The strawberries

"Give thanks in all circumstances." — 1 Thessalonians 5:18

I bought strawberries at the farm stand on the way back from town this morning. Two quarts, and they are sitting on the kitchen counter in their green cardboard boxes, and the kitchen smells like June.

I am going to make jam this afternoon. Not because I need jam. I have three jars from last year still in the pantry. I am going to make jam because it is the first Saturday in June and the strawberries are here and my hands know what to do with them, and there are worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon than standing at the stove with the windows open and the pot going and the kitchen smelling the way a kitchen is supposed to smell when a person is doing something useful.

The process is simple and I have done it enough times that I do not need the recipe card anymore, though I keep it in the drawer because my mother wrote it out for me and her handwriting is on it and I am not going to throw away her handwriting. Wash the berries. Hull them. Mash them. Sugar. Pectin. Boil. Skim. Pour. Seal.

There is a kind of prayer in a process that your hands know. The mind can go where it wants while the hands do the work, and the work gets done, and by the end of the afternoon there will be six jars of strawberry jam on the counter cooling, and the lids will pop one by one as they seal, and each pop is a small satisfaction that I do not think I will ever get tired of.

The fan is on. The screen door is open. Saturday is the day for this kind of thing, the slow useful work that does not need to be finished by any particular hour.

Ruby keeps a collection of prayers at her kitchen table. You can find them here.