Issue 17 —Abide With Me
Dear Reader,
The plan was to be on vacation for the past week or so, but I stayed home instead to help care for someone I love.
I attended a church school through middle school. We sang a lot of hymns under the stern yet fond tutelage of Ramona B. Forbes. Thanks to Mrs. Forbes, I’ve always remembered the phrase “Abide with Me.” It comes from a hymn by an Anglican priest named Henry Francis Lyte, who wrote it while dying of tuberculosis in the 1840s. In the 1820s he was an extremely popular evangelical cleric on the coast of south Devon, the very region from which some of my forebears fled religious persecution 200 centuries earlier. The first stanza is:
Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
Lyte and I would have had a lot to discuss. He loved poetry, wildflowers, children, sailors, sports, and playing the flute. He had a huge library stuffed with classical literature and Old English poetry. He created educational opportunities for children and adults in his community, and he joined in Wilberforce’s national campaign for the abolition of slavery. I’m sure he was flawed as we all are, but he was definitely an interesting and admirable person.
The verb “abide” has a very long history from Old English with many beautiful examples of its use. This is just a small sampler.
Lyte’s hymn jumps off from the moment in the King James Version of Luke 24 when some of the disciples have encountered but not recognized the risen Christ, and they urge the compelling stranger, “‘Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent.’ And he went in to tarry with them.”
What makes the word “abide” so strong, even tangy, is that it can mingle the core idea of waiting and delaying, with related but different ideas of enduring, sustaining and withstanding, and also of standing firm and remaining true to something. We cannot abide certain notorious politicians. We try to be law-abiding. And of course it’s related to the word “abode”—a word that sticks close to home.
In this abiding time, I have found an outlet in trying to tickle my dear one’s tastebuds; I have rediscovered cold summer soups. They all go back centuries. Here’s a pea purée.
Behold, cucumber with yogurt and herbs.
This one was tricky and I had to make it late at night over three days during the heat wave: jellied consommé.
All of these soups succeed because of their tang; they are full of sweetness, but sharpened with some key flavor: vinegar, sherry, yogurt, lemon.
Here is the one I will never forget, the one I will make every summer for the rest of my life. I don’t think I’d ever made borscht before. Utter simplicity: beets, water, lemons, sugar, salt and garlic. I was shocked by the taste. It is like when you prick your finger and instinctively put it in your mouth to stop the bleeding, and you taste the tang of your own blood. It is life itself, with the color and the flavor suggesting that you might just be putting fresh blood in your bloodstream.
To see my dear one put the bowl to her lips and drink and drink and drink again has been a sustaining joy of this abiding time. It has provided a sense of standing firm and staying true.
Thank you for abiding with me. I hope to be back next week with a book for you.
xo Nicie