He had no truck with American abstinence. “God invented cream. Furthermore, having made us in his image, he means us to share his delight in its excellence,” he wrote. He liked a drink or two as well: a married couple’s half-bottle amid meatloaf and brawling children was one of the “cheerful minor lubrications” of the “sandy gears of life”. But modern-day Americans, he wrote glumly, “drink the way we exercise: too little and too hard….”
…[He also] had no time for strict scorekeeping, in the kitchen or anywhere else. Grace, not willpower, dealt with sin: Jesus came to save the world, not to judge it. Showy piety, legalism and quietism were all abominations, almost as much as the cheap oil and harsh flavours of phoney ethnic food.
His own scorecard had some blots. Divorce from the mother of his six children cost him his parish on Long Island and his post as dean of an …[Episcopal] seminary. His 27 books (mostly on theology) and cookery columns only partly filled the gap. But there were worse things than being poor, he wrote, such as losing sight of the greatness of small things. At a posh church in East Hampton, he started his sermon by burning a $20 bill, with the words: “I have just defied your God.”
I have no idea about the man – quite the gourmand perhaps? However an obituary which is more illuminating about the deceased’s thoughts concerning carving knives than on his failed marriage and six children, cuts, so to say, an inhospitably meagre slice off the meat of a life.
RFC was an extraordinarily gifted writer and (even) theologian, afflicted with a particular blind spot. It may have been a mote, as some would submit, or it may have been a log; but apart from that blind spot, he was a gracious well worth attending to and interacting with.
I haven’t revisited his books in a long time, but I recall a ferocious insistence on the priority of grace in all God’s doings (appropriately so), combined with occasional animadversions against anyone who thought that it was worthwhile to try to do a better job of reflecting God’s grace in our own maculate lives. I thought the latter smelt a little of self-justification, which would (if it were a fair inference) complicate his own theology of grace.
I suppose that if I am as good a husband as Capon was a cook, I will be greatly comforted. I will wish that more theologians would to try to write with his elegance, and will pray that we all will be shown grace when our bind spots are revealed to us in judgement.
Capon was certainly no gourmand. (My desktop dictionary notes the pejorative connotations of the word, and its association with gluttony; and contrasts it with the connotations of the word gourmet.) He was not a gourmet, either (at least to the extent that that word carries connotations of fussiness, and a fascination with exotic or expensive ingredients and elaborate technique).
Capon was a home cook and (as AKMA pointed out) a terrific writer, who used the humble domestic arts of cookery and hospitality as occasions for meditations on the goodness of creation, the role of mankind as participants in that creation, and his take on the radical grace of God. He chastised the glutton, the precious foodie, and the strange mix of food fads and taboos that flow through our popular culture (“Look, this mustard is gluten-free!”). And through all of his culinary writing, Capon conveyed his excitement, joy and wonder at God’s creation.
Much of Capon’s theological writing is nearly as good. Try “An Offering of Uncles,” and “Hunting the Divine Fox.” His trilogy on the parables is also worth a look. As AKMA wrote, Capon did have his blind spots, but his vision was and is a corrective to the blind spots of many other writers on theology.
I can’t possibly do the man justice. But that, of course, is not my role. I can say that my marriage has been incredibly enriched by what I have learned from “The Supper of the Lamb,” and much of Capon’s other work gave me reason to continue to struggle with Christianity at a time when I was ready to ditch it entirely. Capon may have had some dreadful failings in his life (in addition to the collapse of his first marriage, I have inferred from his writings that he may have had at best a distant relationship with at least some of his children). Yet, when I consider my own sins, I know that I am in need of whatever grace there is, fully as much (and probably more) as him.
[blockquote]I can’t possibly do the man justice.[/blockquote]
Gesturing towards some sort of just narration is, I take it, one of the things obituaries ought to aim towards. One may note the elisions and silences of a text without suggesting such absences signify all that might be spoken by an obituary, let alone from Christ’s Throne.
OED “Gourmand”
2. “a judge of good eating”