Homespun Wisdom

The fresh insight and input of  my children into my day is almost a guarantee against boredom around home. For instance, today Jamie is making yogurt. No, he didn't get a yogurt-making machine for Christmas, but he did check out a book from the school library before Christmas entitled, "Recipes for Science Fun." Although he looked high and low for it to return it before Christmas vacation, his efforts failed to unearth it. Of course, it did turn up for that two-week stint at home, and has been driving me up the wall ever since.

First, he wanted to make butter--simple enough, but I'd bought the modern, pre-whipped version of the cream he wanted as I made my Christmas dinner purchases. And he tried for weeks to assemble the ingredients for making mayonnaise. Mom again turned out to be maddeningly forgetful in the supermarket. (It called for dry mustard.)

But today he prevailed upon me to get the necessary starter carton of yogurt, whole milk, (I usually buy low-fat), and dry milk for his project. ("Did you notice me reading the label on the yogurt in the store, Mom? It had to be the kind with the live yogurt culture in it.") He'd done his homework, I had to admit.

First he poured the special quart carton of milk he'd bought into a pan, along with the powdered milk. Without a cooking thermometer, he could only guess when it reached the required 180 degrees. ("I know it's 32 degrees below the boiling point,") he reasoned. So when a scum had formed, he decided it was long enough.

"Mom, get me a clean jar, rewash it to make sure it's very clean, or the bacteria won't grow," were his instructions to me.

"That's funny, I thought that's when they grew best," I mumbled under my breath. "Why aren't you doing this yourself?" I asked as I rinsed out the jar.

He stirred furiously at the stove. "Can't you see I'm too busy? Now warm it up under the hot water again."

Just now the phone rang as he called from his friend's house. "Did you remember to turn the heat on under my yogurt for a few minutes at 5:00 o'clock?" he asked urgently. "No, but I'm doing it right now," was my guilty reply. 

When he called again to see if I was tending his yogurt, I asked how long this was going to go on. I smiled as his terse reply made me realize how important this was to him. "Until 7:40."

So now I'm baby-sitting a very large pot of water containing a quart of yogurt-in-the-making. Tomorrow, that book's going back to the library.

Later, when Trevor came in, I was telling him about some trouble we'd had with one of the office phones. "You can hardly hear on it," I told him. "If you really want to hear, you have to turn off the typewriter, turn off the copier, and close the door on the sound of the vacuum cleaner . When they deliver the computer we ordered, we'll have to turn that off, too, I guess."

"That's called low-level noise, Mom," he said. "It's very harmful. It can induce hypertension."

"Well, I do feel tense sometimes," I ventured.

"Well, it might not bother you consciously,  but your subconscious picks it up and it causes stress."

"How do you know all this?" I questioned.

"I saw a documentary on it the other night. The stress level on people in offices has picked up considerably since the advent of the computer," he went on knowledgeably.  "It affects animals, too. It puts out vibrations that drive mice crazy."

"How?" I laughed.

"They pick up the computer noise as a mating signal: it confuses them and they chew up the wiring."

Thankfully, we don't have mice. (I don't think.)

When I thought about these seemingly unrelated incidents, I realized they had something in common. They are both dealing with the small, the seemingly insignificant. The noise factor: nothing big--just a little racket here and there. A hum, a whirr, a buzz--but adding up to a creeping, insidious lethal-ness. Like the Bible says, "It's the little foxes that spoil the vines."

I could easily recognize as noise pollution the loud music teenagers listen to, or as sins the ones listed in the "Thou shalt not's".  But what about the jibes, the unkindness's, the white lie, the exaggerations--the petty sins?

On the other hand, the tablespoon of yogurt culture reproduced itself as a whole quart of yield after the prescribed time had elapsed. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump."  Here, however, the effect was good. It changed the milk sugar into lactic acid, retarding spoilage and creating a changed milk product that would keep without refrigeration.

This is how we should leaven the lives of those around us. The shared light of the Gospel in our witness, however small, can germinate and grow, changing for all eternity the fate of others.