The Significance of Apples in My Religion

The Significance of Apples in My Religion

Apple season is upon us, and this morning I picked up about twelve dozen apples—a dozen dozen aptly named a “gross.” This was in addition to the many dozen I picked up last evening, and the gross I collected yesterday morning, the evening, the afternoon, and the morning before that, and the day before that, and the day before that.

We’ve had several apple-peeling sessions: one person peels and another person chops, dousing the tart chunks with lemon juice to keep them fresh. When the compost bucket is full we dump it in the back garden—picking up apples as we pass under the tree—and start over again.

So far we’ve enjoyed one large apple crisp and one deep-dish apple pie as well as two apple flans and some apple cakes made by our houseguest who we’ve indentured into the assembly line of peeling and chopping. We’ve given away apples to my church members and our neighbors, and we’ve set aside bags of apples for my husband’s church members and for our mail carrier. Anybody who rings the doorbell must take a bag of apples.

After putting up all the apple slices that our freezer can hold, we decided to dry apple pieces that can be stored in the pantry. My husband express-ordered two mesh screens which go in the oven at a low temperature and dehydrate raw food in about eight hours. Given that there are, still, only twenty-four hours in a day, he works three shifts daily, making the house smell, continuously, like a just-baked apple pie.

When I studied Latin American Church History in seminary, I wrote a paper on “The Significance of Corn in the Mayan Religion.” Originally inhabiting the Yucatan area of Mexico and parts of present Guatemala, the Mayas lived on corn to the extent that their whole civilization—including their religious beliefs—centered on corn. Adept at math and astronomy, and with a highly developed system of carved glyphs for recording past events, the Mayas created a remarkable calendar to chart the best times for seeding, irrigating, tasseling, and harvesting corn.

Unlike us westerners who try to separate the spiritual world from the temporal world, Mayas understood the interconnectedness of the earthly and the divine. Their primary foodstuff, corn, was the chief provider of life and the Chief Provider of meaning and order to life. Daily existence revolved around cultivating corn, and corn surpluses led to trading for other goods and specializing in different corn-related activities, like making crafts or guarding the corn. Thus an organized religious structure arose within Mayan society to maintain—and protect—the whole cycle of life.

Like Western Christianity, Mayas believed that humans were made in the divine image, and given that 75% of their diet was composed of corn they saw themselves as creatures of the God of Corn. They used corn to mark various rites of passage, from dedicating their children, to coming-of-age rituals, to marriage ceremonies and fertility practices, to the final harvest of death and the afterlife.

And like Christians the Mayas had more than one god, but all their gods—indeed, all their relationships—were linked to the Corn God, “Kavil,” which means “surplus sustenance.”

Kind of like my current worship of the God of Apples:

Dear Generous Sustaining God,

You created fruit—fruit of all kinds and colors and textures and smells and tastes—

   and it drops from the trees for me and all.

But I grow weary of having to pick up this free food.

I admit I do not look forward to receiving your many gifts, preparing them,

   even sharing them—because it takes up my time, my energy for a whole season.

Forgive me, O God,

   Creator of the apple tree in my garden and all it produces,

   Maker of the seasons, each hour of the day and every day of creation.

In the beginning, O God, you said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation:  

   plants yielding seed and fruit trees of every kind on earth 

   that bear fruit with seed in it,”

   and it was so, and you saw that it was good.

Energize me, energize each one of us, to lift up your free gifts.

Give us courage to claim your gifts,

   patience to prepare them,

   enthusiasm to share them,

   any time, all the time.

Amen.

Do's and Don't's

Do’s and Don’t’s

When I started this blog, over a year and a half ago, I made two lists to guide my writing.

One list reminded me to be biblically-grounded, historically-informed, socially-engaged, communally-nurtured, globally-connected, ecumenically-involved, and earth-friendly.

The other list warned against being preachy or churchy. No writing about my writing (which I’m doing now), or writing about my living relatives (which I’ve done, mostly to their amusement), or writing about my congregation (I couldn’t help it). Steer clear of Guidepost magazine types of articles, like, “How my dog saved my life again” or “My grandmother’s recipe for canine communion wafers.” Don’t be sectarian and talk down about a particular religion. And avoid insider-speak, which plagues most ministers.

I vowed to keep things personable but not get personal or bitter or whiney. Be professional in the true sense of that word: profess my convictions. Describe rather than judge.

There’s an adage among preachers to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” I aimed to fall on the side of comfort—but hopefully padded with integrity.

Even though I’m a die-hard Presbyterian, I wanted my words to be organic and any humor natural, all lending to a certain poignancy (one of my favorite words to say). There are other Presbyterian columnists in the world, each of whom measures differently on the “get-real” spectrum: Dave Barry (son and brother of Presbyterian clergy) is the one to emulate. Those who spin spiritual candy floss or wallow about whether puppies can cry—they can stay in their self-made hell-hole.

