I’ve taken to making soups lately. I’m especially fond of vegetarian split pea and was eating it regularly at the Whole Foods café but since prices are skyrocketing—what used to be $2.49 is now $3.79—I figured why not make it myself. So a friend, a great cook and mother of four, gave me some tips like using a potato masher to “crush” the peas and Nature’s Seasons seasoning. I add garlic, onion and olive oil (my own touch) and SLURRRP!, it’s fabulous—and cheap.
Well, I’ve become a split pea soup fiend! I have also been making lentil soup and this weekend pulled out a bean mix given as a Christmas present. The directions included the usual bean washing and sorting command as well as the ubiquitous “discard floaters” command.
I’ve always wondered just what so vile and devious about floating beans that they must be discarded from the rest of the bean team, never having the opportunity to make its way in my mouth, down my stomach. Never will it have the chance to live its destiny to nourish my human body and soul.
How sad to be a floater. It just doesn’t seem fair. The floater bean was born like his brethren bean. It grew, was reaped, packaged, stored and sold along with them, seemingly sharing the same attributes that would allow it to fulfill its life’s purpose. It did only what it was supposed to do and through unlucky genetics or quirk of nature it failed to fully develop. It makes it all the way through the sorting process only to be found deficient during the soaking stage. Then it is plucked out and thrown in the trash. Rejected. Discarded. And why? Because it lacks the guts of “normal” beans and thus the density required to please our palate.
The floater is a morsel of God, rejected by a child of God.
I began to wonder, are there human floaters too? What of the many human beings, who through no fault of their own, lack whatever attributes that make the rest of humanity reject them as deficient. Some of these human floaters may have been born into a futile environment, surrounded by a world of despair and hopelessness from the time they leave the womb. Maybe they were born to a single parent, or otherwise in poverty so stifling their parents, like their parents, and theirs before them, see no way out.
Other floaters may have been born with genetic quirks that leave them susceptible to who knows what—depression, alcoholism, and lots of other “isms” to boot. At some point the system weeds the floaters out. Some are like the kid in Charlie Brown with the storm cloud over his or her head, troubled, can’t hold a job. Some panhandle, some turn tricks, others turn to crime. All are floaters.
But what about “personal responsibility?”. Can they not lift themselves up by the bootstraps even though they started with these handicaps? The fact is that without much remedial help, without loving dedicated attention, the answer is no, they cannot. They lack even the bootstraps.
While of course with God all things are possible, it is as President John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural speech, “here on earth God’s work must surely be our own.”
Human beans—human beings—are obviously not veggie beans. As a child of God they are never to be discarded, and thankfully they often are not. Family, friends, the church and yes, even government social programs salvage many a human floater. Still, many others share the bean’s fate.
Often all it would take is an acknowledgement from a fellow human be’an--a complete stranger would do—a pat on the back, a smile or kindly word. Sometimes such attention will turn a human floater away from self-termination (suicide) towards the tiny sliver of sunlight opened by this show of compassion. Then one step and another and before long this floater re-joins the mix of healthy human be’ans in the soup of life.
Truly, human kindness separates the beans from the boys.
