Amy loved to cook and she
had read this commentary in a cookbook and passed this
onto a friend, Damsel Plum.
from
_The Frugal Gourmet Cooks with Wine_ by Jeff Smith,
pp75-6
" Wine eventually became a symbol of adoption....The
image of adoption was connected with the image of blood,
a symbol that still causes American Puritans to wince.
But see this! In old shepherding communities, all would
have understood this image because all knew the problem
of the shepherd. He would check his flock in the morning
and find a newlamb...but the mother had died during the
night. In another portion of his flock he would find a
mother, sitting silently beside her child stillborn
during the night. The mother would die of a broken heart
and the orphan would die from lack of sustenance. All
logic would tell you to put the orphan under the care of
the childless mother...but the two would know they were
foreign, and they would not accept each other.
The moment of wisdom came when the old shepherd, this old
Jewish philosopher and theologian, would see in this
event the nature of our relationship to the Godhead. We
are so separated from God, he said, that God is dying of
a broken heart and we are dying from a lack of
sustenance. And it seems that nothing can be done. We are
foreigners to one another. But one thing can be done. It
is still being done by shepherds. If you slit the throat
and drain the blood of the dead baby and wash the orphan
in the blood of the lamb, the living mama smells her own
and moves around so that the orphan can suckle, can come
home to the table. This image of the blood of the lamb
being the symbol of adoption was common in the early
traditions, and it remains common in the Church. Wine
took on the meaning
of the blood of adoption."