In everything I write I try to employ inclusive language and imagery rather than talk about inclusiveness, so I won’t talk about it now. Inclusiveness speaks for itself.

I enjoy playing with gender and stereotypes and upsetting assumptions. One of the reasons I went into ministry was to challenge patriarchal notions of what a minister is and does. Ministry is full of quotable quotes and cringe-worthy clichés. I happen to believe we are made of—and for—truer words.

Humor Me

Humor Me

Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: That’s not funny.

Sadly, this is as close as I get to being humorous. I’ve always envied funny people, folks who can say something that makes people laugh. They seem to have a knack for it. I live with someone like this: he has been known to stand up in a meeting of ministers and read an otherwise dull report and somehow cause people to chuckle. Partly it’s his dry, western, could-give-a-damn accent, and partly it’s his timing and intonation, where he chooses to insert a pause before delivering what becomes the punch line—only it wasn’t meant to be a punch line, it was just the end of a boring sentence. Which makes it hilarious without trying.

 I, on the other hand, am a good audience. I laugh at pretty much anything. And as a minister I’ve developed a talent for laughing on the inside. Because people don’t like to be laughed at. Fortunately I inherited from my maternal ancestry a strong German temperament which allows me to suppress giggles, and I have a naturally down-turned mouth that expresses seriousness in the face of ludicrousness.

It’s little old ladies who make me laugh. Get a group of them together and it’s a stitch. Partly it’s because I expect their generation to be polite and well-mannered, and partly it’s because as they age they lose some of their social filters, or maybe when they get away from the menfolk they let down their defences. I remember taking a group of elderly churchwomen to tour retirement homes one day, and one place had a large glassed-in aviary with a variety of small birds flitting about inside it. Our tour guide was a young woman like myself, and as the group paused in front of the aviary, she asked if anyone had any questions—about the retirement home, she meant. One little old lady piped up, “How do they breed?”

It took a number of seconds for the question to sink in, during which time the guide looked at me and I could tell she wasn’t prepared to address ornithological reproduction. Finally she said, “Just like they do in the wild.” The enquirer peered up into the glass case and responded, “Don’t they suffocate?” I got as far as imagining two birds doing it and wondering where the concern for their airwaves came into it when I realized that she wanted to know “How do they breathe?”

Another time I was visiting a women’s monthly Circle meeting—definitely one of the circles of hell and as predictable and painful as a menstrual cycle. I only attend these upon invitation, but I do go each time I am invited. Such gatherings typically take place in someone’s living room, where the hostess serves tea or coffee in china cups set on matching plates. Platters of sandwiches—with the crusts removed and cut diagonally into fourths—would be passed around, followed by trays of home-made sweets. And in Minnesota there was always a dish of salted peanuts and a dish of hard mints.

After we’d all been served and re-served, the Circle President would call the meeting to order and most of the dozen or so ladies would give their attention to their leader. There would always be a few hard-of-hearing, however, who would carry on chatting until someone spoke directly into their ear, “We’re starting now,” and they’d shut up. The President would walk us through the agenda that felt to me like the valley of the shadow of death, only I had to act interested because I was, after all, the honored guest. The Secretary would read aloud the minutes of the previous meeting—which sounded like a scene from an existential drama where the audience members pretend to grasp the profound message therein but in fact don’t have a clue because there isn’t one. Then the Treasurer would report on—really—the number of pennies collected for this or that mission fund since last month’s meeting.

So once again I found myself surrounded by sweet little old nuts, when one of them reminded the group to turn in their stamps. By stamps she meant used postage stamps, this being in the days before snail-mail had been decimated by e-mail. This church matriarch was always telling members of the congregation to turn in stamps, and sure enough they would bring paper sacks or plastic baggies stuffed with American flags, eagles, Christmas religious scenes, and Santa Claus stamps, many of which still clung to the corners of envelopes. I estimate it took each individual a good hour or so to fill one bag with about-one-inch squares, and usually folks would bring several bags to church and pass them off to our nonagenarian stamp collector. Personally I tried to avoid this perpetual project like the plague, because it never quit. And while we all had a vague idea that it had something to do with foreign missions, it was a though Christ had died so that we might go out into the world to save stamps.

I recall that as soon as this little old lady had repeated her appeal for stamps, another little old lady turned to a third little old lady and whispered in a way that little old ladies are wont to do—that is, loudly—“What happens to the stamps?”

The third little old lady must have asked herself the same thing because she had a ready reply: “They probably burn them.”

And with that, we bowed our heads for the closing prayer.