• goodbadi

    Playing Chicken

    August 2, 2012

    So the world’s in an uproar because a fast-food chain owner voiced a controversial opinion and now people are vociferously either boycotting or supporting the restaurant.

    I ate there today…sort of. I bought a lemonade, and cashed in two library summer reading program prizes: two kid’s meals, one for H (and me) and one for N.

    (The reading program’s been a smashing success. Not only does N continue to love to read; she now also faithfully points out Chick-fil-A billboards along the highway.)

    (She also ardently points out water towers. Earlier this week she said of one covered in fading paint, “I thought it was a country ball,” remembering the large, water tower-like globe that we’d seen a few weeks before.)

    This Chick-fil-A thing really is an opportunity worth not missing, particularly for advocates of same-sex marriage. I remember reading an article a while back about an anti-gay protest being turned on its head by the people being protested: they started a fund raiser kind of like a walk-a-thon in which people agreed to donate to the protested cause for each minute the protest lasted, thus completely debilitating the protesters’ mission.

    So here’s what same-sex marriage supporters should do today, quick before Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day ends: Go eat at the restaurant, in great big numbers. Spend lots of money there. Eat good chicken. Socialize with all the people who disagree with same-sex marriage. Make some friends. Marry them (or don’t). Eat some more. Make more friends. Fill the anti-party with the anti’ed.

    And at the very least, enjoy the food. It’s pretty darn good, in my own humble opinion.

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    A New Salvation

    July 22, 2012

    The story of Zacchaeus provides a view of salvation that is different than the atonement theology that describes Jesus’ death as paying the ransom for the souls of sinful humanity. Instead, the story commands significant life change.

    Prerequisite to anything Jesus, at least in this story, is curiosity. If Zacchaeus’ wealth could have bought an audience with Jesus, I’m guessing Zacchaeus wouldn’t have stooped to the indignity of running ahead of the crowd and climbing a tree, just to see better. As it was, though, there he was, hanging on a branch when Jesus made his day by calling him by name down from his perch.

    That’s when other people started complaining, saying that Jesus was–oh horrors!–staying at the home of a wicked man, this tax collector who had become wealthy presumably by crooked dealings. Almost as if in response to the grumbling, almost as if he perceived that associating with Jesus required some justification on his part, almost as if he all of a sudden wanted really badly to be worthy of Christianity, Zacchaeus declared that he would not only right past wrongs but also begin to deal generously with others.

    Jesus gave his blessing to this distrusted but newly changed man by declaring, “Today salvation has come to this house.”

    Salvation? With no crucifixion? It’s the rest of the story that I find challenging and even intimidating, because if the process of salvation involves changing toward generous living, I know I am far from saved.

    Zacchaeus’ rebirth relies on no prescribed, simple sinners’ prayer, no recitation of a newly adopted creed, and no membership in an exclusive sect. The story doesn’t even say Jesus told him to do anything at all. Instead, it seems that Zacchaeus all at once both desired and knew how to bring salvation to his life.

    I suspect that every one of us has a need for the salvation of this sort, for continued turning from selfish to generous living. I know I do. 

    I have been the recipient of much generosity in the last year. In a way, many people–like Jesus in the story of Zacchaeus–have come to my house for dinner. D loaned me tools and even put in hours helping with my kitchen project. G, whom I’d previously met only briefly, not only advised me by the phone and sold me professional-grade flooring supplies; he also came to my house twice to actually do (for free!) several steps of the flooring project. M extended love and acceptance even when I was less than easy to like. A cousin–just out of the blue–offered words of affirmation even when I felt self doubt about our music. 

    And some, perhaps without even meaning to, pointed me toward new salvation. When I returned the tractor I’d borrowed to mow our meadow, our friend’s dad, who had seemed genuinely eager for me to use his little Ford, sat a while on his porch in the hot midday and talked, in part about a man he knew when growing up: “He always made me feel better about myself,” he said, “and that’s a big deal for a young boy.” 

    That was and still is a call–to this husband, dad, son, brother, teacher, uncle, neighbor–to generous living: the perspective has looked me up and invited me to a more complete salvation based on the building up of those around me. 

    And all I did was climb up onto the seat of an old tractor.

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    A Great Date IKEA Idea

    July 22, 2012

    On a recent Friday, while the four of us were visiting my little big-city brother, he and a friend escorted us to IKEA to scope out kitchen options and eat the trademark lunch they offer for $3.99 (fifteen Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes, and lingonberries).

    The following Tuesday found me puttering along in a borrowed truck to a less distant location of the household superstore, where I loaded up a sink, cabinets, a microwave, and more–about 148 items, plus the requisite fifteen Swedish meatballs, which I am still assembling into the promised kitchen of our dreams. 

