Making Soup

Two days ago I started making split pea soup. It began with water, peas, ham hocks, onion and seasonings. After a long simmer, it went into the fridge. Yesterday I took the meat off the bones, skimmed fat off the broth, added carrots and celery and let it simmer for several hours. The aroma permeated the house. I like the smell even better than the taste!

My dad loved to make soup and put in everything "but the kitchen sink". Any little left-over this or that, he'd throw in. It was always delicious.

This reminded me of something I heard Mark Shields say on The News Hour the other evening:

Last week we saw a white Catholic male Republican judge murdered on his way to greet a Democratic Jewish woman member of Congress, who was his friend. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year-old Mexican-American gay college student, and eventually by a Korean American combat surgeon, and this all was eulogized by our African American President."

This country CAN be a delicious "soup", with all sorts of interesting combinations. Of course any cook knows that some flavors don't mix so well. The analogy doesn't really hold from here on. Because we Americans are already in this soup--all of us together--whether we like it or not. What kind of soup do we want it to be? Palatable, at least, I hope. I pray.

Meanwhile, I'm going to be eating pea soup for the foreseeable future. Just a little warning for those of you who might be near by!

I'm grateful for another day.

Winter reflection on compassion

It is snowing huge lovely flakes and I'm grateful I have a warm home! The other evening, after dropping a friend off at her place, I drove up Larch Street past the Volunteers of America shelter. It was bitter cold and windy. Suddenly I felt, viscerally, the reality that there are people, lots of them, with no place to sleep tonight. Not a new awareness, certainly, but a stark reminder that in this "proud" country we are content to allow millions of people to suffer, apparently because we believe it's each person for him/her self and if "they" would really try, they wouldn't be in this mess.

There's probably some truth to that. We are responsible for ourselves. At the same time, there is not one person on the face of this earth who got where they are simply on their own. We are intricately woven into the fabric of other lives--ancestors, family of origin, teachers, childhood friends, abusers, decision-makers, kind and caring others, mentors, bullies, and on and on. It is all too easy, and oh so self-satisfying, to think we "know" what makes another person tick. And the best part of judgementalism is that it distracts me from my own failings, weaknesses, mistakes, indecision, passivity. No matter how disappointed I may be in myself, there are always those others who, by comparison, are worse.

Still, every major religion encourages compassion, mercy, justice, community. How do we justify the trifling amount of private and public money that goes to care for those who need it most, be they elderly, disabled, children, whatever? We spend a god-awful fortune on defense, so sure that if we are "big" enough, no one will hurt us. No problem, folks. We're doing it to ourselves. I expect those who hate us are laughing to see our intentional trip to destruction. Sadly, how we treat "the least of these" is one of the most obvious signs.

Well, that's my first rant for 2011. I expect it's not the last. May we keep awake, aware, and compassionate in whatever ways, large and small, are presented to us.