Jam Session: Bodhicitta in a jar

 
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Everyone can breathe easier today. The world is a happier place. This morning

I was up earlier than the sun could burn off cold fog, so I fired up the range and made a small batch of late crop strawberry jam. Now there should be enough-- although truthfully when it comes to sharing the love of homemade jam from farmer’s market fruits there is never enough.

The jars of seasonal strawberry I made late in June were disappearing rapidly, chosen over peach and apricot, even blueberry, so I was fretting. For 48 years, I have been making pure ingredient strawberry jam (just the berries with lime juice, rose water, spices and tiny bit of raw sugar), and there have definitely been years I wanted to quit, this being one of them. But people wait for it. They look so forward to getting a jar or two, I feel like that Titanic love: I must go on.

There’s definitely a jar for me, if I even want it because I don’t eat that much jam. But others, they’re crazy for it, and my jam making is always for others. Frankly, no matter how much stuff and money people have, they go gaga over a jar of simple homemade jam. It’s still the best handout money can’t buy. I love how happy it makes everyone, how simple it is to make people happy in this monstrously troubled world.

So, when to my surprise yesterday, I saw a few piled-high pints of late crop strawberries at my local farmers’ market, I figured “what the hell’ and the pig in me grabbed two. I could’ve sliced and enjoyed them, but I was, as I said, worried about others. So I am happy to report the four jars of jam those berries just made reduced my anxiety. More people are going feel the love. Homemade jam is such an easy way to share it, I am in fact on my way back to the kitchen to turn the four peaches a local farmer gave me and the handful of blackberries I picked by the side of the road into a few more jars to give away. On this very happy morning, I feel like the world is going to be a more perfect place.

~Sandy Garson "Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
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