TASTE AND SEE

By Kirsten A. S. Mebust

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to the man, who was with her, and he ate. Genesis 3:6 NRSV

O taste and see that the Lord is good. Psalm 134:8 NRSV

March 2nd was Theodore Geisel’s birthday. Banned from his college newspaper for transgressing campus dignity, Geisel took a pseudonym: Dr. Seuss.  His book Green Eggs and Ham is a spiritual classic. Dr. Seuss used 50 vocabulary words and silly, profound drawings to poke fun at human ambivalence about difference, and illustrate divine interruption and the invitation to creative transformation.

An adult figure sits alone reading a paper in an empty passage.  A childlike figure rushes by on a dog, carrying a sign, “I am Sam.” Not-Sam grumbles to his newspaper, only to be interrupted again by that kid, now on a big cat and bearing the sign, “Sam I am.”

The grown-up does not like either Sam-I-am or the invitation to eat. Without tasting, he rejects them in every cosmic situation; “here and there”, “anywhere.” Sam offers and offers and offers under all imaginable conditions; in a house, with a mouse, in a box, with a fox, in a car, in a tree…even under water. Not-Sam denies that new circumstances open up new possibilities for eating. He is neither willing nor able to like green eggs and ham.

Yet he is lured into a wider world by the conversation. A community gathers, bystanders and victims of his refusals of food and the conditions of life. In the end, he finds no way purge his life of Sam-I-am and the offering. Sam urges again: “Try them, and you may, I say!” Standing in water, woefully eying a green egg, surrounded by mouse, fox, goat, train engineer, ship’s captain and passengers, and Sam-I-am, he finally tastes green eggs and ham.

And surprise! “They are so good, so good, you see!” With a story through which he has resistantly followed Sam-I-am, our protagonist has been transformed—from annoyed to delighted, from isolated to accompanied, from cynical to grateful. His companions rejoice with him.

Real spirituality listens for and follows that persistent beckoning even though we experience interruption, dislocation, and even suffering. It’s about how the inviter doesn’t give up on our possibilities, even when we desperately want her to. It’s about all the events and companions through which grace flows into our lives even when we argue with it.  It’s about how we respond to the Incarnate in things we don’t perceive as divine—until we’ve tasted. It’s about how much tastier our lives become when we leave our illusion of isolation behind to encounter meaning, beauty, and justice. Real spirituality is a vocation of dining with a trickster child named “I am.”