cutting oranges

"Do it lovingly--in perfect  quarters like little boats, or in staggered exfoliations like a flat map of a round world, or in one long spiral, as my grandfather used to do. Nothing is more likely to become garbage than an orange rind; but for as long as anyone looks at it in delight, it stands a million triumphant miles from the trash heap.

"That, you know, is why the world exists at all. It remains outside the cosmic garbage can of nothingness, not because it is such a solemn necessity that nobody can get rid of it, but because it is the orange peel hung on God's shoulders like a chandelier, the wishbone in His kitchen closet. He likes it; therefore it stays."

"[God] likes onions, therefore they are. The fit, the colors, the smell, the tensions, the tastes, the textures, the lines, the shapes are a response, not to some forgotten decree that there may as well be onions and turnips, but to His present delight––His intimate and immediate joy in all you have seen, and in the thousand other wonders you do not even suspect.

"... Man's real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God's image for nothing."

--from Robert Farrar Capon in  The Supper of the Lamb. I'm combining two posts from two years ago this month when our book club had a wonderful supper of lamb together as we discussed this delightful book. Incidentally I orginally called the first part "How to Cut an Orange" and got hits on my blog from all over the world. Apparently many people don't know how to cut an orange and googled directions. :-)  Connecting with other re-posts at Chari's Happy to Design.