Apple Picking (or the lost art of creating)

Yesterday Mary and I went apple picking. We picked 1/2 bushel that I am getting ready to turn into jelly and apple butter. I was shocked by the number of people who paid for 1/2 peck bags for each person in their family and then only filled each half way.

I can remember going apple picking with my mother. It was a big day that we looked forward to all September. We'd go to the orchard and pick 2 bushels. It would take us most of a Saturday. Then over the next week I would help mom create all the wonderful pies, dumplings, apple butter, apple sauce and so on. It felt so good to know that the food going to my table was mine. I had seen those apples go from tree to finished product. I had pride in our food, because I had worked so hard on it. It reminds me of a commercial I used to see on Nick at Nite. "It's Shake and Bake and I helped!"

That's something I want to pass on to my children, their connection to the things in our life. I want them to be intimately involved in the process of creating. I want them to have that pride of a job well done. I want them to understand the work that goes into making something, and the spiritual nourishment that is derived from the creative process.

Mary and I were talking about how man is created in God's image the other day. One of the ways we are like God is in our capacity for reason. We are more than the sum of our chemical processes. But, another and equally important aspect of the Divine in our nature is the desire to create. To look at something we have made and say, "It is good."

I hadn't put all this together until I started listening to those half-bag families. They were there not to create, but simply to get in touch with Creation. For them, the $7 a person they were spending was worth it just for that. So many of the children didn't know where apples came from until that day. And one of the moms came up to me and said, "Wow, you must have something special in mind with all those apples." I told her what I was going to do with them and she was amazed.

I couldn't help thinking how few apples I was bringing home than in those by-gone days with Mom.