Am I really a bitter man? Well, I certainly have bitter tastes: dark roast coffee, hoppy beers and high cacao-content dark chocolate suggest that I am bitter, bitter, bitter.
I am bitter about some things, to be sure. I am bitter about substandard math education in Christian high schools. Corporal punishment. Legalism. Poverty. I guess the list could on -- there are some things I could be bitter about but am not and a lot of other things I used to be bitter about but no longer am.
In fact, Christy (the woman who I convinced to marry me) accuses me of being too perky, too optimistic. Someone suggested recently that it is important to embrace both the dark and the light. Even our liturgy brings us through the darkness as we recognize and admit our human plight in confession before hearing the assurance of pardon and the proclamation of the Gospel. The Psalter is full of darkness and light. Perhaps as a result of my background, I am too afraid of the dark. As suggested in Psalm 121, the moon has smitten me and I fear it. But the promise of Psalm 121 is that the sun shall not smite me by day, nor the moon by night.
Sourdough has been a teacher to me in these two weeks. Against the bitterness of the bacteria, the yeast forms, multiplies, grows. I have to allow the starter to sour before I can use it in bread. If I use it before it is sour enough (as I did), I get not bread, but dense cakes of baked, dried playdough. I'm trying to embrace the sour parts of life as a source of fullness.
2 comments:
Hello Love. Good stuff so far. But I think it's more blog-like to just refer to me as Christy instead of 'my wife' all the time. I know you like the idea of possessing me :) but I have a name - plus it makes the blog sound much more natural and less like reading an editorial from the newspaper. Happy blogging.
-C
This is interesting! And thanks for your comment on my blog too!
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