Bottling SummeR a christmas meditation by Stacey Gleddiesmith
The Shelves T he summers of my childhood line up on shelves. For as long as I can remember I have helped my mother store up the richness of harvest: going out in the morning dew to gather the bounty of our garden, and devoting the afternoon to paring knives and pots of boiling water.
We froze beans, tomatoes, kale; we filled jars of jam that frosted up like Christmas ornaments in our freezer. My mother brought home boxes of peaches and apricots, which we plunged beneath boiling water and cold, until the skin fell off in our fingers. We took their slippery roundness in our palms, and sliced each tiny orb into slivers of sunlight, carefully pushing them into jars and covering them with boiling syrup, the air bubbles skittering to the surface. With one finger pushed tight within a clean, damp cloth, I wiped stickiness from the lips of jars and sealed the fruit in saving it for another season.
As the seasons change and my jars stand neatly lined up on their shelves, I think sometimes of Mary. I am fascinated by the phrase: Mary treasured these things in her heart. I picture her thoughtful gaze, and imagine her hands clasped against her chest, holding memory in.
twice Mary is described as treasuring things in her heart. First after the visit of the shepherds and their proclamation of the angel s words: A Savior has been born! (Luke 2:8-20). And second after searching Jerusalem for three days and finding twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple courts, protesting: Why were you searching for me? Didn t you know I had to be in my Father s house? (Luke 2: 41-52). Mary treasured these things in her heart. Mary took these things and sealed them in her memory, like peaches and apricots in a jar.
Season of Plenty T here are times in our lives when God grants us great abundance: of health, of love, of relationship, of spiritual wellbeing and He asks us to store it. We take the times of joy and abundance and seal them up in jars. Setting them carefully on a shelf to preserve their sweetness. The storing of this abundance is not a passive taking-in it requires harder work than leaner years.
At home in the mornings I awoke, in summer as in winter, to the sound of my father s voice. My father had a habit of waking us with scripture. From the bottom of the stairs, his deep bass voice would boom: How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest and poverty will come upon you (Proverbs 6:9-11). The context of the verse my father chose was consideration of the ant: it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. (Proverbs 6:6-8) And as the season changed, that is what we did. Like ants, we scurried in the field, garden and kitchen to store up the abundance that had been given to us. Storing up during summer, so that we would not suffer want when winter descended.
Season of want Store up, ant, God s goodness in the times He feels near, in preparation for the times when He feels far away. For sometimes, He does feel far away. Mary treasured these things in her heart.. Several years ago, I went through a time of deep depression during an extended period of unemployment. I was living on unemployment insurance in a friend s parents house, and there seemed to be absolutely no possibilities in front of me.
E very morning I hunted for a job that didn t exist. It was fruitless toil. I no longer wanted to spend time with people, because they might ask me how I was doing. Instead, I spent large amounts of time alone in my room in bed.
I t was during this period of my life that I again took up canning. It was the wrong season: early spring. Fruit was expensive, quantities of it were difficult to come by and what was available had none of the sweetness of summer left in its flesh. Yet, somehow, seeing those jars on the shelf at the end of a day made me feel productive that my life was still worth something. It helped me remember who I was. When I felt particularly awful, I would go down to the basement and count those jars and it restored some of my hope. I cannot explain this.
As a child too our canning cupboard mesmerized me. W hen I was sent to fetch a jar of peaches, or jam, or pickles, or crab-apple catsup, I would lose myself in the jars on the shelf. They were bottlings of my summers: concentrated sweetness stored and waiting for a day in need of sweetening. Perhaps that is why I found comfort, in the midst of my depression, in the simplicity of a row of jars newly lined up on the shelf. They reminded me of brighter times, and I clung to that bottled brightness to lighten my present. But simply looking at jars on a shelf is never enough.
Provision BReaking the Seal As my mother and I bent over steaming pots on hot summer afternoons, we knew that we would not leave the jars we filled to decorate the shelf but would, in the depths of winter, foray down into our cold basement to bring up jars of summer. We would hear the satisfying pop that broke the seal and allowed the flavour and texture of summer to live in the midst of winter.