    As soon as the day after my travels, even though I was still reeling from the PISD (Post-IKEA Stress Disorder) I’d picked up along with our dreams fulfillment, I knew I’d someday go back. There are always more household outfitting needs, after all, and so at the breakfast table I laid out a Great Date IKEA Idea.

    I said, “Let’s save up $500 and go to IKEA and buy–.”

    N’s interjected ending to my sentence was immediate: “Eighteen hundred meat balls.”

    N in her uncle’s Ivy League Statistics PhD-candidate office.  She wasn’t too far off: At $3.99 for a plate of 15, 1,800 meatballs would cost $478.80.
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    Floored

    July 8, 2012

    Last Thursday I awoke from an afternoon nap to overhear a phone conversation that has changed the course of my recent history.

    My dad was on my porch scraping gunk off of the old maple flooring that my brother had gleaned from a work site then given to him and that Dad had passed on to my brother-in-law J, who didn’t want to clean it up and so gave it to me to clean and use on our new kitchen floor. My nephew and I had sweated it out of the cramped “second floor” of J’s workshop and I’d stacked it, bought a scraper, and had put in hours’ worth of cleaning the boards laid atop some upended trash cans.

    I don’t really enjoy dirty work of the painstakingly slow stripe, so I was more than grateful for my dad’s willingness to jump in on the project while J was practicing tourism in the big city instead of working on my parents’ new house.

    And since it was a day in general and a summer day in particular, I’d gone up to my bedroom floor for an after-lunch snooze, my timer dinging just as Dad on his new cell phone was saying words like “hickory” and “good price” and, “Does C know where it is?”

    Someone had called J in the city to tell him about a good deal, and he called us. I jumped, and our speedy trip to town netted us a store-closing deal of some three hundred square feet of new hickory flooring.

    Notice the fine trapdoor to our root cellar: the work of J. Also notice the commercial-grade finish on the floor (I’ll add one more coat, yet): J hooked me up with a professional flooring guy who sold me the stuff and even helped me put down two coats, and buff it.

    (The partially cleaned maple is still on my front porch, waiting to be reclaimed by either my dad or by J, who my dad thinks regretted giving it away.)

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  • goodbadi

    Beef

    June 24, 2012

    I love hamburgers.

    The best–most memorable, anyway–meal I ever served housemates was way back in 2000, when McDonald’s had Big Macs on sale for ninety-nine cents. We sat down at the table that night, and my housemates looked at the absence of any evidence of kitchen use except for the pot of peas on the table and wondered to themselves, “Is this all?” That’s when I hopped up, opened the oven door, and presented them each with the crown jewel of Mickey-D’s.

    For many years I swore by Burger King’s Whopper. Four years before I served my housemates the Big Macs, I learned that the Whopper was on sale for the same ninety-nine cents. At least once I bought a couple on my way to work and had brunch there in the darkroom at the newspaper office.

    Much later, I talked my family into celebrating my mom’s sixtieth birthday by all going out to Five Guys, my all-time favorite burger establishment. She may be to blame for my love of ground beef; when we moved back when I was ten to civilization after two years in mountainous hinterlands, she found with glee that we could actually see golden arches from our front porch.

    The ongoing availability of quality burgers on dollar menus is thrilling. I surprised M after her most recent choral concert by taking a little stab at some cheeseburgers. She noted my uncanny ability to give her gifts that I know I would most appreciate receiving. To be fair, though, I’ll add that I’d invited some special guests along, so it wasn’t all about the meat.

    As much as I love burgers, however, I should be clear that even before being married to my dear M of vegetarian leanings, I was not and still am not a frequent patron of fast food restaurants, or even Five Guys. It wouldn’t be accurate at all to claim for myself the saying on the plaque my principal received as a farewell gift from some of his coworkers: “If you are what you eat, I am fast, easy, and cheap.”

    And we buy meat so rarely that I’ve never mastered the art of making burgers.

    A few years ago for Christmas my kind sister-in-law G and her husband gave me a “Build a Better Burger” book which I looked at for supper ideas and then promptly did my own thing, ending up with dry, blackened-brown styrofoam-like discs and a kitchen whose windows could’ve given Paul the idea “for now we see in a mirror, dimly.”

    This week M and I have been at G’s house taking care of her (and our) kids while she is having reconstructive surgery after having cancer that very well could have come from eating those charred, carcinogenic patties way back then. Before they left, though, as they are generous people, G’s husband M took me on a tour of their freezers: pounds and pounds of bacon, pre-shaped beef patties, steaks…you get the picture.

