The Gift of Butter

There is nothing like a piece of homemade buttered bread. 

Positive Pensées

Kathy King

The Gift of Butter

“With enough butter anything is good.”

Julia Child

Butter is one of life’s great blessings, some would say. 

You spread it on toast or bake cookies and it really tastes so very great. 

Butter is special you see because even if it melts it can cool and be reshaped with ease. 

How can you be smooth like butter each and every day?

Well, that is for you to say. 

If your day is really awful just pause and think, this too shall pass, I can cool and reshape the next day. 

If someone else is suffering, be butter to them.  

Spread on the joy when their mirth is quite thin. 

Butter is so versatile you can eat it just on toast.

Or you can take butter and bake a cake that is quite delicious and moist. 

Think about all the various ways butter can be used. 

Find your butter, spread it all around and change and bless your current point of view. 

You’ve heard that phrase, “Smooth like butter” I am sure, but what does it really mean? Some would say it means to be a smooth talker or someone who likes to schmooze to get their way.  Yesterday it occurred to me that we can take that phrase and change it for the better.  Every single day we make toast at our house, it is something that my mother started when I was little.  I am sure in some way it is supported by her very humble upbringing during the 40’s.  Money was tight, her mother would make bread and the kids would make butter for the family to consume during the week.  Some may disagree but there really is nothing better than a nice piece of toasted bread with butter.  The butter melts and invades the little porous parts of the bread making for a taste bud delight.  If butter can do something like that for just a single piece of toast just think about what a life lived with the purpose of butter can do?  What do I mean?  If someone is having a bad day or a bad experience.  Spread a little butter on the situation.  If you are having a challenging day or experience remember yes, butter can melt but it can also cool and be reshaped.  Recently I read that a particular person who is a little famous shared her morning routine with her family on a social media site.  It was a simple post that said she and her husband enjoy a cup of coffee and toast before working on their farm. It was delightful and meant to be uplifting.  The comments section however had a completely different view altogether.  The vile spewing of comments such as: “It must be nice to have coffee in the morning when other people have to actually get up and go to work.”  What the commenters did not realize is this person had decided to eschew a life of notoriety and embrace a simpler life.  This was her family's “bread and butter” now, their main source of income.  Some other comments were even more upsetting, calling her “out of touch,” “how dare you share something like this when people are suffering in the world”.  Suffice it to say, all of the commenters were not even remotely involved in her life and were just judging based on a simple picture.  Why could the commenters not just be happy that she could farm?  Or, that she could just have a simple cup of coffee?  Because dear readers, they have lost that sweet butter in their life.  To take that thought even further another common phrase that has been used over the years is referring to one’s job as their “bread and butter”.  The activity that enables them to eat, to have a place to stay, to subsist.  Humanity has lost their bread and butter.  For us to reclaim a modicum of decorum we have to very purposefully find a way to butter up our lives and the lives of others.  Find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Make that positive comment in the absolute deep ocean of negativity.  Reach across the aisle and find what brings us together, not what tears us apart.  I have said this many times since starting to write these Pensees.  We can do it one day at a time, one person at a time, and change our direction to one of edification rather than obtuseness.  Spread the butter!