Today I woke up and had an inkling that I was going to make French toast. So I did. While I was making it, Chris and I began talking about life and exchanging how things were going. Suddenly, and I don't remember why (except for sheer enthusiasm), I began explaining to Chris that what I thought is so cool about cooking is that the fundamentals haven’t changed since Escoffier made his first sauce hundreds of years ago. There have been innovations and slight differences to be sure, but the way to make a quick bread (i.e. Banana Bread) and the way to make a good crepe haven’t changed, and they won’t.
It’s neat to think that some things simply don’t need to change- and they shouldn’t. But what I’ve been reading recently that just blows my mind is that the whole of cooking- from pancakes to pie doughs to breads to stocks- can be summed up in ratios. The difference between a crème brulee and bread pudding and French toast is in the ratio of eggs to liquid. How about a pancake, a crepe, and brioche bread? Flour, fat (butter), and liquid, just in differing measurements and added in differing sequences. If you know these things, these ratios, you no longer need to follow recipes. Recipes and the food network become cumbersome chains from which you can free yourself to think creatively and begin to make recipes of your own. All of a sudden, the world of food is your oyster and the sky is the limit! Want to make a savory shiitake mushroom and fennel crepe? Do it! A lobster gruyere bread pudding? SHYEAH! Now there only remains the matter of technique in preparation, and these things must be learned; they require experience. You can’t slow poach a crepe no matter how badly you want to. I mean, I suppose you could, but what you’ll get won’t be a crepe…it will be something else, something not so good. Put bread dough in an oven at 245 degrees, and you may get something resembling bread eventually, and if you put the loaf in there for too long at too high a temperature, you’ll get a scorched rock. It’s all about ratio, technique, and time. See, if you get the fundamentals right, you can do anything you like. And if you serve it to others, you will be blessed in what you do.
So, how does this relate to life? Surprisingly it does, and even more than you could begin to imagine.
***
I’ve been reading a book about change, and it mandates that the three ingredients necessary for positive change in the life of a person are Grace, Truth, and Time.
For those unfamiliar with the meaning of grace, let me offer a concise definition. Dr. Henry Cloud defines the difference between grace and love as follows: “Love stresses God’s personal disposition toward unworthy creatures, while grace stresses His freedom from obligation in saving them.” In other words, God loves us, but not because He has to; He loves us because He wants to. He could theoretically stop loving us at any given time if He really wanted to, but that’s not what He’s chosen to do. We can’t earn his love any more than we can earn the taste of blueberry pancakes and maple syrup or the heat on our skin on a sunny day. It is freely given, and it comes to the just and the unjust, the evil and the good.
In changing a life for the better, the “ratio” of these things in occurrence with one another matters a great deal. Grace in the absence of truth and direction will result in us feeling that we have license to do whatever we please without consequence, and this will lead to dysfunction. One doesn’t have to look hard to see this played out in the lives of those around us. If you need proof of this, just Google the latest Hollywood starlet and you will find it in ample supply.
Similarly, truth in the absence of grace results in judgment. The daughter with an absentee father who constantly tries to earn his love by being “thin or beautiful enough,” or the son who never hears the words “I love you and am proud of you” from his father will probably become apathetic, depressed, or anxious, and this may possibly result in them acting out in unhealthy ways. We try hard, but it’s never enough. We’ll never be perfect; when we get one thing right, another goes wrong.
The kiddo whose mother father have always fought and ignored him and whose father is physically abusive will find ways to not be at his house as often as possible, guaranteed. He’ll turn to perfectionism (whether it be grades, body, performance in sports, et cetera), pornography, “righteous” judgment of others, narcissism, drugs, gangs, you name it. As humans, we’ll resort to anything that will numb the pain, and we’ll seek approval and comfort in those who do the same. See, we’ll get the “love” we need from others, even if we have to destroy ourselves and others in the process.
So, the question remains: what do we need? We need grace and truth. We need love, acceptance, and direction from others in the proper proportion. But we also need time. This makes sense, and anyone can see that, but what astounds me about this is that we can all agree that bread needs to be made with proper proportions of certain ingredients and then baked at a certain temperature in order to be termed as such, but when it comes to our own lives, we can mix and mingle and merely “do as we please” and expect the outcome to be a positive one. We hurt others and ourselves with our actions and then we turn and act as though nothing has happened.
We accept absolutes where they are “important,” and we ignore them where they are unflinchingly necessary.
So, where do we find such things? Who do we know in the world that loves and accepts us? My honest answer at the fore was my roommates. But where did they meet such people, and how did they come to be as they are? Where can I tell someone to go looking for grace and truth? Then it came to me:
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth… Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace (the law was given, we didn’t earn it). For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”
But what of me? Why do I try and try to change certain things about me for the better and fail time and time again? Jesus tells me this parable:
“A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree but haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’ “’Sir’, the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year and dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’”
We need time. I need to be more gracious with myself and give myself some time to grow. Tend to my branches and stuff, you know.
But while I know that grace, truth, and time are indeed necessary for growth, I would like to propose a fourth ingredient: environment. I think that environment we are in is just as important as anything else. It goes in line with grace in terms of being around people that accept us, but we need the right kind of people around us. We can’t hang onto relationships that are pulling us toward unsafe patterns of living. We need truth, and if the way we are living is not in accord with truth, then it will only serve to hurt us in the end. Just as dough needs a hot oven at just the right temperature to become the best it can be, we need the right people and the right situation to help us grow. This is not to say that if something is hard that we should tuck tail and run. Sometimes the toughest of situations will serve to grow us the most if we allow them. It may be painful, but diamonds are not made in a vacuum void of pressure.
Jesus was not afraid to spend time with people who society shunned. He came near. He also gave them direction and truth to guide them. He was patient and kind, but more than that, He was chosen for a specific moment in history to save us, to appear in a manger- God as man- that we might gaze in awe at the notion that there is a God who loves us enough to come near to us in the midst of all of our crap. He saw our ugliness and our hopelessness, and He came at just the right moment. I have to believe that.
He fled to Egypt as a child and he came back to Nazareth, He chose twelve to follow him, He rid merchants from the temple, He came riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, and He died on a cross all at specific times for a specific purpose. God is intimately concerned with the details. He cares about our situation, and he wants to till the ground around us and fertilize it to help us become the people we once dreamed we would be.
So how do I be grace and truth, time and situation? For me, this means that every time that I share my food I am sharing grace and love. I want others to be in awe of how a raspberry tastes and how a truffle smells, and I want them to know that God is responsible for it all. I want them to know that it is just one way that He is drawing near to them and allowing them to taste beauty because he wants to wow them. He wants to love them, and the taste of that is divine.
Jesus is grace and truth. He is patience and kindness. He is love, at the right time in the right place. When we follow him, we are applying the right ratios and we are free to love without a recipe. We are free to be creative.
He is the ultimate ratio.
All praise to the spirit, whose whisper divine, seals mercy and pardon and righteousness mine.