    I dubbed tonight, as the evening before Sunday, “Saturday night,” when it is appropriate to go all out with the grill and bag of potato chips. As I am generally concerned about food safety and specifically, tonight, worried that the raw meat would not be cooked well enough so that ebola and Somalia and other bad things wouldn’t be served to the seething horde, I loaded the grill with enough charcoal to satisfy Satan herself. The resulting leather circles, dry-crunchy weenies, blackened Boca burgers, and charred bacon flakes were, unfortunately, not enough to quiet the tired youngsters in need of an early bedtime, but I dutifully plowed through and ate a minimal portion.

    I am not despairing, however, as on our day-long return trip home I’ll be cashing in the coupon M gave me for Father’s Day–for burgers at a joint of my choice.

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  • goodbadi

    A Telling of John 21:1-14

    June 17, 2012

    (All disciples sit around a campfire, looking bored.) 

    SIMON PETER (standing): I’m going fishing.

    (Nobody responds.) 

     SIMON PETER (clearing his throat): Like I said, I’m going fishing.

     (All others look at each other, grumble and shrug.) 

     JOHN: Well, I believe we will all come along.

    (All get in the boat, shove off shore, and sit, bored, catching nothing all night.) 

    THOMAS: I can’t believe you wanted to go fishing, Rock. What a dumb idea.

    JAMES: Oh, I don’t know. I can’t say I mind the quiet time to meditate on the recent turns of events that have really thrown us all for a loop. As Buddha would have said, “When things go wrong, there’s nothing a little fishing won’t fix.”

     JOHN: I don’t believe Buddha ever said that. 

    JAMES: Stop interrupting my being-less-ness, please.

    NATHANAEL (yawning): Fishing sure beats working on my kitchen, though. Not that I know how to work on it, since I have no carpentry skills. Let alone money. Should I just scrape by so I can pay someone to do it all? Limp through just trying to do it myself? Settle for whatever? Whatever. Kitchens!

    THOMAS: Fishing also sure beats hiding out behind locked doors. In fact, this is much better. Here we are, just sitting out here in the open, nothing to shield us from the ridicule of everyone pointing at us and laughing: ‘Hey look! All the king’s men!’ … ‘Fishers of men! Ha! They ain’t even fishers!’

    SIMON PETER: Okay, okay, so I can’t deny that we’ve caught no fish tonight. But you all shush; I think that turkey on the beach is listening to every word we say. Or else he’s studying my studly chest, since I’m not wearing any clothes. It even says it in the Bible: I’M NOT WEARING ANY CLOTHES!

    (Jesus stands on the beach.) 

    JESUS (calling): Good morning! Did you catch anything for breakfast?

    THOMAS (calling): No, and–I believe my grumbling stomach–not for a midnight snack, neither.

    JAMES (calling): It’s okay, though–we’re just loving the meditating that we’re getting done. 

    NATHANAEL: Shut your traps, boys, or I’ll put you all back in my new root cellar and put a trash can over the trap door. (Calling) No.

    JESUS (calling): Throw the net off the right side of the boat and see what happens.

    SIMON PETER: I think I’ve heard that before.

    JOHN: Just do it, guys. You know, believe.

    (They throw the net off the right side, and it nearly pulls them into the water.) 

    JOHN: It’s the Master! James, where’s my notepad: This is perfect for my book!

    SIMON PETER: Holy Smokes! (Pulls on some clothes and jumps into the water.)

    (Disciples pull the net to shore, where a campfire is laid out, with bread and fish.)

    JESUS: Bring some of the fish you’ve just caught.

    NATHANAEL: Just a sec. We’ve got to count these, first.

    (The disciples count the fish while JESUS impatiently taps his foot.)

    JAMES: Oohmmmmmmmm…153 !

    THOMAS: Can’t be. Net’s only rated to 75. 

    SIMON PETER: Thomas, we know how to count.

    NATHANAEL: Fellows, I’ve got it: I’m going to turn these 153 fish (minus a few for breakfast, of course) into that new breakfast nook in the new kitchen.

    JESUS: Breakfast is ready.

    (JESUS serves them food.)

    SIMON PETER: Yum. I love fish for breakfast. I could eat this every day.

    THOMAS: You already do.

    JAMES: Buddha loved fish, too.

    JOHN: Right.

    NATHANAEL (thinking to himself, aloud): I’m not going to ask if that guy’s Jesus. (To the others) Anyone know of a good fishmonger? I’ve got a feeling my boat’s just floated straight into my kitchen.

    THOMAS: Enough already about the kitchen, Nathanael. (To himself) I’m not going to ask if that guy’s Jesus.

    JOHN (to himself): This is the third time, right? Man, if this won’t make people believe. (To the others) My boat’s a book, and I’m with Nathanael, here: the paddle’s in my hand already.

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