Comfort Food For The Soul

February 11th, 2012  |   

Food that provides consolation or a feeling of well-being, typically any with a higher sugar or carbohydrate content and associated with childhood or home cooking.

Dictionary definition of Comfort Food.

A Plateful Of Determination

The woman sitting next to me in the hospital waiting room is 82 years old. She is trim and so alert that she puts me to shame. We strike up a conversation. She got up at 4:00 AM to pick up her brother, her younger brother. He’s being worked on while we talk.

This woman’s husband is at home. He is almost totally deaf. She is losing her vision but has enough confidence and sight to drive from the rural area where she lives so that she can transport her brother to and from the hospital.

Her husband is a World War II army veteran who saw lots of action in Europe, mostly in France. Like many veterans, he didn’t come home from the war and talk about it. What she knows about the war has come from listening in on conversations during numerous reunions of his combat unit. That’s where grown men cry. It’s where the wounds and scars, hidden beneath these men’s outward appearance, are allowed to surface.

She tells me that her husband of 62 years was hospitalized in Chicago at a reunion fifteen years ago. It was the first wave of a heart attack. A second wave occurred as they drove home. Describing him as a determined person, matched only by her determination, he would not let her stop at a hospital en route. No stops on the way home to West Virginia.    

And home she drove, telling him in no uncertain terms, “don’t you go anywhere, don’t you leave me.” And he didn’t. And so she drove on, and she kept praying, and he kept breathing.

Retired, he’s at home now with bum knees, but still as determined as she is. This kind of determination either drives people apart or else it binds them together. Her eyes tell me even more than her mouth. She’s as bound to this man as she was when they were young.   

Having grown up in a rural West Virginia hollow, they’ve never lived anywhere else. Why should they? It’s home. With only a high school education, this feisty woman, before retiring, rose from a receptionist job to being the administrator of a fifty person staff.

I hug her when I leave the hospital. She hugs back. It’s a warm embrace. She may not know it, but she has given me a plateful of determination. That kind of meal can carry a human being a long way, don’t you think? She is enough comfort food for my entire day.

A Mother’s Determination Up Against A Recruiter’s Determined Ambition                                                                                                                                             Sometimes I think I am an ecclesiastical Ann Landers, who for 56 years wrote a syndicated advice column featured in newspapers all across America. That’s because, for one reason or anther, people I do not even know call me to air an opinion or seek advice. A few weeks ago it was a woman on the other end of the line seeking counsel about her son.

She identified herself as a Christian. I never know whether that means an attack is forthcoming, or a point of positive identification. It was obvious right from the start that she came from a more fundamentalist approach to the Bible; nevertheless, I felt an immediate faith connection with her as she talked.

She described her son in great detail. As a young boy, he had taken missionary trips with his family and church. He was, she said, a sensitive boy who loved to help people. He had been talking with a Marine Corp recruiter and was on the verge of signing his name to an enlistment agreement.

The recruiter had told this mother and son, that he would be able to guarantee him service in New Zealand or Australia following boot camp. That was intriguing to her son—the thought of the beautiful water and scenery—but his mother was suspicious. I confirmed her suspicion. Recruiters cannot guarantee automatic assignments for recruits. He was less than honest with this young man and his mother, but give him credit for honesty when he said he didn’t like being a recruiter, but it was a stepping-stone for a better assignment. Of course, producing a goodly number of recruits guarantees him a reward.

Whether that young man should join the Marine Corps is not my decision to make, nor his mother’s. I stressed that fact. What I gleaned from the conversation was simply that this woman’s son wanted to move beyond his rural West Virginia home in order to have experiences on his own, without his family. He wanted to grow up and become a man.   

I encouraged the caller on the other end of the line to keep talking with her son in an understanding way, and to make sure he understood that enlisting wasn’t only about seeking exotic places. It also meant that he might have to kill people.

A week later this woman calls to thank me. She tells me that her son is not going to enlist. He can’t kill anyone, given how he’s been raised. Instead, the family has enough money to send him to a school where he won’t have to study war, but rather environmental studies, particularly as they pertain to water. I am pleased at the exchange. Then I think about young people who don’t have the money to support alternative jobs.

On Sundays, when I am celebrating and administering the Eucharist in a congregation, I feed bread and wine to people. It is comfort food. Maybe I should think of this encounter on the phone, and others as well, as some kind of electronic comfort food for callers.

Standing In The Need Of Prayer And Some Comfort Food

I took advantage of a free car wash the other day. While waiting for the crew to wipe down my car with rags, a guy waiting for his car struck up a conversation.

He began by commiserating about the world situation, about how dark and dangerous these times are for people. That led to conversation about Iran and President Obama. You may think I started the conversation, but I didn’t. Honest, I didn’t. He spoke. I listened.

