Life is lived in the gray areas, even if you dye your hair. Between the extremes of bottle black and platinum blond lie all the various shades of relative truth.
Neat and tidy as it would be to inhabit a wrong-or-right, black-or-white world, we don’t. Situational ethics govern us.
Alright, alright — no ethics at all govern the US right now.
But I digress.
Excepting that perennial Top Ten list of Thou Shalt Nots, it’s always best to accept absolutes with a grain of salt.
This might involve work. It might mean facing unpleasantness and learning new things and making decisions for yourself and enduring uncertainty.
Being a good human is hard.
But there are perks, and one of them is poured on pancakes.
Trust me, though: Thou Shalt Not Confuse Aunt Jemima With Maple Syrup. God would have typed this up Himself, but He used the wrong font and ran out of file space on His tablet.
I speak for Him, here, believe me. Let there be no situational ethics nonsense at the breakfast table.
And don’t be fooled by Trader Joe, who adorns his syrup jugs with autumn leaves and the warm orange tones of fall. Joe got the Vermont part right, but knows nothing about sugar maples or sap, which runs in the earliest days of spring.
You’ll find Truth in the bottle on the left, showing sparse cold springtime spaces. Bitter winds, crunching snow, colorless skies, and cold hands and feet give maple syrup its sweetness. Making it is as hard as being a good human.
If you happen to find a good human who makes good syrup and shares it, you’ve found one of God’s own anointed. Thank you, Uncle Keith!
Which brings us to another food-related commandment, #12: Thou Shalt Shamelessly Butter Up.
Pancake syrup or maple syrup? What’s your truth?
I shudder at the reaction that will sweep Yuppie America when it’s discovered that Trader Joe’s food is so cheap because it’s mostly cat litter and corn syrup. Except their cat litter, that’s mostly funerary ash and soap.
On the other hand, I had a good day teaching, so life ain’t all that bad.
I was raised on Aunt Jemima, so I’m not the one to ask. (Real maple syrup seems too sweet and thin. Please forgive me!) About the Top 10—a recent sermon by one of our new pastors was about “Is it OK to lie? Being that thou shalt not lie is one of the top 10.” Doesn’t if all come down to definitions? Is a white lie a lie? Is omission a lie? Is 100% pure even possible?