Oatmeal. When I was a child I liked cooked oatmeal. Then when I grew up, to echo the Apostle Paul, I put away childish things. Every now and then my spouse Joan, an oatmeal fan, would urge me to consider the possibility that Paul wasn’t speaking in 1 Corinthians 13 of putting away oatmeal. I resisted.
Then the cholesterol test. Not terrible but high-ish, I still think probably, as I told my doctor, due to weeks on the road and too much rich eating. Still the test unsettled me.
I watched Joan cook oatmeal. Hmm. Worth trying? Even as a grownup should I take the advice we give children, try it you’ll like it? Yes.
Wow. Steel-cut oatmeal. With raisins. Some brown sugar. Milk. Wow. I had let glitz and glamor and shiny-object foods overwhelm an humble wonder. Now I find it hard to get through the night while awaiting another oatmeal breakfast.
Then next I was going to criticize the focus on beautiful everything Instagram offers. Along with millions of us, I’ve been unsettled by ways social media appears to be distorting our lives. I’ve barely explored Instagram, but I do know you don’t post photos to Instagram without running into filter options that allow automatically making a picture look better than it is. This struck me as a metaphor for how our sensation-loving culture pursues image over reality.
And oatmeal seemed to me to symbolize the antidote. You can’t get much more basic than oatmeal. It is what it is: a beige-ish concoction whose texture vaguely reminds me of old paint going lumpy. We need to live more beige-ish, lumpy lives of not chasing the latest latest shiny shiny. This is the Jesus way.
But then I used what was once the latest shiny but now feels more like a water supply company though with more worldwide networked power for good or ill—Google. To make sure Google agreed with my view of oatmeal’s humble role I looked up . . . “oatmeal on Instagram.” The very first articles that came up had titles like these: “Oatmeal Has So Much Instagram Clout Right Now” and “Sorry, cereal! Oatmeal is the Instagram-worthy breakfast of choice right now.”
I was stunned. When I started this post, I thought I was a pioneer, with oatmeal as prism for exploring society possibly a stroke of inspiration from above. I thought oatmeal would be of no interest to the way-cool people, like the ones I read about this morning, who can make tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars by being Instagram “influencers” paid to oh-so-authentically feature products we all ignore if pushed on us through oh-so-inauthentic ads.
Yet instead of being counter-cultural, instead of being faithful to Jesus against seductions of the day, I am just one more schlub who missed the tiny sidetrail of Jesus’ narrow way and with the zillions of us am on the broad path that leads to destruction.
Actually I’ve seen no evidence that oatmeal leads to destruction except if you eat too much and put on it precisely what I like to put it on it. Oatmeal really is good for you. It really does help lower cholesterol and more.
Now what? The only thing I know to do is let oatmeal lead the way. I am as ordinary as I thought oatmeal was. Sometimes even the broad way has its merits. And maybe it’s okay for the beige-ish lumpy things to have their occasional day.
—Michael A. King is publisher and president, Cascadia Publishing House LLC. He writes “Unseen Hands” for Mennonite World Review, which published an earlier version of this column. He emphasizes that the photos in this post are of a real, authentic bowl of oatmeal prepared for an actual breakfast rather than to influence Instagram fans.
Next column on the health benefits of grits?
Well, Loren, I feel about grits just like I did about oatmeal before Joan convinced me to try. Interestingly she loves grits also. Note that this blog also features guest posts. An essay on “Grits” from you would be welcome indeed.
OH. MY. How could I have forgotten that? – Yes, of course, before, during and after that creamy lump in the bowl!
Michael, the only palatable way to eat that off-white lump of stuff that has to be dumped off the spoon and then yet scraped off the spoon because it’s like glue with eyes in it – only then does it plop into the cereal bowl and you improve it 1000% by coating it with dark brown sugar (doesn’t matter if the sugar has lumps in it either) and then – THEN – dousing it with half-‘n-half. And don’t feel guilty about the 1/2 ‘n 1/2 – after all, you could be truly decadent and be using real cream…
Oatmeal will never be food for the gods, but closer to that than if you didn’t reward yourself with all the stuff that makes it a halfway decent thing to eat for breakfast.
Hope that helps!
Audrey, wow, you have really given us an oatmeal roadmap. I would never have admitted publicly (I didn’t before, did I, I guiltily say?) to using half-and-half–but yes, a little sploosh of that across 1% milk is just right. Just right. And yes, the brown sugar with lumps is huge, essential, why eat this without that? I’ve been using lighter brown, but I’ll also try darker brown, since you clearly have your oatmeal act together.
Oh, and do you agree that a strong but mellow coffee cup is part of the oatmeal dance?
to repeat (since I don’t think I sent the first response?)
Yes, of course, that strong cuppa needs to come before, during, and after the lump in the bowl – no meal, certainly no oatmeal – complete without it.
Thank God!
Michael. Really – it’s OK to forego the 1% and have a
GOOD GUILTY GO
at enjoying your oatmeal – with just the half-n-half and dark brown sugar – by the way, the brown sugar needs to be put on first, right ON TOP of the hot oatmeal in your bowl, and THEN add the white stuff – the sort-of-as-good-as-real-cream.
But I actually also enjoy the milk, Audrey. Still, I hear you, I hear you. And absolutely yes, the sugar is first. Dear me, I had no idea how much oatmeal-details passion is out there!