Nothing In Here Goes Together

Nothing in there goes together.

That is the verdict, and it gets delivered about four times a week, standing with the door open, looking at a shelf.

There is rice. There is a can of something a relative left. There is half an onion, a bag of frozen things, some pasta, and an item you bought with a plan attached that you no longer remember.

And none of it is a meal. It is a collection of unrelated objects, and a meal is something with a name, and there is no name for what is on that shelf.

So the door closes, and you have toast, or you order, or you go to bed at a slightly odd hour having eaten something out of a packet standing up.

And the whole time, there was food in the house.

So let me say the first thing plainly, before anything practical.

Nothing here is going to send you out for the missing item.

There is no missing item. What follows works with what is on that shelf tonight, because the sense that it does not go together is the actual subject and adding to the shelf would leave it exactly where it is.

There is a lad here which hath five barley loaves

There is a moment in John where somebody does the arithmetic on the food available, and the arithmetic is correct.

There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many? (John 6:9, King James Version)

But what are they among so many.

The man asking is not being difficult. He has looked at what is there, described it accurately, and drawn the obvious conclusion, which is that it does not add up to a meal for the situation in front of him.

And he is not corrected for the arithmetic. Nobody in the text tells him he counted wrong.

You are counting accurately rather than counting badly, and a shelf that does not add up to a named dish has never once been the same thing as nothing to eat. John 6:9 lets a man state exactly what is available without correcting his sums, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody standing in front of an open door again.

And then look at what the food actually is.

Five barley loaves and two small fishes. Barley was the cheap grain, the one nobody chose. Two small fish, and the text says small, as if to make certain nobody imagines this was an impressive lunch.

It is an odd, unmatched, unimpressive collection of things belonging to a boy who happened to have them. It is a shelf.

You have the same kind of collection that got used rather than the kind that gets rejected, and unmatched items belonging to nobody in particular have never once been disqualified from feeding somebody. The Spirit of God is the one with somebody who has written off his own cupboard, and John 6:9 names the cheapest grain and two small fish and does not upgrade either.

A meal is not a dish, and your shelf is four dinners

Here is the practical half, and it is one correction. Going together is a property of dishes, and it has been demanded of food that never claimed it.

A dish is a named thing with a fixed set of parts, and if a part is missing then the dish is not available, and that is a real constraint for anybody making that dish. Nobody here is making a dish. What is being made is dinner, which is a different and much older activity.

Dinner is heat, a fat, something with substance, and something with flavor. Any four objects that cover those four jobs are a dinner, and going together is not on the list.

Look at that shelf again with that in mind. Rice is the substance. The onion is the flavor. The can is the substance or the flavor depending on what is in it. The frozen things are whatever you need them to be at that point.

You were auditing a shelf against a recipe rather than against a dinner, and items that do not share a name have never once refused to share a pan. John 6:9 has an unmatched handful of cheap food set in front of a crowd, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man who has been closing a door on four dinners.

And here is the part that will feel wrong for about three minutes.

Do not decide what it is before you start. Put the pan on, put the onion in, add the rice or the can or whichever, and let the thing become what it becomes. It will end up being something, and the something will not have a name, and it will be eaten.

Cooking without a name for it is not improvising above your level. It is the ordinary way people have fed themselves for most of history.

You have permission to cook something with no name at all, and food that never became a recognized dish has never once been a lesser dinner. The Spirit of God is the one in that kitchen with somebody putting a pan on before deciding anything, and John 6:9 ends with the unimpressive collection being the thing that was used.

What tonight is, off that shelf

So here is the assignment. Cook one thing tonight with three things off that shelf, and eat it sitting down.

Tonight. Three things. Go and take them out and put them on the counter first, so the arithmetic stops. Then one pan: something fat, the onion, then the rice or the pasta or the can. Do not go out and get anything and do not look up what it is called.

It may not be good. That is expected, and it is information about a first attempt rather than about the shelf, and the shelf was never the problem.

You are cooking a dinner rather than assembling a dish, and three unrelated things in one pan has never once been the same as an empty cupboard. John 6:9 sets out barley and two small fish exactly as they are, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that stove with somebody who stopped counting.

Then the second half, which is the one that does the work. Eat it sitting down, at a table, on a plate, not standing at the counter with the pan. Standing at a counter is how a person eats something that does not count, and this is the first thing that ever came off that shelf, and it is going to be treated as a meal even though nobody knows what to call it.

You are sitting down to something with no name, and a dinner nobody could name has never once counted for less than one that had one. The Spirit of God is the one at that table with a plate on it, and John 6:9 uses what a boy happened to have and nothing more.