heroes

We had an argument at the dinner table the other day. Well, not so much an argument, as a discussion—No—It was an argument.

I’m assuming some of you will want to weigh in, so you may get your keyboards and smart phones ready to make your comments. We were arguing, strangely enough, about ice cream flavors.

I will admit to being no connoisseur of gourmet foods. I am not a foody in any way.

I eat food. Real food.

I’m not fooled by a little raspberry sauce drizzled around a dish so tiny you have to use the lowest section of your trifocals to find it on the plate. Presentation has nothing to do with the meals I like.

Flavor and texture. Those are the most important attributes I’m seeking in the substances which pass my lips.

For instance, corn on the cob, fresh from the garden, husked and boiled in water, with a little salt and butter added—now that’s real food. Creamed corn? Not at all! While there is a slight corn-like flavor to the recipe, the dreadful mushy, slimy dish resembles corn not at all—to my palate.

A fresh tomato is good for any number of things.

Eaten by itself in wedges? Sliced and laid atop a freshly grilled hamburger patty? One of a few select ingredients in a plain dinner salad? All wonderful conditions in which to consume the enigmatic fruit/vegetable.

But, stewed and breaded? I think the Valley Girl of the Seventies said it more delicately than I can put it: Gag me with a spoon!

You begin to see a pattern here, don’t you? I like plain food. The honest flavors and natural textures of foods are a treat to the palate and need very little embellishment.

I think I’m what used to be called a meat and potatoes man. I’ll eat those other dishes when they are on the menu; even enjoy them at times.

But, for comfort food, for feeling all is right with the world, I’ll have the fried chicken with mashed potatoes, thank you! Sure, a little white gravy will go nicely on the potatoes, but not too much.

I want to taste the food I masticate.

Vanilla ice cream.

It’s what I prefer. Actually, what I crave, since it’s not really supposed to be in my diet at all now.

If you’ll promise not to tell the Lovely Lady, I will admit to having a serving of Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla just recently. I had passed on it at dinner that day.

But, it called my name for the rest of the day, so I answered. Just a little.

Vanilla is an amazing flavor.

If you must know, it was the reason for the discussion at the dinner table.

One of our guests refused the offer of this food-of-the-gods after our meal, with one word: Yuck!

It was her contention that vanilla is plain, a non-flavor, if you will. And, while there was a day I would have agreed with her assessment, I will readily confess now that I have seen the error of my ways.

My sister-in-law (aided by her husband) creates an incredible home-made vanilla ice cream, the memory of which will make you want to spit out any Cookies and Cream you taste thereafter. I have had Butter Pecan I thought was really good, but one spoonful of Aunt Jan’s homemade recipe drove away any fond thought of that plastic flavor which remained.

I’ve thought of this phenomenon numerous times, while consuming unseemly quantities of the fat-laden nectar. I’m convinced that when we start to add flavors to the original, we begin a journey down a path leading to all kinds of excess which make us forget what we loved in the first place.

A teaspoonful of chocolate syrup added today, turns into a couple of tablespoons the next time and before you know it, you’re consuming some substance unidentifiable as ice cream, with a name like Chocolate Chunky Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Nightmare, and wondering how you could have sunk so low.

You may press “send” on those angry notes any time you are ready now. . .

What’s my point, you ask?

As usual, I employ the ridiculous to illustrate this plain truth: It is so simple to leave the path of clean, straightforward joys, mingling them with gaudy, overpowering extravagance, and before we know it, we no longer recognize the original product as real, or even as desirable.

Plain vanilla we call it, implying that it is somehow lacking.

The concept holds true throughout our culture. Clean cut, wholesome young men and women are replaced by Hollywood with surgically enhanced and painted caricatures with attitude problems. A criminal record is a plus, not an embarrassment.

If pets are important to you, it is no longer acceptable to just have a dog in the backyard, buying dry dog food at the local supermarket when they run out. We must shop at stores which cater to the pet’s whims, offering amazingly expensive toys, clothes (yes, clothes!), and food. Don’t leave that poor pooch alone at home all day! Doggie Day Care is the only loving way to treat Fido in this culture!

Families who enjoy the simple pleasures of spending time together playing at the park are replaced with the Madison Avenue image of the family who spends together at the amusement park, while wearing costly mouse ears and hugging imaginary princesses who have no interest in returning the adoration.

Bigger, better, more flavor, more excitement—all these are desirable, while plain, clean, pure, and simple are pejoratives used to poke fun.

The add-ons eclipse the original, making it seem obsolescent and passe’.

I’ll have two scoops of vanilla, please.

I’m fairly sure that great things are more often accomplished by just plain folks. Heroes are more likely to be normal people with simple values than they are to be the fake, embellished stars on television. Honest and responsible young adults are reared in the homes of honest and responsible parents.

We follow Christ in simplicity and purity. When the world intrudes, it’s only too easy to be distracted by the dressing and bling, forgetting that our path lies in a different direction.

He calls us to remember what first drew us into the way.

On second thought, make that just one scoop. (Watching my calories and fat intake, you see?)

Still vanilla.

