Mexican Rice Missionary

My creative energies have been spent on a few all-consuming projects as of late. They've also taken, it must be admitted, an occasional backseat to things like mowing the yard and doing the washing-up. I have poured them into my family as well, and that has been more valuable an expenditure than anything measured in silver and coin, though I confess I'm not yet stout enough to look those particular virtues in the eyes. Still, spinning spoons at the stovetop like some desperate vaudeville dreamer, I've conjured a few tasty gems out of spices, butter, and humble tubers. These dishes and their ilk find their way to the dinner table, where two lovely ladies with no company affiliations, no accolades, smile and savor the God-given fare. Such is the ritual here it Sinclair's Eve.

And the world never measures it.

Everyone recalls how Mama made that beef casserole, and you rarely hear the World complain that such stuff is of no account, even though it be outside the grasp of empirical knowledge and reckoning. In this, perhaps, the World knows it has little chance of victory, and so it wisely remains silent. In this, the unsung creativity of people for their families, the World meets a fell nemesis.

I have spent many a minute lately pondering and postulating over the nervous figures surrounding CD sales, photography purchases, and bookbinding. Yet these are only the treacherous waters of getting art and its stories to you, so you may take art home and write the next chapters, as it were. In the end, it is still one of us telling the story to the other, who listens with fertile ears.

Here at home, Mexican rice and chicken is recognized by no printed review, but it's inspired by the same Holy Ghost who billows the temple curtains and shuffles spookily across the attic floor of my soul. I find the laundry, the dinner table, the yard, and the communion of storytime to be a mission field. And like so many mission fields, the one who set out to effect change is himself changed, often with greater cataclysm than his congregation.

My aunt, who is a masterfully peaceable homeschooler of eight children, has a blog filled with succinct but valuable gems on this subject. For more reading, see Little Sanctuary.