This week at school I was given a starter. "What is a starter?" you may ask. Well, it is quite simply an analogy for life wrapped up in a ziploc bag. Ziploc bags are so freaking handy, aren't they? The starter is lovingly divided up by someone who has added to the Ziploc bag a mixture that resembles a thinned out pancake mix. Included with the mix is a recipe. A recipe for life.
First of all, let me explain the origin of the mix that is received. This mix has previously been spending the duration of at least 10 days with the person that gave the mix to me. Now, understand that everyday the recipe has called for a procedure that must be followed precisely or all is lost. Also, understand that the person who gave me the mix has had a portion of that mix given to her previously. The mix is a perpetual ingredient that has been in the care of many others previous to me. Picture, if you will, DNA. I contain the DNA of generations of relatives before me. My starter mix contains the mixes of generations of bakers before me. It's like a food chain letter.
So, as in life we come to earth with the DNA of others before us(refer to the starter mix analogy). We are starters in human form.
Now every day to insure my recipe will be succesful, I have to do some things. Here are a sampling of instructions; Day 1- do nothing, Day 2-do nothing, Day 3-do nothing, Day 4-mush the bag, Day 5-mush the bag. As you can see these are very mundane activities that really require very little effort. As in life, the mundane is inevitable. Our lives roll along and we do the things we need to do to survive. We take out the trash, go to work, wash the clothes, go to church and so on and so on. Not that we aren't happy doing these things, it's just that they are the things we do to survive and can become very regular and taken for granted.
For the mix, these kinds of days are very important because they allow the ingredients to rest and yet do their chemical work that will create a masterpiece. These days cannot be hurried or taken for granted.
Refer to Day 5-mush the bag. Mush the bag? Yes! Squish it around in your hands, It's great therapy. It causes some angst within the mix and yet it is necessary. Do you feel at times your life is being mushed? And yet, you are contained in your life and can't escape it. Just like the mix. That Ziploc bag won't let it out for anything. It must endure it's mushing. Just like us. Mushing in life comes in the form of, unexpected bills, illnesses, problematic children, marriage difficulties, death. The list goes on and on. It could be as simple as your clothes not being organzied correctly by your wife in your closet that throws you off. But I digress.
Anyway, we all have been mushed at one time or another. This is necessary in life to make us better.
Day 6-Day 6 is what gets me through days 1-5. On day 6 we add flour, sugar, and milk in this particular recipe. Don't you just love a change? Changes in my life that have made me happy are babies being born, family coming to visit, pay raises, shopping for clothes and peanut butter m&m's. Once again we must mush the bag to mix it up. This is a good mush.
Since all good things must come to an end we find ourselves back to Days 7-9 wherein we will resume mushing the bag. Why can't we just go back to doing nothing. Now doing nothing is looking pretty good. And thus we learn, how we have taken for granted those wonderful, repetitive, do nothing days. However, without the mushing, our mix and ourselves cannot grow.
And now-Day 10. The final day. The day all of our hard work and patience pay off. This also, in my analogy of life, is the day we die. However, it's all good. This is the day that we mix our final ingredients with our starter. The accumulation of our 9 days of work have come to this point. We pour our mix into a glass bowl. We free it from it's Ziploc bag. We also share. We take four cups of the mix and divide them evenly into 4 Ziploc bags. This is where we share our mix with others and provide them with a starter. We share our experience with them. I liken this to having children. I'm sure some things my children would have preferred I not share with them. Such as my praciticing parenting skills on them, crying in front of them and arguing with their father. But such is life.There is a lot of mushing going on. We add the final touches, mix and bake. We are going to take our finished product to that great county fair in the sky where Heavenly Father will judge it. Has all our doing nothing, mushing and mixing paid off?
Suffice it to say, the cake was delicious. I think I will add walnuts and chocolate chips next time to make it more interesting. Hmm..another analogy for life.
