And Then I Said …

Each morning he got up and faced the same meal. He alleviated the alike by cavorting with his cutlery. He frolicked with his fork and he speared with his spoon, yet each morning the meal was a twin. He heard of other foods, he noticed other nutrition and he tasted at other tables. He developed a taste for the tasty and a drive for distinctive dinners. “Sustenance must do more than sustain,” he decided. “Nutrition needn’t just nurture. It should be noticeable,” he discerned. His mental menu became a piecemeal of pieces from imagined meals: sautés from his seen and entrées from entertainments. His table was deserted yet soon he’d make it desserted: cakes and cookies and confections. He deemed it less a dream and more a quest and he began to attain his banquet.

 

It would take preparation. It would take perseverance. It would take toil and it would take tears. Yet the bounty was in the banquet and the goal would arrive at the gathering. He divided his space into a place just in case. He needed a plot for the produce and some land for the livestock. He would toil and he would foster. He would grind and he would group. Potatoes were a staple. He planted them in the periphery. He’d need a clearing for a calf. He’d need a grove for a garden. He set to the task.

The neighbors would tisk at the tasks he had set. “A man doesn’t need more than a potato!” they’d judge, “Why spend the sweat for a sweet?” Yet his garden would yield beauty for his bounty and he wanted to set a table for the eyes as well as the tongue. And a flower can provide flavor and favor. So he’d need to weed and he worked until weary.

Could he have concentrated on the concrete and starved the soul just for starch? Certainly. Yet the human heart seeks beauty in its beings and needs expression not repression. Animals eat; men yearn to dine. Should he have caved and carved the calf? Certainly, yet you cut when you cleave. A calf offers milk and cheese, not just meat. There’s continuance in its continuation. He could have left acres to fallow yet it follows that the pursuit of more portions can be prosperous. He divided his time and he timed his divisions: so much of the day for a cow that needs cud, so much of a minute for a spud bathed in mud, so much of a second for a flower yet to bud. He worked and he waited. He went without sleep. Yet his goal was apparent to any man who’s a parent. You do what you need because you have children to feed.

The days passed with the years yet his eyes shed no tears. He was too weary to be teary. “Who noticed the work?” he would wonder. He harvested yet never hoarded. He shared with his brood and yet never brooded about the loss of a bounty. His hair grew gray until it grew tired of exposition. His pate was as pale as his pallor. Yet his parlor was packed.

One day he carried his aged bones to the table and feasted his eyes at the spread near the head. Gathered around were the ones he had fostered. There was food for the hungry and flowers for the table. There was milk for the babies and breasts full from the bounty of God’s blessings. There was variety for the various. He had been generous to his generations. And he had earned it with his work. He poured a stew from a pot that he’d smelted with sweat: an old man’s pot full of geriatric stew. A stew of elements toiled by his elderly hands. He had amassed a bounty for the head and the heart and the hearth and the home. And God looked down and saw it was good.

The aspect of proportionate is that each man is justly given a proportion. It isn’t selfish to set a portion as your portion. To deny a portion means to be disproportionate. Grace is in self-sacrifice yet wisdom is in justice. If you have one piece of bread and one child at your knee – is it wise to whittle the bread for his sole sustenance? If you take a corner and refrain so only he can sustain – then who will tend for the one who can’t take care of himself? So nibble a kibble and be strong until the child can get along. Every heart must have health and art and music and love. And each element makes a hearty stew that will nurture our souls when our bodies are too old to toil yet our souls are still young and still yearn.