"Keep it," Frank grumbled, waving his hand in a way that seemed to simultaneously proffer the gift and ward off its possible return. He turned on his heel, scooped the box of dishes and Tupperware Janet had nearly completed packing and bustled out the kitchen door on his way to the car in the driveway.
Jim's eyes followed his father's steps, then looked to his mother who stood with a small pile of dish cloths folded across her arms. Her eyes were moist and a tense smile wavered on her lips. Jim was suddenly aware of the heavy weight in his hands.
Jim was leaving home. His first job out of college had gone well and he was offered a position with more responsibility in the company's regional headquarters out in Chicago. For the past two weeks, Jim and his mother had been busy gathering the household supplies he would need to stock his own apartment. Now the time had come to pack the car and begin the journey west. Jim had volunteered to cook breakfast that morning as a kind of good-bye gesture; cinnamon French toast with maple syrup, always a family favorite. He had monitored the heat carefully, turning each slice just as the edges peaked to a delicious dark brown; just the way he had been taught. Jim wondered what French toast would taste like in his new home, without family to share it. After breakfast, it was Frank who volunteered to wash up. He had been quiet all through the morning meal. He said he would clean up, because Jim and his mother knew where all the stuff was stored, and it would be best if they did that job. The sticky place settings were waved under running water and plunked into the dish washer, not exactly pell mell but then not as orderly as Janet may have placed them. Jim smiled secretly knowing the history behind the "loading the dishwasher" ritual. Only the skillet was left out. Instead, Frank planted his feet, and with
elbows raised high, gently scrubbed it, gave it a thorough rinsing, and set it on the stove to dry over a low heat. Jim knew this ritual too.
The skillet was older than Jim, and older than Frank. It had hung in Frank's mother's kitchen until, at the age of fourteen, he purloined it early one fall morning to take it camping. When he'd returned, his mother declared that the campfire had undoubtedly ruined the curing on the pan's surface making it useless to her, so he might as well keep it; and he should leave the rest of her cookware alone. Frank knew the curing was just fine.
In the days before Teflon and other space age metals and coatings, savvy cooks would cure cooking surfaces with various concoctions to prevent food from sticking. Now, two generations later, there was still a thin coating on the inside of the skillet, and through careful cooking and careful cleaning the surface had been preserved and renewed. This was another reason why Frank had volunteered to wash up. Since that day in his mother's kitchen, he had become the skillet's guardian, and any use would come either at his hands or under his direct supervision.
The weight in Jim's hands was not the weight of cast iron, it was the weight of history. He had come into the kitchen for the bag of spices sitting next to the microwave, just as his dad was fingering the skillet to test its coolness. Expecting to see it travel to its reserved space in the cupboard, Jim was unprepared for the unceremonious hand-off. Now the residual warmth soaked into his hands, traveled up his arms and straight toward his heart. Jim had become the keeper of the cast iron skillet.
Can you recall the warm glow of a sun baked rock perched in your hand, or the soothing heat passing through a clay mug? There is something magical about that sensation; like petting a cat or cradling a baby, your body responds instinctively and your mood is transformed.
Standing amid the kitchen in the hub bub of a major transition, Father and son were transformed. Not so much by the physical gift, but by the symbolic gesture. Frank, the man who had given Jim life, a person who had given a significant portion of his life to caring for his son, gave over a part of his own personal story to his son's keeping. Pressed into that skillet, as certainly as the worn design on the handle, were the imprints of a lived drama. Radiating from the pan's patina surface was an honest bid for immortality, the hope of living memory. In that moment, Frank was giving of himself.
To accept the gift, Jim needed to change, to make room within himself for his father's story. No longer could he be simply his own tale in the telling.
Frank's tale was folded into his tale too, to preserve and renew as Jim saw fit. So often as UUs we speak of the importance we place on how our children are to grow to be themselves, to achieve their fullest potentials. How often though do we take the time to consider that we figure, oh so prominently, in fulfilling their potential. Not only as facilitators of a full life, but as integral pieces of their lives. Since the ancient Hebrews first began recounting the story of the first AD- AM, the first human, religious people have recognized that no one is self made. Like water in a vessel, we are our own essence, but we are shaped by that which contains us, and it is our task to claim the fullness of our reality: that which is purely us and that which shapes us.
It is no easy work. As sure as God made little green apples, an expression I inherited from my first formative family, there are moments in Frank's story Jim will be reluctant to recall, but to deny their influence on Jim would be to sell himself short on the truth.
