Last of the Summer Tomatoes

It's either feast or famine. In the winter we all pine for real tomatoes and eat pallid greenhouse versions that could really double as tennis balls, now I have hundreds, maybe thousands of perfect, bright red, fragrant, vine-ripened. . .

Well you get the picture. It's a glut. And the frost is coming sooner rather than later. So what do you do with bushels of tomatoes? Make sauce, of course. So I spent a rainy afternoon last week doing just that. The deal with making tomato sauce is it's mechanically boring. Especially the peeling part. It affords plenty of time for reflection. It was interesting to me at least, how such a simple activity could be virtuous in both in the doing and in its result. A trite observation, maybe, a truism, but still: how many of us really take advantage of the mundane? Working with your hands, even in a small way, listening for that Divine Voice has its own rewards, not the least of which is the humbling realization that the Light is speaking even with flecks of tomato guts on your face.