My Holiday Bouillabaisse

December 20th, 2015  |   

Joe’s Fish Market is one block from my home. I frequent it often for fresh seafood and conversation with the owners, Joe and Robin Harmon.  

Robin cooks up a Yugoslavian fish stew. Full of a variety of seafood and spices, I carry some home once a week. It is enormously popular, especially over the Christmas season. I call it Charleston’s very own bouillabaisse.

By definition, bouillabaisse is a mixture of incongruous things. There is an apocryphal myth about the origin of bouillabaisse. It is said that Venus, the beautiful goddess of love, served the stew to her husband, Vulcan, in order that he might fall asleep while she had her affair with Mars, the god of war.

In this holiday issue of Notes From Under the Fig Tree, I will serve up my very own bouillabaisse, full of a variety of ingredients. My readers might look for connecting links between each piece, or just take each one for what it’s worth, like you would when you retrieve gifts from a stocking hung by the chimney with care.

On Buying A Cup Of Starbucks Coffee

I’m in line for a cup of coffee at the local Starbuck’s. The man in front of me places his order. The clerk writes his name on the back of the blank red cardboard cup. That blank side of the cup is the rallying cry for folks who feel that Jesus has been left out of Christmas. “Merry Christmas” printed on the cup, they say, would right the situation.

Perhaps Jesus should be kept off the Starbuck’s cup and out of the mall; after all he couldn’t get a room in the inn. Maybe we should search for him in some other place. Since Mary and Joseph were refugees fleeing the violence of the Roman Empire, maybe we should look for him someplace where people sleep in refugee camps or under bridges. Because Jesus was given the title, Prince of Peace, perhaps he hangs around with people who espouse nonviolence, and refuse to kill anyone. I’m only guessing, but maybe he’s in the least expected places – in line with me, unrecognized, quietly seeking a cup of coffee, right here in the mall, where no one would dare put his name on a cup of coffee.

The BB Gun Under The Christmas Tree

Back when I was a young boy, growing up in Baltimore, my parents gave me a BB gun for Christmas. I can’t remember how old I was at the time. But I can still remember the metallic smell of the barrel, the feel of the wooden stock, and the cocking device. Then there was the tube filled with BBs.

Neither one of my parents owned a weapon. Back then I didn’t think my BB gun was a weapon. A weapon in those days was what I saw WW II soldiers carrying in the newsreels that flashed across the movie screen news in black and white footage.

My BB gun was for shooting tin cans and targets in the wooded area behind my house. It was my Dick Tracy cops-and-robbers game-piece, searching for bank robbers.

I still remember my father’s instructions. “You are never to point a gun at anyone. The only time you point a gun at someone is when you want to shoot him.” 

Tears And Laughter

Over a cup of coffee, a friend tells me she has the urge to write about a profoundly wonderful experience with her daughter. It is a personal story she’d like to share with others, perhaps as a newspaper piece. But can she find the courage to do it? It is a joyous story, but it draws tears from her.

I tell her that tears are ink in search of words.

Since then I have thought about laughter. If tears are ink in search of words, what is laughter? And then it came to me from someplace I rely upon for images that bring me satisfaction.

Laughter is a chord in search of a song.

Could I Shoot? Would I Shoot?

Stretched out prone on ground at the Marine Corps firing range at Quantico, Virginia, I thought about how I could pierce the circular black bullseye in the target some 200 yards in front of me. I never saw the bullseye as a man’s heart. 

On board the USS Ranger, an aircraft carrier floating just off the coast of Vietnam, our reinforced infantry battalion was ready to make an early morning helicopter landing at Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon. The U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Vietnam numbered about 500, and we were told that they in a distressful situation. Our mission was to give them firepower for resistance and possible evacuation.

My platoon was issued ammunition. Hitting the rack after a big steak meal, I was flooded with thoughts about Judy, and our nearly six-month-old son back home, my parents back in Baltimore, my platoon that would make this landing in the morning.

All of our training as infantry Marines was now to be tested. No more target practice. The bullseye was now a human being. We would be shooting to kill. Could I shoot another human being? Would I shoot another human being? I’d find out in the morning.

The next morning the mission was aborted. The threat to our MAAG was lifted and we were transported back to the base in Manila. The could-I, would-I questions were not answered. I was not put to the test. But I am convinced that, because I was a Marine, trained and ordered to kill, I would have killed people. People whose names I did not know. In a country I knew nothing about. In a war my country should not have fought. That was a Christmas Past, at a distance from Judy and our newborn son, Stephen.  

