20150811.0711

The Mrs., Ms. 8, and I returned to Sherwood Cottage from the C-Bar yesterday, arriving in the afternoon and spending the rest of the day recovering from the drive and ride. It went well enough, and I may end up writing about some of the reflecting I had opportunity to do while driving with my wife and daughter asleep in our little shuttlepod of a car and while looking out over hills of granite clad in oak and cedar. Today, however, I have some comments on events from Sunday, events which put me in mind of my

As is commonly the case when we visit my wife's family at the C-Bar, we attended a church service at the Fredericksburg United Methodist Church. It is the church where the Mrs. and I got married, although the pastoral staff has changed over since then, following the Methodist tradition of reassigning preachers at intervals. During the service, the associate pastor gave a sermon that began with an extended anecdote about an episode with his grandmother. In it, she baked prune kolaches, dressing them up with a bit of molasses and sugar to make them more palatable to young tastes--and to those, such as the pastor in his youth, who find them distasteful. The pastor used the anecdote as analogy to help explain the reading for the day, coming from John 6 (35-51, as I recall), explaining that Jesus was to many contemporaries as prunes to the pastor's young self--not initially palatable, but ultimately relied-upon as a panacea.

There are other implications for the metaphor through which the pastor worked in the sermon. If we are to read Jesus as prunes (which is the root metaphor at work), we can read the prune kolaches, sweetened as they were, as parallel to the bowdlerization of Scripture often presented to children--after all, how often do we point out to children what was going on with Lot, for example, or the fact that children in Scripture are often made to suffer for their parents' misdeeds? How many conveniently forget Noah's drunkenness as they complain of films of his Scriptural story? But I was not at the time put in mind of that connection; instead, after one of the pastor's comments, I found myself recalling Edward Taylor--whose work I have referenced before, and for much the same reason. (I might note also that the piece in question is a musing on the same part of Scripture that informed the day's sermon.) For one of the things for which prunes are good, and for which they are often associated with those of more advanced years, is in the regulation of the bowels. The pastor hinted around that particular use, and the many elderly in the congregation responded in such a way as suggests their own familiarity with that use; I am certain the scatological humor was meant. Whether the quiet reference to Taylor was, as well, I am less certain--but whether it was meant to be included or not matters not to the fact that it was there.

I find it odd that I am sometimes rebuked for temerity in finding toilet humor in things--and even in my own home, on occasion, or in a piece of explication--when preachers can do so from the very pulpit to acclaim.