The Great Turnip Conversation

Tis the season of bridal showers, and soon this year's crop of June weddings will be upon us. It seems that everybody I know (including myself) is due to don the festal garments and attend upon brides and grooms in short season. I don't mind. I like weddings. Where else, after all, can you get a full-blown pageant with ceremony and music and ritual and living imagery of Christ and the Church and beautiful clothes and idyllic settings, not to mention first-time-smooching, which is always sweet and often humorous? Personally, I'm a fan.

Meanwhile, Valentine's Day looms over the singles community, clothed with an awful and dreaded power. (For most of us; somehow I always either forget what day it is or else associate it with failing my first driving test and with my mother's enjoyment of pranks.)

Also meanwhile, but in a more routine sort of way, there are opinions sloshing back and forth across the internet about finding a spouse, or picking a spouse, or loving a spouse, or how you know you've got hold of the right person, or how you know that you are the right person, or whether there is a right person, or what you should do with a person who you think might be right.... etc. etc. and so forth ad infinitum.

Sometimes I wish the singles community would take up a new pet discussion topic, like maybe turnips. "Consider the turnip," somebody might say. "I believe that it is a good gift, and that somewhere out there is a turnip ripe enough to eat, which is provided for me."

"No!" Someone else will howl, "The turnip is an Unclean Plant and a Temptation to All Manner of Evil. I'm pretty sure the Old Testament says so! We had much better abstain from turnips in order to devote ourselves to Better Things!"

"I would be willing to eat a turnip," another chimes in, "if only they grew in my climate. But they do not; there are neither turnips nor turnip-growers in my church community."

This from the first fellow who began by praising turnips: "Don't be limited by geography! Go out and find another location where there are turnips. Try the internet."

Another, seeking to calm the situation, says "If God has a turnip for you, He will bring it along at the proper time."

After this the comments crowd in thick and fast, thus:

"God helps those that help themselves! You can't wait around like an idle sloth waiting for the turnip to find you; you must find your own turnip!"

"There's this great book on turnips, which tells how long to grow a turnip before eating it and has a color chart showing which variety of turnip is right for you and everything! It makes choosing a turnip easy."

"I've read that book. It stinks. Turnip-eating is a process that can't be designed or planned; you've got to just go out in a field and test one turnip after another until you find one that seems right."

"I've tried to grow several turnips but they all died on me. Honestly, man, you don't want the pain of turnip-loss. It'll eat your heart out. Forget the turnips."

"I'm a young single and this whole concept of finding a turnip that's right for me is scary. Also, I don't consider myself very attractive and wonder whether there is a turnip that would like me. Does anybody have advice about this sort of problem?"

"Like I said before, you should try this book on growing turnips. It has a whole chapter explaining that you don't have to be outwardly attractive to a turnip as long as you connect with it on the level of character and shared values."

"The truth is that we all have a turnip-shaped hole in our hearts and nothing but the right turnip will ever fill it. Do you want to go around all your life like that, or do you want to get out there and find your perfect turnip?"

"I don't care who you are, you're never going to find a 'perfect turnip' that agrees with you about everything. The main thing you've got to do is learn to compromise with your turnip, and always be willing to say you're sorry."

"I thought that eating a turnip means you never have to say you're sorry!"

"Sometimes association with a turnip does mean having to say you're sorry. But I also agree with Alfred Tennyson, who said,

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it, when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all."

"I agree! And when you really do find the right turnip, it's amazing. You feel like a falling star who has finally found its place next to another in a lovely constellation, where you and your turnip will sparkle in the heavens forever."

"I think that sticking with a turnip is a choice we make from moment to moment. You can't decide once and forever that you will love just this one turnip, but you can make that decision every day like it was the very first time."

"Whatever else we might disagree on, we should agree that we all need turnips."

Ah yes, I can see it now... the Great Turnip Conversation....

(Disclaimer: It is not my intention to mock either the honorable state of matrimony or the sincere efforts of Christian singles to understand how they shall go about entering that state with wisdom and integrity. It's just funny to me, sometimes, how much we stew about it all---especially since there are so many other things in life to think about. For example, turnips. :-))