Jars of Light
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008Being Birdie’s friend necessitates an adventurous spirit and the willingness to meet her on her turf, a turf I had to admit was not widely visited. We met in the diner south of town near the abandoned drive-in. A handful of truckers and farmers sat scattered throughout the dining area. The waitress was making the rounds with a pot of fresh coffee. Sitting beside Birdie was a brown paper bag. I sat down and she peered at me over the top of the sports page of the paper.
“
Checking the line on your team?” I ventured breaking the silence.
“Well, smarty pants, I am keeping up with my basketball boys, but I’m certainly not interested in something as vile as a betting line. Only the unwashed would wager their hard-earned cash for something as fickle as a sporting event,” she piously said to me. We both knew that Birdie was an occasional buyer of a lottery ticket.
“Everybody’s got their own little private sins,” she reminded me, “What’s yours?” Pious denial worked with some church members but it never got me anywhere with Birdie. We both shared the understanding that a deep honesty about both our goodness and our sin was a healthier way to live. Neither of us could stomach the false piety that some Christians call “normal.”
As I’ve already said, sitting on the table when I arrived was a brown paper bag. Birdie pushed the sack toward me and said, “These are for you and your sweet family.” Inside were jars bearing the fruit of Birdie’s garden. “Take, eat and enjoy, pastor.
“You look like a man accustomed to those instructions,” she jibed merrily.
“These took all summer to grow and then just last week I swept through my garden as if I created them myself. From the garden to the cooking pot and then into a Mason jar sealed tight for the winter. They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Birdie had that beatific glow of someone who had done something nearly miraculous.
“Thank you for sharing them with me and my family, Birdie. We’ll think of you when we open them,” I said, trying to be appropriately grateful.
The first one I pulled out was freshly pickled cucumbers. Most folks would simply call them pickles but even I could tell they weren’t quite fully pickled. They were still cucumbers caught in the in-between time between being a cucumber and becoming a pickle. Like some people I know.
There were two jars of peaches, golden and sweet. The squash had slivers of onions suspended in the juice. The tomatoes had been peeled and looked like red balls of tomato goodness ready to make a winter stew the perfect meal.
“Growing a garden is a partnership venture,” she said quietly. “We gardeners are like midwives to something that we had little to do with but are fortunate enough to witness. Maybe that’s it! When we garden, we become witnesses. God lets us share in the glory of creation for a season.”
I couldn’t help but add, “I read something a while back written by someone who went into the root cellar and took a good long look at the vast riches of the stored fruit and vegetables and observed the latent light captured within them. ‘Stored light’ was how the writer described it.”
“Preacher, I was with you till you got down into the root cellar and went allegorical on me. Give me another shot at what you mean.”
Birdie’s teachable moments were rare so I wasn’t quite prepared to handle it. “Think of it this way, it’s as if the light of the whole summer gets poured into the plants and at just the right moment, we put a lid on all that light and bottle it.”
“The proper term is ‘canning’ but it’s still pretty good for middle of the week, Holy Man. I guess you would also add to your little object lesson the idea that in the darkest days of winter, we can open up our little jars of light and they can pour out all that illumination.”
“Maybe you missed your calling, Reverend Birdie,” I said. “Let’s give it a try this winter.” I held up the jar of peaches to the light, “When I open up this jar of peaches and make a cobbler this winter, I’m going to let the light shine! Of course, I’ll have to put a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream on top to bring out all its latent glory.”
“When you make that cobbler, be sure to give me a call and we’ll do this little experiment together. The ice cream is not an option. It’s required!” Birdie added. “I see your point … I guess that’s what God does in all things. The light of the sun itself is like the light of God and it gets inside things. When we get into those dark, testing times, the light wants to peek out and sustain us till winter is past.”
“Birdie, you’re beautiful! It’s a date!”
Note to readers: Thanks to Paul Duke for the insight into stored light that I retrieved as referenced by another pastoral colleague. Hopefully this gives the attribution for the metaphor to the one who first captured it.
