Neapolitan

When I was a child, ice cream was not so very easy to get. The local import supermarket, Cold Storage, brought in British brand ice cream, which my mother bought for special occasions. We could also buy ice cream on occasion at the local swimming club, as I recall. There was no such thing as Baskin Robbins and thirty-one flavors. Our choices were four: vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, ... or a combination of all three called "Neapolitan."

Neapolitan ice cream came all in one container, with strawberry, vanilla and chocolate right next to each other so that if you scooped across the container you could get all three of them in one scoop. Or if you cut down through the ice cream you could lift off a slab with the three flavors represented more-or-less-equally in the slab.

I liked chocolate the best. But often the hostess would serve Neapolitan, so I developed a system for making my way through all three. I remember eating the vanilla first, then the strawberry, and finally finishing off with the best of all--the chocolate part. Although ice cream itself was a treat, when there was chocolate to be had, eating the other two flavors was simply doing my duty on the way to the best part.

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It's graduation weekend, and at our school that always begins with a vespers for families on Friday evening.  Traditionally several seniors will give short talks at the vespers, typically along devotional lines. It is there that we hope that the growth and maturing in their faith journey is evident to their fellow students, their teachers and their families. I hadn't been to the Friday vespers on graduation weekend for some years, but this evening I went. And what do you know?--I tasted Neapolitan tonight.

The first student spoke about the school's mission statement, which lifts high and celebrates our four values: Excellence in thought, generosity in service, beauty in expression and faith in God. She spoke with eloquence about how the school had succeeded in helping students develop these, and in what ways they could stretch further. But when she got to the "faith in God" part, she let me down as her listener. She copped out by defining faith in God simply as inherent in the other three values. In other words, she believes that if you think well, give well and express yourself well, you are living out faith in God.

Imitation Vanilla?

The second student also spoke of the mission statement. He referred to the church which supports our institution, claiming that the church had not stayed true to its beginnings. He described a reinterpretation of church history that was new to me, a sort of "libertarian, come-one-come-all" twist on what I would agree was a very lively start to this movement. His point was that we should focus on what we are rather than what we aren't (which I would agree with).  However, he urged that in doing so we should rule nothing out, censor out no competing interests, and simply let the strong pull of Good be the energy that drives us to live out our Mission. Censorship, "thou shalt nots" and boundaries are clearly to him the Great Evil.  Sigh.

Overripe Strawberry?

And then the third speaker rose, and she prayed. She opened her Bible and preached from a passage that tells how the servant of the prophet Elisha had his eyes opened as the Arameans attacked.  "Those that are for us more more than those that are for them," Elisha had told his servant. Then Elisha prayed for his servant, and the servant's eyes were opened, and he saw for the first time that they were surrounded by the armies of God, by the "horses and chariots of fire."  It's all in our perspective, the young speaker emphasized. God is there with us through the good times and the bad. There is more to our story than what we see. Let us not misinterpret our world when we cannot see the whole picture. Let us take heart, let us live with joy, and let us journey in hope.

Ahhh.  Then it was that I tasted the chocolate. But after getting through the first two flavors, it was bittersweet.

**Disclaimer: No, I'm not thick-headed. I realize that others could label the flavors of the three talks differently, and indeed could prefer a different flavor than I.