Inspirational Mustard

I have been thinking a lot about mustard lately, and not because I like it.  I don’t.

The reason I have been thinking about mustard is because of its significance at a recent Steubenville St. Louis Mid-America Youth Conference (significance which, by the way, was initiated by a bishop – just one more of the countless reasons I love being Catholic!).

In his homily, Bishop Johnston began with a piece of trivia – that most of the world’s mustard is made in Springfield, MO – the town where we were for the conference.  This fact was immediately tweet-worthy to many attendees, but I suspect that the bishop had no idea how useful this piece of trivia would become!

Near the end of the conference, all of us speakers were asked to share a final encouraging or inspirational thought.  However, just two minutes before we went on stage, our host Bob Lesnefsky (aka ‘Righteous B’) told us that somehow we needed to incorporate the word “mustard” into our closing thoughts.  He did this, I suspect, for three reasons – to ensure that we didn’t take our own thoughts too seriously, to pay tribute to the mustard capital of the world, and to help all of us in attendance recall Bishop Johnston’s homily.  None of the conference attendees were informed of this brilliant plan; we simply had to share our thoughts, laced with mustard.  We needed to think fast.

I was blessed with the opportunity to go first and boldly proclaimed, “I don’t like mustard, for four reasons: I think it tastes bad, it looks like baby poop, the two syllables are ‘must – turd,’ and there is a variety called Grey Poupon.  And even though I don’t like mustard, God likes you.”  I know, I know – these words served to provide inspiration to the throngs of attendees and were also yet another public display of my enigmatic and adolescent sense of humor.

Other team members shared other thoughts, including the befuddling statement from Adam Bitter that he does like mustard for all of the reason I don’t (!?!?) but that God still loves us all, and the beautiful reference to the many varieties of mustard by Fr. Brian Fischer – paralleling the varieties of inspiration our church offers us to nourish our spiritual life.  Each speaker shared something amusing & inspirational, being certain to include a reference to mustard.

What’s crazy is that I have received more feedback, from both teens and adults, regarding this mustard outburst than many other things I have spoken of or written about lately.

Here are just a few comments I’ve received –

• Who knew mustard would raise my mind to God! I shall now always have Holy hot dogs & brats!I 
• I don't like mustard, but I like people who like mustard. They eat it so I don't have to.
• After that talk, my best friend and I ate corndogs with mustard on them in the shape of crosses. (:

And the biggie…

• I loved the mustard talk. It was just what I needed. We had a teen with us that is very dear to my heart. He is searching for the truth. He believes in a higher power, he’s just not sure what that power is. I prayed my heart out for him throughout the weekend. When all the mustard talk started I not only laughed but was reminded of this passage…
  ”I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Who would have thought a yucky condiment could have brought such comfort. LOL

I believe that this mustard experience has a few things to teach those of us who want to share our faith with others, reflected in an acronym I heard years ago on how to give a good talk.  I was once told, and I have never forgotten this, that a good talk should include all of the elements of the word TULIP - any good presentation should be Therapeutic, Unconventional, Lucid, Illustrated, and Passionate.

I believe that the mustard experience at the youth conference was all of these things.

Our advice was therapeutic; every foundational thought that was shared was in fact helpful to the teens.  It was unconventional; we successfully shocked tired people into paying attention on a Sunday morning.  We were quite lucid; no one spoke for more than 45 seconds. We illustrated all of our points with the image of mustard, and we all believe passionately in God, whose message we were trying to share in these closing thoughts.

In addition to incorporating all elements of TULIP, we did something else - we were pretty funny – and humor (within reasonable limits) can be quite helpful, especially when you are trying to reach teenagers! When people laugh or smile or smirk or groan, their hearts open up in inexplicable ways; and it certainly never hurts when the humor is an inside joke, reflecting a shared experience.  Whenever we can reference common experiences with an individual or a group, we have their attention.  People tend to listen better if they know you have been paying attention to their lives and what has been happening to them, whether it’s serious or silly!

I hope that mustard continues to inspire you the rest of your life.  I know that it inspires me, now more than ever…although I still don’t like it nearly as much as God likes you!