Figs and Faith
“Then their eyes were opened...and they sewed fig leaves together and made clothes for themselves.”
Some wonderful food and people are acquired tastes. Food first. Across my first dozen years of life, it would have been tough to come up with a dozen things I liked. Fried chicken legs, non-gravy mashed potatoes, non-iced cake, Rice Krispies, correctly made banana sandwiches, and well... That's the point. Not much. Whereas in Dianne's family you were required to try something before you declared you didn't like it, in mine, for some reason, you were allowed to get by with a whiney 'I don't like that.'
Things of course changed. Now going down the line of dozens of choices at Nikki's or walking through the rainbow array of fresh produce at the East Lake UMC Saturday Farmers' Market, my tray and bag are not big enough for all I want. Figs, however, are comparatively latecomers to my palate.
In my first church - pretty gray stucco Gurley Methodist just outside Huntsville - as a 20-something seminary student, I met a delightful caste of people. Among them was Mrs. Fowlkes, 80+, a decade or more older than my grandparents at the time. Long a widow, Mrs. Fowlkes (Hester) lived in a weathered clapboard house, high ceilings, tall windows, sparse living room with overstuffed couch and chair, TV tray end tables, and tiny B/W TV. Mrs. Fowlkes heard me say from the pulpit that I liked popcorn (oh yes, popcorn was on the early list). So each time I visited her, she made popcorn. Great.
Then one day Mrs. Fowlkes said she had made fig preserves and gave me a Mason jar of the dark mysterious substance to take home. Not long afterwards one Saturday breakfast in the flagstone parsonage next to the church - built by the carpenter pastor and church men in the 1930's - Dianne served the preserves with our breakfast toast. From her history and heritage she said, 'how do you know you don't like figs unless you try them...and you know Mrs. Fowlkes is going to ask you about them.'
So I ladled out the sinister deep red, seedy goo with little flecks of lemon peel.
Figs, not for the faint or infantile, not sweet and easy like applesauce or bananas, but dark, sinewy, a bit of tiny seed crunch - a grown up taste that doesn't immediately reveal all the its secrets. MMM. A long time coming. A great acquired taste.
Last week, Dianne made fig preserves - pictured with her just right fluffy inside-crunchy outside biscuits and Debbie Lofton-style crisp baked Conecuh bacon. Body and soul, stomach and spirit, good!
Memories swirled. Both my grandmothers had fig trees in their yards. Both made fig preserves that I - sigh - missed tasting because I prematurely decided I did't like them. In time, I did get to enjoy Dianne's Grandmother Shockley's figgy preserves. Also I recalled a decade later than Mrs. Fowlkes 90+ Clara Copeland's preserves, from her tree figs of which she step ladder climbed to pick herself. Wonderful taste and people thanks to figs.
Of people. Also wonderful, but many a long time coming acquired taste. We are pretty infantile, childish about people we like early on. Sadly some of us have a hard time outgrowing it. It is easier to stick with people who look, think, act, believe, smell, etc. like us and never stretch us out of our comfort zone. Across the years, we like the Wallace's, Trump's, and such who make us feel good about our bigotry.
Funny. Those who say we need to get back to the Bible to back up their excluding people must have missed the Bible's actual opposite arc of stretching, expanding, and including previously left out people. The chosen people called to be light to the nations. No longer slaves or free, Jew or Gentile, male or female - all one in the love of God we know in Jesus. The early Christians in Acts 15 were Spirit stretched to include food and people previously excluded. The Bible takes not back to where we have been but forward to where we have not been.
Across my life, the stretch for food and people continues. Race, religion, gender, love-styles, nationalities, even some folks in our families...
Life quickly became complicated from the beginning for God's creation of complicated, intensely forgiveness requiring humans. Most all of us are a hard to take-acquired taste to love and put up with.
So, Adam looks at a fig tree. Hey, Eve, try this on. Hey, Adam. Taste this.