Soy Sauce Packets & Epiphanies: "The streets of heaven...

"The streets of heaven...

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

...are too crowded with angels, but every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we're reminded that that capacity may very well be limitless." -Jed Bartlet

2 comments:

Anonymous, 6:55 PM: one small angel in now in heaven... one enormous difference made forever on earth... how this made me cry...
Anonymous, 4:03 AM: Reaching for the stars, that were once out of reach
We now face a world, where we can touch anything.
But with the ability to be in reach of everything
Exists the ability to touch unbelievable evil.

Many do not seek or provoke the assault,
But our birth right of freedom is unthinkable to so many.
The divide between the sexes nearly extinct
Allowed to vote, drive and say what they want.

But when presented with such horrifying sights,
Things that once only occupied a nightmarish dream,
We are faced with a choice to our lives not yet faced,
Do we run to the fire or hide in the corner.

We’ve achieved what is hard, we’ve achieved what is great.
That which was hard was done for we could.
That which was great was done for it was there.
We’ve reached for the stars and nothing’s out of reach.

Yet the true measure of our people’s strength
Is how they rise to the evil that is now ever-present.
The true measure of our people’s strength
Is how to master the fear that comes from such wrong.

They are our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers
Our friends and our workers, our heroes and our leaders.
They’ve been taken from us, ripped from our sides,
And nothing on earth can explain it away.

Come evil come good our destiny is not of our choosing
We will stand and face it or hide in the shadows.
The question you must ask is one simple question,
Will you hide in the shadows or will you run into the fire?

The streets of Heaven are too crowded with Angels tonight.
Don’t let them be forgotten, don’t let them fade away.
God bless their memory, God bless our nation’s
The streets of Heaven are too crowded with Angels tonight.

the story behind ssp&e:

so i'm not sure if you're anything like me, but being the 'off the cuff cuisine' chef that i am, i try not to let anything go to waste. you know, when you bring home some bk or mickey d's, and after consuming your poor excuse for food, have ketchup packets or sauce shots left over that you throw in the door and forget about. same goes for chinese food, and you know they always give you enough sauce to put out a fire at the pentagon with your order. you throw them in your refrigerator door and forget about them. then one day you're trying to impress some last minute guests that have decided to stay at your place for dinner and all you have in your 'gourmet' kitchen are some ramen noodles, frozen veggies and some leftover grilled chicken from last weekend's cookout. the makings of a superb, on-the-fly stirfry. but wait, OH SHIT!, how are you going to make a sauce for your stirfry with no sauce? you look in the fridge and all you see is a bottle of ketchup, french's mustard (i use the term mustard loosely when describing french's), and a jar of pickle juice. oh no, what to do, what to do. then you bust open the butter holder, that invariably has never seen a stick of butter in it's life, and VOILA! soy sauce, duck sauce, hot mustard! packets, but instant chinkychow sauce nonetheless! each one of those packets, collected over time, came from a meal, inevitably eaten over conversation, an argument or during a lone lunch of self-reflection, came from a time and place in the past. as are our lessons learned. we learn through the years how to cope, how to inspire, how to teach, and how to live. we don't always remember those lessons, as we throw condiment packets in the fridge we throw life-lessons into the back of our heads, until one day we find ourself in a situation where it becomes relevant and we pull them from the back of our minds as to not waste the advice and lessons of the past. the moral of this story, and the linking of it to my blog- our life experiences are our 'soy sauce packets,' our hidden links to our experiences of our past...

e·piph·a·ny - noun - a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience. [www.dictionary.com]

the epiphanies that we experience in life, questions or situations that we find ourselves in, and don't know how to resolve, can most often be solved my raking our brains in search of a 'soy sauce packet.' an answer to a question. a solution to a problem. and so this, this blog, is simply an ever-expanding culmination of soy sauce packets in my butter box, and the epiphanies that have helped to make room for more butter in my fridge...