Iran is out to get us. Iran hates America. They want to kill Americans. If they get “the bomb,” they will use it on us. President Obama is a socialist—a Marxist. He wasn’t vetted before he was elected president. He hung out with communists when he was young. He didn’t go to a good school, and we don’t even know his grades. He took drugs.

As he rattles on I feel hate in this man. But then I think that he is full of fear and that Gandhi was right when he said: The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is fear.”

“Keep your eyes open,” he says, as I get in my car. “Keep your eyes open wide because these are dangerous times.” I smiled and told him that I sure would do that.

As the old hymn says, this man is “standing in the need of prayer.” He also could use some comfort food, don’t you think—chicken soup for the soul? On second though, after encountering this man’s fear, so do I. Where is a brownie when I need one?

Landau Murphy From Logan, West Virginia—Who And From Where?

I looked out my back window and there on the top of my trashcan was a brief case. It had been opened and papers were swirling about down the alley. After gathering them up, I looked for a phone number, and then made a call. As it turned out, the owner was ecstatic over the fact that what had been stolen from his car had been recovered.

Here’s where the story takes an interesting twist. When the man came to pick up the briefcase, he wanted to give me a reward. When I passed up the cash, he offered me an autographed Landau Murphy CD. It turns out the briefcase man is Murphy’s agent. Well, you say, what’s so interesting about that? Just who is this Landau Murphy from Logan?

The Landau Murphy story is a rags-to-riches tale. Rags—like the rags used to wash cars. Until recently, Murphy worked at a car wash in Logan, West Virginia. Born into poverty, homeless at 19, the only work he could find was at a local car wash. Then, like the now legendary Susan Boyle who found fame and cash through her appearance on American Idol, Landau found his future on the NBC reality show, “America’s Got Talent.” And talent is exactly what this 36-year-old man has. He won the $1 million prize, signed contracts with Sony and Columbia Records. He is, above all, a West Virginia hero.

Logan County, unbeknownst to most people, is the site of the largest armed rebellion in America since the Civil War. In 1921, about 15,000 coal miners confronted police, strikebreakers, and U.S. troops in an attempt to unionize miners in companies that were exploiting them. Folks interested in this struggle should read Denise Giardina’s book, Storming Heaven, and see the John Sayles movie, Matewan.

Landau Murphy’s county is also where the Buffalo Creek disaster took place. February 26 will mark the 40^th anniversary of the night back in 1972 when a Pittston Coal Company coal slurry impoundment dam burst. About 132 million gallons of black wastewater wiped out 16 coal mining communities, killing 125 people, injuring 1,121 people, and leaving 4,000 people homeless.

With such rampant exploitation by coal companies, along with abject poverty, I find it miraculous, by any definition, that this area has produced such magnificent rebellious resistance, as well as a man like Landau Murphy, who captures Frank Sinatra when he sings. Strange, isn’t it? Good crops have a way of growing, even in rugged soil. And dyed-in-the-wool West Virginian’s will swear to the fact that the wild ramps that grow here, like the wild and wonderful people who live here, are pungent comfort food. 

Comfort Food To Counteract Fear

In 1999, Mike Wallace interviewed me for a Sixty Minutes piece about the Diocese of Delaware’s involvement with problems in the poultry industry. He asked me if poultry farmers (growers) were really as afraid of Tyson and Perdue as I had stated. Was I exaggerating the fear? I didn’t hesitate because the answer was simple.

The companies contract with growers on a one-year basis. If the grower challenges company policies, or tries to organize other growers in order to bargain for a better contract, the company can refuse to renew the contract. That is devastating to a grower who has his livelihood tied up in chickens, and most often a huge debt tied up in land and equipment. Sure poultry growers are afraid, especially the ones with small operations.

But poultry growers, and poultry plant workers as well, aren’t the only people frightened. Fear is an inevitable factor for all of us. It has many manifestations. Perhaps it’s fear over losing a job, losing one’s health, losing a relationship, or losing one’s life. Maybe it’s fear based in some uncomfortable psychological or spiritual malaise.

The New Testament story about Jesus crossing the Sea of Galilee with the twelve Apostles during a storm is a marvelous prototype of human fear. As the waves crashed upon the boat and the wind roared, the twelve cried out, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” Looking directly into the eye of that storm, and the eyes of the Apostles, the underlying reality of all fear—fear of death—was in that boat.

While I was pecking away at my computer, constructing these Notes, I was informed that a friend was in the emergency room. Upon arriving there, I took her hand. She was embarrassed because it was cold. And then she said, “Your hand is so warm.” Wearing a collar around my neck for almost forty-eight years, I have walked through the valley of the shadow of fear with many people. It is a frigid place—a place where blood runs cold.

