Baconed Out

I am still gnawing on the bones for blog meat from the Family Reunion. Essentially, the Fam Re is open season on eating. Gut-busting is the goal. It always makes me laugh when the do-gooder starving diet gurus say "Maintain, Don't Gain" over vacation and the holidays. Really? What is the point then of vacation and the holidays if not celebration? I set goals like more food and I usually can step up and make that happen with just that little extra effort.

True enough that most Americans gluttonously act like we are on vacation and celebrating the holidays 24-7-365. Lazyboy used to be only a chair. Now it is society.

I had what I thought was a golden idea for the bbq while vacationing. How about grilling some bacon? Genius! I must be the first person in the world to think of this. Einsteinian indeed. I secured what I believed the best bacon to avoid a grease fire...naturally smoked bacon with actually more brown meat than white fat. A perfect cut.

To digress into Old Testament and New Testament history for a bit, the dietary laws of the Old Testament really confuse me. If pork was forbidden in the days of Moses onward to the closing of the O.T. and then some, why did God amend this in the New Testament? The pork go for it revelation happened to Peter on Simon the Tanner's roof in a vision of scrapple, sausage, bacon, and lobster. Hey folks, it's Shady Maple coming down! Greatest culinary event in history on top of everything else happening.

For the record, I don't get lobster's appeal. It could still be forbidden for all I care. It is like eating a big bug with a hard shell like some comedian said (I forget who...thinking Gaffigan whose routine is 99% food). Butter can't save it. I ordered lobster tail for my 21st birthday dinner and it was gross. I also ordered my filet mignon steak well done (it was a surf and turf dinner) at the restaurant my older brother was managing which resulted in him calling me a "moron." Apparently medium rare was the appropriate order.

What did I know about lobster and steak? That wasn't common fare in my home of the bare necessities. Day old donuts, cheese ends, powdered freaking milk. And about a trillion peanut butter sandwiches to make up for the caloric deficit I had after eating dinner, two each night. I was an athlete and growing like a weed upwards. "Hey Ma, hear that growl after din-din? That means I am still HUNGRY!"
    
I get that the Ceremonial Law was abolished in the coming of Christ, but that really doesn't answer the crux of the question: Why the dietary laws in the first place? It seemed like it set the Jews up for believing that outward observance was creditworthy. In fact, so much of the Old Testament created the conditions for external righteousness measurement. Check, Check, Check. One of those hard questions I am willing to ask.

My take is that humanity has had to progress through various levels of spiritual development and stages. Just as a child first crawls, then walks, then runs, humanity had to be shown structure and systems before the limitations of that epoch could be illustrated. In Christ, the OK for pork was a "Dinner is Served" announcement to the whole world to come to the table of salvation.

Imagine a life without bacon.

Anyway, the bbq'd bacon tasted like strips of half-smoked cigars. Since the bacon was naturally smoked to start with, adding more smoke flavor through charcoal became serious overkill. I couldn't believe that I had hit the bacon wall...disconcerting and disorienting indeed.

The next day I couldn't shake the taste of smoke. I felt like one of those kids whose old school Dad made him smoke the whole pack of cigarettes to punish junior for smoking a ciggy. Make 'em gag and vomit...that'll show you to stay away from the nic sticks. All the while, the old man is smoking three packs a day.

I forced myself to get back on the pig a day later by eating bacon. I wasn't sure if I would be revolted. I wasn't. A day break from bacon created enough space for me to move on. I was relieved. In the day off and being Orthodox, I drank a quart of my E-8 green drink to rain nutrition upon the smoldering ashes of my innards. I was reminded once again that God has created a world where more can actually lead to less. One of those paradoxes that creates space for spiritual reflection when we recognize that the economy of the kingdom often means that less is more.