making butter

So this isn’t really a recipe post as much as a reflection post . . . because one doesn’t really need a recipe for making butter.
To make butter: Pour whole cream into a bowl, add a dash of salt, whip the daylights out of it, and presto: Butter.

But the actual act of making butter connects you to something else. Something beautiful and nourishing and transformational. Is that an exaggeration? I don’t know. But making butter, for me, feels like all of those things.

As I sit on the counter, watching my stand mixer do the work housewives before me grew blisters for, I marvel at their tenacity. Their determination to do something good for their people. And gratitude is the only word I can think of. I’m thankful for them. For these women, all of them, who came before me to make the world what it continues to become. I’m thankful they cared enough about their people to do the work, day after day. To nourish and feed and love and build life out of nothing. Do to transformational work—in the kitchen and out. I think it fair to call butter making an allegorical act. A work that tells a story. In making butter, one useful nourishing thing is changed into another useful nourishing thing. And isn’t that what it is, to parent and cook? To wife and partner? To work and build and grow? We change ourselves, and those around us, with small daily acts, from one thing into another.

So as you go about this week, take a minute. Pause. Remember. You’re making butter. In and out of the kitchen. As men and women ages before you have done. The unseen, blister-growing, heart work that transforms lives. Well done. Churn on.

the Diver

“One may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to colour and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover.”
—C.S. Lewis (Miracles)

 

I’m going to start off with a note acknowledging that this is a bold, personal post and I know not everyone reading it will agree or appreciate that I felt the need to post it. And that’s okay.

I have loved C.S. Lewis’s quote—or word picture rather—since the first time I read it.
It gives such clarity to the theological truths I live by. This idea of foolish, extravert Grace that strips down to nothing, and descends even farther—so far as to be cloaked by death, but not consumed. And all for something He considered precious, though by all appearances and realities, the “prize” wasn’t worth the cost it required to obtain it.
The very act of God’s plunge gave it value.
Lost things are given value—worth—by the one who searches.

This Sunday we celebrate Easter—the death of death. The plunge and rise of Christ for the sake of me, and you, and every broken heart that ever was or will ever be. It’s a celebration of all the “Re.” —Restoration and Rebirth, Rejuvenation, and Relationship if only we accept the outstretched hand and the offer of air.

This is a blog about food. About the things that nourish need. And I’ll be first in line to admit that my need goes far beyond physical. I crave wholeness in every aspect. Physical and mental, emotional, and spiritual. And praise God, who sent His one and only Son to earth, to plunge and rise again, that He refused to leave those needs unmet—yours and mine.

Happy Easter, Dear Ones.