A Stocking-Stuffer From Christmas Past   

My granddaughter Eva will have a small item placed in her stocking on the mantel in her home in Minneapolis. It will be transferred from my stocking to hers. You see, Judy stitched a small Christmas tree for Eva the Christmas before she died. By mistake, it wound up in the toe of my stocking. I found it when I got home. Three Christmases after that little tree was crafted, it will finally be delivered, a gift from Christmas Past.   

Talk Of American Values

We are going through a very dark period in which fear, like a dangerous virus, has taken root in our country. It has infected our body politic. And once it enters the blood stream of a nation, it is capable of driving people toward violence and war.

Donald Trump’s call for a ban of all Muslims entering the United States is being described as inconsistent with American values, contrary to what we hold as basic moral standards. One commentator says Trump is waging jihad on American values.

That facile analysis requires scrutiny. What are these American values that critics of Donald Trump are talking about? I would suggest that we strip away the tinsel and decorative paper that wraps all talk of American values. What lies beneath the sanctimonious talk about American values is, in actuality, a truth we fear facing.  

American values? To invade a country, Iraq, with no more intent than revenge for 9/11, and a pack of lies about weapons on mass destruction? To torture people? To keep people prisoners for years at Guantanamo, without benefit of trial?  To give Americans tax deductions for giving contributions that subsidize the building of settlements on Palestinian land in Israel? To bomb a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan?

I do believe the human body has an innate power to target a disease and heal itself. The same is true when it comes to our body politic. But unless we understand that our nation has a long and continuing history of violence, justified as a value for our own ends, hoping for peace will be no more than wishful thinking,

Get A Gun, Jim, Get A Gun

Talk of guns came up at a Burger King located in Georgetown, Delaware.

I’d hired John C. to assist me in work I had been commissioned to do by the Bishop of Delaware. I’d been hired to bring people together around the injustices surrounding the production of poultry. Perdue and Tyson were two large companies under scrutiny.

John’s family had lived on the Delmarva Peninsula for hundreds of years. He was what people referred to as a “Local.” He knew how important chickens were to the economy of the area. He knew that organizing poultry workers and farmers was dangerous work.

“Do you own a gun, Jim?” My answer was prompt. “No, John, I don’t own a gun.”

“Then get one. These people play for keeps.”

“I am not getting a gun, John. I carried a weapon when I was in the Marine Corps. I won’t carry one again.”

“Then, for God’s sake, get a baseball bat.”

“I think not. I’m too old to play baseball.”

The Grocery Store And The Doctor’s Office

Last week, in the grocery store, I ran into a friend, a Vietnam War veteran who came back scarred from having done battle there. He hated my work against the invasion of Iraq, but whenever we meet we talk. Sometimes it’s hard to listen. It’s a test of my commitment to listen to people who see the world through a different lens than mine.  

Next to the cold frozen food section of the store, I feel my friend’s heat, as he rants about Syrian refugees coming to the United States. The subject of the Islamic State brings his blood to a boil. I can take his temperature by looking into his eyes. “A nuclear bomb. That’s what we should drop on them—these Muslims. A nuclear bomb.”

Shortly thereafter, I visit my doctor. A big man, he has West Virginia written all over him. He looks like a tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Having grown up in a small town, he can talk deer hunting and guns. Boy, can he talk guns. In all truth, I love talking with this man. He comes in the examining room talking politics. The nurse has to remind him that he has other patients. We are from different tribes, are we ever, but I need to talk with some gun-owners about guns, particularly these days.

He tells me he owns six  “assault weapons” capable of firing off 200 rounds per minute. “Six assault weapons. Why do you need six?” The answer is obvious. It’s fun to shoot them. And, if anyone like that Muslim in California comes to his door, he’ll get what’s coming to him. He just wants to protect his wife and children. I understand.

Believe me, I know when I am in the presence of fear. Both these men are afraid.

White Yet Very Green

She was white, yet very green. The young social worker in my office was stunningly porcelain, as the song says, “a whiter shade of pale.” She was a glass of milk in a dress, carrying a briefcase. She had walked to the church office from her Department of Welfare office, four blocks down King Street. On the phone, she had asked me if I would accompany her to a house located in a remote wooded area outside of Martinsburg.

It was obvious that this young social worker was very green. She had little-to-no social work experience, and had never faced what she knew awaited her in a dilapidated dirt-floor house. She was fearful. She had reason to be fearful. I agreed to go with her

There was a very sick baby in need of hospital care inside the house. The man sitting on the porch, cradling a shotgun, was determined not to let anyone take the baby from the house. He insisted that there was no reason to take her to the hospital. She was not sick.

