and stands exposed to the worst weather on our planet. Then the egg hatches and the father has to care for the mindless, rambunctious, fragile chick. The weather can kill baby penguin in hours. Finally, momma comes back with a crop full of fish, and the happy family march-waddles to the sea.

So . . . if penguin fathers can be this patient and selfless, can’t I? Here’s a sonnet I wrote, a prayer, asking God to give me the patience of a penguin:

Prayer for Patience in Fathering

Lord of all, if penguins can, can’t I?—
The plodding march, the hunger, pain, and trials.
They shuffle, stand, and shield their juveniles
With only instinct, hope, and feathers dry.
If they can nurture chicks in wind and trackless
Ice with predators, besides the wild
And mindless straying of the hatchlings beguiled
By shape and sound, can’t I? Do I have less
Instinct? Less hope? And surely human brain
Can compensate for flightless feathers. Yet,
I lack the penguin’s patience, just to let
Him molt, mature, and muddle in his vein.
Help me to wait, the penguin emulate;
He knows his role, his place, Your time, time’s state.