Lessons in the stew

Did you ever agree to do something before you realized how hard it would be? This is one of those times for me. During a planning meeting for our upcoming (Sat, Nov. 3) Perlieu Stew, one of the planners asked me to mention it in my column. I said, “Sure!” Now, as I sit to write the column, which is to be a religious column that I pray inspires people and draws them closer to Christ, I’m wondering how to make Perlieu Stew inspiring for the sake of the Gospel. Other than being a fund raiser for the Christian mission, there’s not too much about it that could qualify as “religious.”

Perlieu stew’s history has an interesting past. It was a community get-together during the times when the church was the center of the community that was designed to use up the last of your garden vegetables. The women would pick all the leftover vegetables and bring them and the men would get their guns and go hunting. Whatever they shot was the meat for the stew. In these parts, that meant deer, opossum and squirrel. Then they’d boil the living daylights out of it until it made a well-cooked stew. It was a way that a community could share little resources to make a lot.

As I got the penny tour around the church the first time I met members, they showed me the stew room (Bethany actually has a room devoted to making Perlieu Stew) and one of the men told me what went into the stew.

Now, I’m a Yankee (actually, I’m a Midwesterner, but down here that means “Yankee”) who was raised in suburbia. We ate a good variety of Midwestern suburban food: one day it was T-bones and potatoes, the next it was pork and potatoes, then sirloin and potatoes, and when we wanted that international flair, my mom cooked spaghetti with the same recipe she used to make chili (it’s actually delicious, but nowhere close to Italian). Then it was back to the (fill in the blank) and potatoes. With that history, it took me awhile to even get used to eating Bambi (who, I admit, makes a good sausage), so upon hearing that I’d be eating squirrel and opossum, I politely kept my eyes from bugging out and became a vegetarian on the spot.

“But we use chicken now.” Praise the Lord! A note of grace from a kind woman who thought the joke had gone on far enough. Actually, it turns out that there is now a very definite recipe for Perlieu Stew. A good dash or two of Tabasco is optional (make mine Texas Pete; I’m too wimpy for Tabasco).

So, here I am writing about the almighty Perlieu Stew, and I’m thinking to myself, “Sally, your calling is to tell of God’s love.” Actually, I think the woman who let me off the hook, saying they now use chicken, is probably one of the greatest models of God’s gracious love I’ve ever encountered, but she’d be embarrassed if I wrote about her.

I thought of turning the Perlieu Stew into a metaphor: different items getting boiled together and end up being unified is like people getting together, getting into hot water, and ending up unified. I even thought of the tenacity of the human spirit: everyone got their scraps together to make a lot from a little.

But Perlieu Stew is about community. People need community. There are even buildings called “community centers” built just for that purpose.

It’s sad that the days are gone when the church was the center of the community and people knew their neighbors. Now, even in our growing area, we live very isolated lives. Compare that to the early church in Acts. People held all things in common and things were dispersed as any had need. They were unified in Christ, devoted to a common purpose, the breaking of bread and prayer, while waiting for Jesus’ return.

Nowadays, we step around each other. There’s a chasm that’s developed between people; a chasm that only Jesus himself can bridge. We divide ourselves into rich and poor, cool kids and nerds, Yankees and Southerners, black and white, native and foreigner, Methodist and Baptist, children and adults (and the list could go on) ...

The origin of the Perlieu Stew is about as close as you can get to that early church: bringing their vegetables and fresh meat (whatever it was) to hold them in common and to disperse food to whoever needed it. It’s still a fun get-together; many hands go into making it. The hens have to be cooked, rice has to be bought, the fire has to be lit, someone has to stir the cauldrons, and so forth. And the people come to eat stew and talk.

You see folks you haven’t seen awhile and those you see every day, and though there’s some in every crowd, saying things like, “this isn’t as good as it was last year,” or “too much salt,” or “we never did it that way before,” we know that those folks, too, are included in the body of Christ – and we’re able to love them all, breaking brea—that is, Perlieu Stew and crackers, together.