It’s an amazing flavor. . .

But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first! Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first.
(Revelation 2:4-5a ~ NLT)

“White,” Saruman sneered. “It serves as but a beginning. The white cloth may be dyed, the white page may be overwritten, the white light may be broken.” “In which case, it is no longer white,” Gandalf answered. “And, he who breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”
(Lord of the Rings~J.R.R. Tolkien)

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,
’tis the gift to come down where we ought to be…
(Simple Gifts~Elder Joseph Bracket~American Shaker songwriter~1797-1882)

My disappointment was profound.

No. Strike that. My disappointment is profound. Still.

Years after the release of the movie, I feel even now that familiar twist in my gut when I think about it. I still imagine an apology from the screen-writer is forthcoming, and an amended version of the film will be released any day now.

I am, of course, speaking of the Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies. It was a triumph of film-making. The casting was nearly perfect, the special effects, spectacular. The setting in which it was filmed remains one of its greatest triumphs; the scenic panoramas are breath-taking and awe-inspiring.

The movies had, however, a fatal flaw. I may never recover from my disillusionment.

I am a LOTR nerd.

I refer, not to the aforementioned movie, but to the books. I have worn out three sets of the paperbacks in reading and re-reading them over my adult life. Each time I have picked them up, they have seemed fresh and exciting, even if at the same time they are like old friends–comfortable and familiar.

A good book is like that. The books I don’t enjoy–those, I read once and place on the shelf, never to be opened again. Good books invite a second (and third) reading. Mr. Tolkien knew how to write a good book.

Ah. But, you’re not all LOTR nerds, are you? I’ll hasten on, if only to keep that glazed look from overtaking the reader’s eyes.

To get to the point, I’ll say this: Mr. Tolkien wrote of heroes; the screen-writer for the movie series had no use for heroes.

Not perfect heroes, anyway. And, therein lies my profound disappointment.

This hero wasn’t one of the main characters in the story, the individuals who are with you from start to finish. No, the hero whose sullying I decry in the movie series is a relatively minor character named Faramir. He almost doesn’t warrant a mention at all in the list of important protagonists in the story.

In the film version of the story, Faramir is captured by the lust of the article of power, the One Ring, and very nearly brings disaster to the entire quest. He takes the main characters captive and carries them far out of their way and into more danger before coming to his senses and releasing them and their ring.

I nearly shouted out loud in the movie theater as I watched the movie with a group of family and friends. This man’s words are burned into my mind from the multiple times I have read the book.

“Not if I found it on the highway would I take it!”

Like all true heroes, Faramir wasn’t even tempted by the lust of power and fame. It held no influence–none–over him, as he went about his duties as a heroic soldier with a clear heart.

I didn’t shout in the theater. Not aloud, anyway.

To this day though, I feel I have been robbed. Personally–robbed.

I want my hero back. Unstained. Unblemished.

You laugh. Not without reason.

It seems a foolish grudge to bear, does it not–this trifle about the accuracy of a fictional hero’s character? I myself still struggle with the rationality of it. And, after all this time, I think I begin to understand why it affected me so.

I want my hero back, but I know–deep down–there is no such man walking the earth. Not one.

Not one man who can keep his promises without fail. Not one person who has never hurt anyone for selfish reasons. Not a single human being who is free of the stain of lust and desire.

I once believed such people walked the earth. I repent of that foolishness. I have seen my own heroes fall, one after the other. They fall from the pedestals they were put on, or climbed upon themselves, but they fall.

Eventually, they all fall.

Human. Not heroes.

Every one.

It’s actually a good thing, having all your heroes fallen. The disappointment–the depressing certainty that all is lost–is profound at first, but it eventually gives way to hopefulness. You see, if heroes can stand in their own strength, there is no hope for the rest of us. We mere mortals who give in to our base nature, the sin nature passed down to us through our human DNA, again and again, have no hope as long as there is one single person who doesn’t need grace.

There was only one True Hero. Ever. Only one.

He saw the temptation on the highway and passed it by. On his way to a cross, He passed it by. Power and fame were nothing to Him.

He passed it by. Because He loved us more.

I have told you repeatedly that I am forever grateful for grace. Grace says to each of us, every fallen one of us, “You get to be a hero again. Not because of what you can do, but because of what He did.”

And when we fall again (and we will fall again), grace offers another chance to be a hero. And another. And another.

I like second chances. There is still hope the quest may end in triumph after all. And somehow, hope seems to me to be better than a nonexistent hero.

I’m still angry about Faramir though.

Are you listening, Peter Jackson?

“‘Not if I found it on the highway would I take it,’ I said. “Even if I were such a man as to desire this thing, and even though I knew not clearly what this thing was when I spoke, still I should take those words as a vow, and be held by them. But I am not such a man. Or I am wise enough to know that there are some perils from which a man must flee.”
(from The Return of the King ~ J.R.R. Tolkien ~ English author ~ 1892-1973)

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in Me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.”
(John 14:12 ~ ESV)

He's Taken Leave

Random wanderings with Paul Phillips

Still Vanilla

Fallen Hero