A warm presence in a cold situation is comfort food. Perhaps it comes as a warm casserole delivered to the door of someone who has experienced the death of someone they loved. Or maybe it arrives as a warm hug between people who need so desperately to come in out of the cold—an ice-cold grief capable of inflicting frostbite to one’s soul. Perhaps it’s the warmth between people in love bundled together for better or for worse.

And for those of us who attempt to hide our fears rather than acknowledging them, the great operatic star Lucian Pavarotti has a message for us when we fear living life boldly, or when we remain silent when a voice for truth and justice is so desperately needed.  “Am I afraid of high notes? Of course I am afraid. What sane man is not?”

Now that is real comfort food—a sweet Cinnabon cinnamon roll right in the middle of a tired and laborious trek through an airport while on the way home.

Human Beings Cannot Live By Comfort Food Alone

Christians are about to begin Lent, that period of roughly forty days when the church goes into a fasting mode in preparation for Easter. For some folks, that will mean forgoing comfort food. They may choose to give up sweets, alcohol, or some favorite pastime. How about sex? I once knew a man who told me he was giving up sex with his wife for Lent. I chuckled and thought I’ll bet he will have one heck of an Easter.

But isn’t it true that comfort can become its own idolatrous end-in-itself? Human beings cannot live by comfort food alone.

Mother Jones, the mother of all social justice rabble-rousers, was not much on comfort food. She is reputed to have said, “My   business is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Perhaps that’s the job of preachers—to rile up their congregations a bit. Not just one portion of the congregation but, instead, a third of the congregation every Sunday, a different third each week. That means conservative and liberals, Republicans and Democrats alike. No favorites when it comes to shaking the tree.

The Hebrew Prophets understood the value of a disturbing word. Isaiah confronted worshipers who engaged in fasting that reeked of solemn obeisance to God, while they oppressed workers, demeaned the poor, and denied food to the hungry. Today one might castigate these rebel Prophets by labeling them socialist—food stamp prophets. Then there’s the Prophet Amos who really gives his worshipping community hell. He took no delight in their hollow, solemn worship. God wants justice and upright behavior on the part of believers, not the liturgical façade of worship that’s disconnected from life.

When I observe a number of churches, I see very little honest-to-God fasting, as Isaiah defines it, nor little, if any, understanding of Amos’ displeasure with the formalized solemn assemblies that take place on Sunday. Pierre Berton once described the nave of churches as full of “comfortable pews.” One might say, full of church couch potatoes who are unchallenged by a radical message that confronts the status quo. And, I would add, church leadership that doesn’t know how, or is afraid, to mobilize the flock. Berton saw the church as having become institutionalized, therefore, fossilized— overly concerned about it’s own survival as an institution. It was, he said, full of “status seekers and respectability-hunters…deadwood who enjoy the club atmosphere…ecclesiastical hangers-on and the comfort-searchers.”

The church, as Berton says, may be the repository of dead wood, and fearful leaders enamored with the status quo, but it is also houses a Biblical message and tradition capable of engaging and challenging the principalities and powers that exploit people. Berton does offer a portion of manna in the wilderness. “Once the church becomes the most uncomfortable institution in the community, only those who really matter will stick with it. At this point, one would expect the Church to come back to those basic principles of love, faith, and hope that have made martyrs of men.”

Food For A Journey Through The Land Of Men With Purple Shirts And Miters

President Obama has now offered a compromise to his plan to mandate birth control insurance coverage for women working for Roman Catholic institutions. He’s announced that they will get coverage from insurance companies. Consider it comfort food for the United States Catholic Bishops, ecclesiastical surrogates for the Pope in Rome. But I guarantee you the bishops will not be satisfied with this meal. They will want more.

I remember the 1960s great debate in the Roman Catholic Church over birth control. A commission had been set up by the Pope to advise him about birth control. He then rejected their report that called for a revision of the church’s position on birth control. Instead, he issued a papal encyclical letter—Humane Vitae—that reconfirmed the Church’s ban on contraception.

It was met with immediate resistance. I still remember the comment by the Jesuit leader, Father Pedro Arrupe in the New York Times. He brushed the encyclical off by saying that most Catholic women had already made their own individual decision about birth control. His testimony confirmed what I had discovered when I referred an Episcopalian woman to a Jesuit priest. Her Catholic husband would not allow his wife to take the pill, interestingly enough, developed by a Catholic, Dr. Rock. After one session with the Jesuit priest, the couple came home in search of a doctor’s prescription for the pill.

Hooray for Roman Catholics who practice what the church won’t preach—birth control. They are food for a journey through the land of men with purple shirts and miters.

 

 

 

 

 

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