May 2014

On Computers and Applesauce

by J. Ellsworth Kalas

 

 

 

 

 

The computer and I have a tentative sort of relationship.  I realize that I’m at a disadvantage because I had reached a more advanced age before the computer and I met, and computers are prejudiced toward those who meet it when they’re still pre­kindergarten.  I think the computer also senses that I’m not looking for a particularly close friendship.  In truth, I do with the computer something I wouldn’t think of doing with a human friend:  I maintain my ties with the computer only for what it can do for me.  The computer serves several important purposes in my life, and beyond that I don’t desire a closer relationship.  When someone tells me of the marvelous fun they have with a computer, my eyes glaze over quickly.  I’d rather read a good book.  Clearly, my computer recognizes that I’m not as devoted as it expects me to be.

   

A few weeks ago, however, my computer talked back to me, and I’m half ­convinced that it had the mind of the Spirit.  I was preparing a sermon of sorts for an alumni luncheon.  I was talking about the way we preachers, teachers, and such are inclined to feed on the kind things people say to us.  It was our version, I suggested, of the entertainer’s feeling about applause.  The true entertainer needs applause more than he or she needs money.

   

As I explored the Christian servants’ need for their special kind of applause, my fingers got lost from the home base that I learned so long ago in Touch Typing 1­A, turning “applause“ into a a conglomerate of meaningless letters.  Suddenly the spell­check took over, and spelled out the word it thought I had in mind:  applesauce.

   

In the language of the late Jack Paar, “I kid you not!”  Applesauce.

     

Let me hasten to say that I like applesauce.  The menu in our home leans largely to fruits and vegetables, so now and then we have a small dish of applesauce to augment  other items in our evening meal.  But I know that in the world of mild slang, applesauce means something you shouldn’t take too seriously; as in “Hey, that’s a lot of applesauce!”

     

There’s a place for applesauce (or applause, if you prefer) in our professional diet.  It’s nice to hear that someone appreciated a sermon or a lesson or a pastoral call.  If they add some special adjectives, it’s still better.  Then, however, if we’re in the right mind and spirit we ask ourselves some key, painful questions.   Did the sermon or lesson have depth and lasting value, or was it superficial?  Was it seeking growth for the listener, or was it satisfied to get a smile and an approving nod?  And above all, will it meet the test of eternity?  Will it help the other person in that ultimate journey?

     

Flannery O’Connor, the extraordinary American novelist, was a devout Christian and faithful Roman Catholic.  While still in her very early twenties, as a student in the famed University of Iowa writer’s program, and while working on what would become her epic first novel, Wise Blood, she wrote in her journal, “Don’t let me ever think, Dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story.”
Amen.  All the rest is applesauce.

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