That knowledge was part of the pleasure of canning. We knew that the abundance we were granted was stored not to remain on the shelf to be admired from a distance, but to provide in a season of scarcity. T hat knowledge was part of the pleasure of canning. One does not take to canning in order to hoard the harvest, only to preserve it for when it is needed. If the jars are left too long on the shelf they turn sour and spoil. Yet we are sometimes tempted to retreat into memory sheltering ourselves there from some present threat to wellness. Instead, God asks us to take out our stockpile of His presence, the bottled substance of relationship and plenty, and to release it to refresh our present: to take the jars out of the cupboard and bring them upstairs, rather than sitting beside them in darkness.
But how do we do this? It is far easier to follow the example of Israel. What was their constant complaint, but a sitting in the dark, staring at jars that represented better times in their lives? Forgetting the toil and pain they suffered in Egypt, they remembered only that they were well-fed, making each other s mouths water with lists of good things: Leeks! Onions! Melons! Ah, remember the taste of melons? And they wished themselves slaves again.
As we so often follow their bad example, we must learn from what was spoken to them for there is a commandment of remembrance. W hen Israel balked at the power of the Canaanites, they were told: remember. Remember the God who brought you out of Egypt. When they stood at the brink of that Canaan, they were told again, remember. Remember the promise you were given. Remember who gave you the promise. And all through the Psalms, through every lament, the echo: remember. Remember the faithfulness of the Lord.
This remembering is different. It is not sitting in the dark. It is opening, releasing the abundance of God s past blessings into the present. It transforms the present. It is the quiet pop of a seal that releases the sweetness of a season preserved. For this time. For this season when nights become longer and darker, and we are tempted to focus on what we don t have, rather than being conscious of what we do have. For this time.
God's Cupboard I have always wondered what Mary treasured in her heart. Now I think I know. She was storing up the goodness of a season: memories of shepherds and kings bowing down to kiss the tiny hands of her new child. Memories of her son, her small son, claiming a home other than hers; claiming the home of His Father, boldly teaching teachers in a way that amazed them. She bottled these memories in her heart.
PerhaPS, as she watched her son grow and as she began to listen to his teaching, she occasionally went to the cupboard and ran her fingers over the jars, reading labels, imagining their taste, placing new jars on the shelf. Perhaps, as she stood at the foot of the cross she began to open these jars maybe she opened them all. A soft, popping of seals. Pop: a Savior has been born! Pop: Why were you searching for me? Didn t you know I needed to be in my Father s house? Perhaps in remembering these things she was able to gaze, even at her son on a Roman cross, with some small sliver of hope still alive.
PerhaPS her hope was supported by more than her own remembrance. The Psalms echo not only with faith based in remembrance, but with pleas to God: remember me, remember Your promise. Our hope in times of darkness and light is built on the remembrance of God s faithfulness and promise, and on the fact that God, Himself, remembers. Colossians states that hope is stored up for us in heaven as if God has a heavenly canning cupboard in which he has bottled up our days as if he goes there from time to time to run His fingers over the jars, read the labels, and take out one or two to open. So even when we cannot manage the strength to open a jar ourselves, God reaches above and beyond us, pulls the jar we are seeking off the shelf, twists it open, and invites us to eat at His table.
ConclusioN My mother and I spent marathon days elbow deep in harvest, wrinkling and staining our hands with the gifts of God. We filled two gigantic chest freezers, and two dark cupboards, shutting the sun and wind and warmth of summer behind insulated doors. We collected the rich abundance of good years, and held it in reserve for years of drought. Like Mary, we treasured that bounty and stored it up. And when a thinner season came, we opened it and let it fill us with the hope and light of summer. Like Mary, we knew that both were God s provision: the bounty of a season, and the jars lined up on the shelf.
2015 Stacey Gleddiesmith