Rosario and Reality

There’s a jumble of delightful Italian chaos tucked inside a specialty shop just off the cobbled streets of Stresa.  Run by a gregarious whirlwind named Rosario, charm and dust mingle on wooden shelves packed with local wines, ancient Balsamic vinegars, and the goldy-green oil of freshly pressed olives.  Spices with hand-scrawled labels are pressed into corners with other secrets of nirvana-inducing Italian cuisine, entire stretches of Tuscan-colored walls devoted to jams and limoncellos, truffle oils and sweet cream honey.

Italian living ebbs with its own particular passions, rising and falling with the sun’s sleepy glow over the waters of Lago Maggiore.  I was determined to savor it, though I was in the area for a conference.  On a free afternoon, some friends and I went hunting for authentic Italy along the uneven paths of Stresa, scavenging for scarves and the other usual non-touristy but still envy-inducing fare Americans in Europe love to collect.   We were admiring some hand-painted serving trays carelessly tossed in a splintered basket when Rosario called to us from her doorway, like a carnival-hawker.

“Come!  You come here and you try some Balsamico.  It is the best in Italy.  My friend, he make it.  It is fourteen years old. You come”.   Rosario’s hair shoots out from her scalp like an iron blond halo and her voice is just as unyielding.  She is not the sort of woman one disobeys.  We stepped in, wide-eyed, breathing deeply the shop’s tangy colors and warm herbal aura with the intentionality saved for those rare moments you sense are in process of becoming extraordinary memories.  Every shelf was magic, every label enchanting.  We could have stayed an hour or forever, but we were meeting others for lunch very soon and said as much to Rosario.

“You come back after lunch.”  It was a command, not an invitation.  “You bring your friends and I do for you a wine and vinegar tasting.  You come.”  What could we do? We nodded.  We would come. 

  

Convincing the others wasn’t difficult, so after pasta and cappuccino al fresco, we traipsed back to Rosario’s emporium.  She threw up her hands at the sight of us, hustling us in and leading us to a dark angled half-room near the back, fussing over us like a hot-blooded Italian hen.  We soon were seated along an ancient oak table, worn smooth in spots by other others who had once breathed in the scents of sweet vinegar and herbs with intentionality.  Her husband perched on a three-legged wooden stool to her left, firmly in her orbit, but never speaking a word.  When we were all settled, she began.

For nearly an hour she lectured and laughed, clapping her hands and pouring potent dark liquids into our tasting glasses.  She would punctuate important thoughts with her index finger, stabbing the musty air near her head, then lowering her voice and raising one eyebrow to give us a sly knowing look.   We knew we were expected to nod in response, whether we had any idea what she was talking about or not.

“I have an American friend” she started, after a long litany detailing the birth of balsamic vinegar and the pressing of olives, “She is very bright.  A psychologist!” Again the finger, thrust into her husband’s orbit, with a dramatic wrist twist for emphasis.  He moved ever so slightly to his left.  “Alfred remembers.  We go to visit her in America, I think it was Pennsylvania, and this woman – a psychologist! She make us lunch before she go to work.”  At this, Rosario closed her eyes and shook her head slowly.   The stabbing finger rejoined her hand and fluttered to her chest.  When she continued, it was in the tones one reserves for funerals and very bad news.

“She make pork chops.”  She stopped, then corrected herself, “Eh -She try to make pork chops.  She put them in the pyrex dish and she-,” Rosario eyebrows arched with disbelief, her slightly bugging eyes imploring each of us to share in her incredulity. “On top of them she pour chicken stock.  Chicken stock!”  She flung her head back and slapped her forehead with the horror of it.  “She tell me to cover it with tin foil and to cook it in the oven for 35 minutes.”  The iron blond halo shook from side to side.  “This woman, she is brilliant – a psychologist!  But, she is a terrorist in the kitchen, I tell you.  A terrorist in the kitchen!”

We all shared a hearty laugh and she settled into her sly knowing look to tell us the rest of the story:  Instead of baking the offending pork chops, she and Alfred snuck into the psychologist’s back yard, dug a hole, and buried them!   The terrorist in the kitchen never knew and Rosario brought forth the authentic taste of Italy meal after meal for the rest of their visit.

Most of us hunger for the taste of authenticity, these days.  So much of the world we live in is fake – fake hair, fake teeth, fake body parts; fake friends, fake personalities, fake celebrities.  Generations of targeted advertising have taken their toll – salesman-sensing skeptics loiter in the back of our minds, sizing up everyone we meet.  Those trying to sell us something are immediately under suspicion.  Our minds and our wallets are equally guarded against swindlers, whether financial or philosophical.  We don’t really trust anyone. 

And because of it, when we happen to stumble upon a rare specimen of authenticity - whether cultural, spiritual, or relational - we take notice.  Although we spend most of our lives hiding behind the projection of a much better self than we know we truly are, when we see others brave enough to be transparent, we envy them.  We value honesty.  Candor.  Being “real”.

Why?  Because we know that if what we see is fake, it is because the “fake” can only exist as a distorted imitation of an actual reality.   Every year, millions of people go to “Italy” in Florida, at Epcot Center.  They visit the pink and white marble 14^th century replica of Doge’s Palace, girded by gardens of olive trees, Mediterranean citrus, kumquat trees, cypress and pines.  Canals echo with baritone strains of “O Sole Mio” from gondoliers in striped shirts, expertly guiding tourists in tapered boats through the waterways.  Bernini’s “Fontana de Nettuno” is there, as well as St. Mark’s Square, Illy coffee and Venetian glass.   But, Rosario is not.  And while no one who visits Epcot is under the illusion they are actually in Italy, it is because authentic Italy exists that Epcot Italy was born.

If we go back to the Big Questions – Who are we? Where did we come from? Is there a God? How should we live? Etc. - our hunger for authenticity reveals that not only is it logical for an actual Truth (vs. non-truth) to exist, it is important to us, as humans, to identify what that Reality entails.  What is “real”?  Is love real?  Loneliness?  The Orion Nebula?  Joy, Compassion, or Dodo Birds?  If we want to know the Truth that lies behind everything we experience, we must first identify what is real, because the authentic Truth must be compatible with every reality we encounter (or else it cannot be true). 

I’ll take the lead in being real and name my bias from the start – I believe in God.  I believe that He made things and spoke up, clearly communicating our purposes and our privileges as mankind.  I don’t, however, believe in swallowing a faith blindly just for the sake of believing in Something.  There are scores of “fake” belief systems for sale in the marketplace of ideas and sheer logic tells us that they cannot all be true, nor can they be equally authentic.  If so many imitations have been born, however, it must be because somewhere in the universe, an Original exists. 

I am not interested in the things that are fake – bury them out back with Rosario’s pork chops.  I want what started it all: the good stuff, the Original, and I believe the only way to find it is to be brave enough to take an honest look at the evidence.  If God is who I think He is, He’s not afraid of my doubts, my fears, or my wonderings.  If He cannot handle the hard questions, He must not be God.

My life has flowed with my own particular passions - through it I have made every effort to breathe life in with intentionality.  I want to taste the reality of extraordinary memories because I need to know that I am real, that my relationships are real, that my experiences are real and that somewhere, an independent Reality defines them.  I can be as brilliant as the next person, but if am focusing that brilliance on imitations that distract while carelessly whipping up a quick, sub-standard explanation for what feeds the hunger inside me, I am not a realist.  I am a terrorist in the kitchen.       

  

“No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions”

 -Charles P. Steinmetz