The weapon he held was his guarantee that the baby would not be taken from his sight. He said the baby would be safe in the confines of the house, as long as he could see her. For about an hour, the space between us was filled with words. Finally, he relented, with my assurance that I would see to it that the baby would be returned to him and his wife.

Allowed entry to the house, the mother, labeled retarded in those days, handed the child over to me. Within 20 minutes, the baby, so obviously ill, was given to a nurse. Before leaving the hospital, the nurse informed us that the child had been full of crab lice.

The baby, whose name I didn’t know, was under care in the hospital. Judy needed the car. Daughter Katherine had a ballet lesson. I was late. Katherine was late for her class. Judy, on her way out of our driveway with Katherine, I took my just-purchased bottle of Kwell, into the garage, stripped, and doused my body with the lice-killing liquid. Then I awaited Judy’s return so that I could tell her about the baby, the man with the gun, and the lice.

Spicy Stew—Hellfire Missiles—Under A Star

The sky is dark but I spot a star while driving home. When you live in the mountains you don’t always see a sky-full of stars, like you would in a place like Kansas. One will do. Perhaps this one is there to see me home. Yugoslavian fish stew awaits me in my refrigerator, and a pile of papers and magazines I digest with my meal.

How’s this for a headline? “U.S. Arms Makers Strain To Meet Demand As Mideast Conflicts Rage.” It seems that “top U.S. arms makers are straining to meet surging demand for precision missiles and other weapons being used in the U.S. led fight against Islamic State and other conflicts in the Middle East.”  

The Lockheed Martin Corp. plant in Troy, Alabama, that builds 100-pound Hellfire air-to-ground missiles will have to hire new workers. The Pentagon says there is a strong demand for these missiles. The U.S. government has approved the sale of Hellfire missiles to South Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, France, Italy and Britain.

Choirs and church congregations are singing about angels during this Christmas season. Meanwhile, people are lining up to see the new Star Wars movie. With that in mind, I can’t help but envision a war being waged in heaven while we are in church or at the movies. The angels, meant to sing on high, have to do battle with a sky full of drones and airplanes dropping thousands of bombs. I hear talk now of “carpet bombing” in Syria and Iraq. It sounds so familiar. It has Vietnam written all over it. Massive death, indiscriminate killing of civilians who happen to be living on the “carpet.”

Enough! It’s time for bed. With a stomach full of fish stew, and a belly full of war, it’s time for bed. Before climbing the stairs, I dig out a huge volume of W.H. Auden’s poetry.

Leafing through it, I find my favorite Christmas piece: “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio.” It is a magnificent accomplishment, written during WW II. Once again I bump into the Magi, those three old goats who followed the star in search of the Child.

Up the stairs I go, climb into my familiar bed, pull up the comforter, prepared to slip into a swaddled sleep, praying for another day to search, along with the Magi, for what it means to be human in a world where Hellfire missiles do battle with angels.

“At least we know for certain that we are three old sinners,

That this journey is much too long, that we want our dinners,

And miss our wives, our books, our dogs,

But have only the vaguest idea why we are what we are.

To discover how to be human now

Is the reason we follow this star.”

Swaddling Cloths

 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.  Luke 2:12

It’s a simple, generous act. Wrapping a baby, like a special present. Gracious warmth in a cold world.

Swaddling cloths — a powerful, often overlooked image.  

All of us, at all times and in all places, no matter how old or how young, yearn to be swaddled. Held, wrapped in love, safe from all that might do harm, even destroy a human being.  

Newborn twins, swaddled by their mother, held tightly in a blanket, rocked, awaiting a journey home from the hospital.

Refugees on a television screen, fleeing the cold realities of war, are in need of being swaddled by people willing to welcome them with warm food, a warm bed and blankets.

A frightened child, scared by a terrifying nightmare, swaddled and comforted beneath the blanket that covers her parent’s bed.

A dying woman, swaddled by a warm blanket, given to her by a nurse who is aware of her patient’s fear.

A couple holding one another in bed, swaddled in the warmth of each other’s bodies.

A man, who has lost his job, swaddled by family, friends and neighbor who embrace him.

A man who feels God wrapping him lovingly in a quilt, not suffocating him with judgment. 

The homeless in our midst who carry bedding in a trash bag, for sleeping outside on cold nights.

According to the Bible narrative, no body was found in the empty tomb where Jesus was laid, nothing but linen wrappings. I think that perhaps those wrappings were left behind, meant to swaddle the poor, the lonely, the despairing, and all who are frightened. All people, at all times and in all places.

Swaddle, that ye may be swaddled — wrapped in love.

Jim

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