From concentrate
May 19, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 35 Comments
I know there isn’t much difference between the sort of juice you get from concentrate and the sort of juice you get any other way. Not when it comes to taste, at least. I’ve sampled. No, concentrate is used in our home for another reason. It’s a reminder of sorts, something tangible that helps keep me focused on one of life’s greater truths.
My mother always had orange juice concentrate in the freezer. Easier on the budget, she said. And though my childhood interests tended to involve things far away from the kitchen, I was always around when she made orange juice. The process amazed me.
One frozen tube, small enough to fit into my tiny hand, suddenly transformed into an entire pitcher of juicy goodness? Simply by adding some water? To most, it was a powerful example of human ingenuity endeavoring to make the world a simpler and more orderly place. To me, it was a minor miracle.
Though water seemed to be the magic ingredient, I always thought it an unnecessary step that took a bit away from the finished product. Why bother? Water didn’t taste good. It didn’t taste at all. On the other hand, the stuff in the tube had to be loaded with taste. Sweet, with just a hint of sour. Delicious.
So why not forget the water all together? Why not just serve it right out of the tube?
According to mom, that wasn’t such a good idea. Concentrate on its own was awful, she said. It was too sweet and too powerful. That’s why water was the magic ingredient. It diluted the concentrate and made the juice drinkable.
I never bought that.
One day, alone in the house, I decided to see if she knew what she was talking about. I climbed up on a chair, took the concentrate out, and peeled off the cover. After a few minutes of letting the orange goop thaw in a bowl, I sniffed and smiled. Heaven awaited.
Thinking back, I probably should have taken a sip. Just in case. But I didn’t. I took the biggest gulp I could. Swallowed half of it, too. The other half was launched right back out through a retch that spewed the juice through my mouth and nose and left me teary eyed. I coughed and hacked and, for a moment, almost blacked out.
Mom was wrong. The concentrate wasn’t awful. It was worse.
How could something be so sweet and have too much taste to drink? And how could diluting something so bad make it so good? It didn’t make sense then.
It does now.
Because I’ve spent years wanting a concentrated life. Years on my knees, asking God to help me be and do more. My days were filled with too many mere moments. I wanted defining ones. Moments that lifted me up and rescued me from the hum-drum of life.
And there have been some, to be sure. Like the moment I met my wife. Or when I first held my children. Or the moment I knew beyond all doubt that there was a God Who loved me. But those moments have been surrounded by years of seeming nothingness, when the days seemed to drift by rather than stand out.
I hated those times. A waste of living, I thought. But I’ve learned to think differently. I’ve learned that we may be proven in our defining moments, but we are made in our quiet ones.
Drinking life right out of the tube would sooner wear us down than lift us up. Rather than enjoy its taste, we’d spew it out. It would be too sweet and too powerful to swallow.
Which I think is why God in His infinite wisdom gives our greatest blessings to us over time rather than all at once. Why our days seem to have much more of the same old than the different new. Time, I think, is the magic ingredient. It waters things down. Which is why the wait we mourn for the dreams we have may in fact be His greatest gift.
It makes the living more delicious.
Packing For The New Year
January 18, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 8 Comments
(This post first appeared in the Staunton News-Leader on January 11, 2009)
I’ve read that in the years of westward expansion, settlers would often spend the first night of their journey only a few miles from the city of their departure. That way all of their gear could be unpacked, used, and more fully considered. Any nonessentials could easily be disposed of, and anything missing could be gone back and purchased. A trial run, in other words.
It is in this spirit that I would like to start this new year. I am about to end my first full week of 2009, which seems to be about the right time to take a moment and consider what is thus far going right and what is going wrong. What I could use more of and what I could really do without.
My New Year’s resolution lasted exactly twelve hours and thirty-seven minutes. Not bad, really, until you consider that for eight of those hours I was sleeping. Still, I’ll call it par for the course. I’ve never had much luck with resolutions.
I nonetheless like the idea of deciding what it is you want to change about yourself. New Years is one of the few times that I take a long, hard look at me. Warts and all. It isn’t that pretty of a picture, but I guess that’s the point. There’s always something to fix. Always something we can either improve or discard.
This year, I think I need more of that self-investigation. But I’ll do it in the mindset that I am a work in progress rather than something eternally broken. I’m going to try to do without the high expectations. “Be ye kind,” the Bible says. To yourself, too.
Like most everyone else, I was glad to see 2008 go. Not that the whole year was bad, but enough of it was. A new year brings new possibilities. It’s the closest we get to a do-over, a chance to start from scratch. If Christmas is the season of hope, then New Years is the season of hopefulness. Things will be better, we promise ourselves. We won’t screw things up again.
But it’s worth remembering that life is more like a permanent marker than a piece of chalk. You can’t erase one year just because a new one comes along. You have to carry it with you, if only so you can learn from your mistakes. So I can do with the hopefulness this time of year brings. But I’ll do without the thinking that simply putting a new calendar on the wall will fix things.
If I’m packing for the trip into a new year, I can’t forget to carry along my faith. There seems to be a lot of that going around. Which is amazing, really, considering the fact that things seem so bad in so many places. But I wonder sometimes in what direction does that faith leads. For many, it’s toward a particular person or situation. When this person is in charge, we think, things will get better. Or when that government comes to its senses, things will start to turn the other way.
But faith in such things is ultimately self-defeating. It asks us to depend upon other people to make us happier. People who are just as frail and flawed as we. So I will be sure to carry my faith for the next twelve months, but I will also make sure that faith is placed in the God who created man rather than man himself.
And the last of my supplies? Love. There must be love, if for no other reason than no journey is worth beginning without it. It is the sort of love that reaches beyond self or family and extends to life itself. It is a love of the moment, of each breath, whether exhaled in frustration or peace.
That is the love I need. The love that makes hope and faith possible. The love that says no matter what the year may bring, it is God Who will bring it, and all will be well.
I’m a writer whose first novel, Snow Day, will be published by FaithWords in 2010.
But don’t let that fool you. I’m just as confused as anyone.
And that is fine with me, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is that you never know what you might run into.
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