Following on from my first post and second post, about The Story of Mary Maclane by Herself:
Mary Maclane's joy at cold boiled potatoes runs as another theme through the play. She just can't get enough of them - she fantasizes about eating them with the devil when they get married and there's multiple songs about how wonderfully indulgent they are.
At one point, the actress has revealed more than she's comfortable with and is hiding from the audience - and it's only the prospect of cold boiled potatoes (that dropped from the sky into the narrator's hands) that entice her to come back.
She's convinced they're the one thing that God got right. (The only positive thing she says about him in most of the play.)
I feel like I resonated so much with this idea when I was a teenager. I have a memory of being completely depressed with everything in the world, and coming into our dining room. On the table was a bowl of green grapes - and as I ate them, I had a vivid feeling that the world couldn't be so bad if grapes existed in it, and maybe there were good things.
Part of me feels like this is a pretty indulgent, perspective-lacking way to think - my life has been so materially rich in so many ways, it's ungrateful to think that grapes were the only good thing to happen to me. But part of me thinks this is exactly right - that God made the world good, and there are lots of wonderful things in creation that we can look at and be reminded of his goodness.
So I enjoyed the cold boiled potatoes segment, but hope that my perspective is usually a bit healthier - I'm so much more thankful for many things that I rarely am reduced to that depressed feeling that everything is doom and gloom.
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