Now I'm not saying that Jim must literally own his father's story. Frank's story will always be Frank's. But Jim will become a major interpreter of Frank's life. In the same sense that Christians claim the story of Jesus and the Iroquois own the story of the great Peace Maker, Jim must find ways to embody the truths of Frank's life. This is sacred work for it is the work of the divine within each of us.
UU theologian Charles Hartshorne writes of God as the one to whom all hearts are open, to whom all emotions, all feelings are known and eternally remembered. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob remembers them and thus knows and works to reshape the vessel. in which they thrived and which we continue to live. In this way, God, in relationship with humanity, is informed by human experience and thus human experience carries forward as God influences the vessel of future life.
But what is to become of Jim if his father had some great tragedy in his history? What if he had descended on Mei Lai that fateful morning or in the throes of drunkenness caused a bloody car accident? Must Jim be saddled with that burden? Is his vessel indelibly scarred? No, Frank's guilt is not, I repeat, not Jim's. Jim must however make meaning of the ways his father lived molded by those experiences, however ugly; or no less difficult, however beautiful. What if Frank were a gifted violinist, a renowned attorney, or just a guy with an incredibly big heart. The task for Jim is no less taxing, for he must still make meaning of his life in the light of his father's.
How would Jim do it? By using the tools for meaning making given him by those who care for him. By comparing his father's stories against the values of his culture, Jim gains perspective on his own life. Like any storyteller, Jim will choose what to emphasize and what to gloss over, based on the ideals he has learned.
In any family situation, as in any story, there, are a number of ways we can look at them, a number of themes which warrant examination, a number stories within a story. Form in your mind for a moment, a picture of the large cast iron skillet in this morning's sermon. Imagine its weight in your hand. Can you hear the sound it makes when you tap it?
Now look closely inside the skillet. Look at the surface and see if you can pick out the thin coating of "curing". Slide your finger over the surface, can you feel Jim's grandmother's home grown "Teflon"? Keep that coating in mind as you put down the pan and reconsider the gift Frank is passing on to Jim.
From generation to generation to generation a ritual is handed on. A way of cooking, nourishing, and cleansing; an ongoing cycle of caring. Infused into the iron of that skillet was a tradition about what it means to be an adult, to act responsibly in the world. Why else would three generations go to all that trouble? As the story tells us, this family was not averse to the inclusion of modern conveniences. They were liberal in that sense, willing to incorporate the new into their lives, the same way that religious liberals have always demonstrated a willingness to bring modern discoveries into their understandings of the religious life, but they are not wholly given over to novelty.
One of my pet working definitions describes a liberal as a radical with children. There is truth in it. To be present with children is to be mindful of both what is to be and what has been. As a care giver to children, I sometimes see my work as a weaver, guiding the threads of innovation into the fabric of tradition. The family in the iron skillet story worked not in cloth but in culinary arts. Cooking is, you know, a transformative art. Using the classic four elements: fire, earth, water, and air, the kitchen alchemist transforms the inedible into the edible; the lifeless into the life giving.
All of this transformation takes place on that thin coating preserved and renewed across the generations. To me, that thin coating speaks to the role of faith in our families. What is it that faith does for us? Doesn't it have a certain kind of protective quality? It shields us, in a way, from the scorches of the profane in the world. When things get too hot, or we are stranded in one place too long, sometimes it is faith which preserves our integrity and keeps us from getting too stuck.
But like the curing on an iron skillet, our faith can be damaged or destroyed; worn down and scarred. Unless we take the time and effort to guard our faith, through thoughtful religious rituals, we run the risk of loosing what the previous generations experienced on a daily basis. Meditation or prayer, meaningful service, living daily with measured integrity are ways to tend to our coating of faith, and here among these people is the kitchen in which we practice. But Keith you might say, what about all those new innovative coatings; the non-stick, no fuss surfaces we find in today's kitchen arsenals, how can we get that kind of faith? Sadly my friends despite the waves of technological innovations and the philosophical realizations, even in the face of the information explosion, I know of no major new faith breakthroughs. We are still in the iron age of religious faith. We must still apply heat carefully, and scrub mindful if we are to enjoy the benefits of a life of faith.
Fortunately, the way has not been lost to us, and if we are attentive to its heritage, this most ancient of wisdom will be available to those who will next feel its warmth in their hands. May we be wise in our teaching, may those who follow be receptive in their learning.

May it be so.

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Last updated May 24, 2002 by clf@uua.org