This past weekend, I had the misfortune of drinking banana-flavored beer.
We were at a local brewery with friends. Aside from the impending rain and the omnipresent buzzing of the cicadas, it was a beautiful day to sit outside and let our children roam free.
Our drinks, though, were running on empty, and my wife entrusted me with securing our next round. So, I donned my mask and headed back into the bar to see what else was on tap.
I quickly glanced at the menu. IPA… Hazy… Local… Good enough! I thought. Money exchanged for beer, and I was on my way back outside.
That first sip wasn’t great. The second wasn’t either. What have I done?
“What is this?” my wife asked. “Is this banana-flavored?”
Oh no… I thought. That IS what it tastes like… “I thought I was just getting an IPA,” I admitted. “I didn’t even see banana on the menu.”
Our friends — clearly more detail-oriented than I when it came to ordering beer — confirmed my oversight: There was a banana beer, and I had purchased it.
“You have to read the description,” my wife said, shaking her head. She was no stranger to my knee-jerk decisions when it came to ordering out.
When we’re moving quickly — particularly in a poorly lit bar — we don’t always sink into the details. It’s easy to spot that handful of words that confirms our assumptions or helps us make a quick decision. It’s the loudest, brightest, shiniest things that demand our attention and too often dictate the course of our days. Or, we see the familiar, the comfortable, the expected and find ourselves hesitant to stray too far.
For me, in that bar this past weekend, what was expected, what was most obvious, was wrong – and kind of gross. I didn’t take the time to sit with the details, to examine what the options before me really were.
I wonder how many of us feel that way now, as we find ourselves inundated with new choices, decisions we haven’t had to make since the pre-pandemic era. We’re eager to throw ourselves back into our lives as we expect them to be.
And yet, we don’t want to end up with a banana-flavored beer.
The Ignatian Examen, I think, is the best tool we have to really sink into the details of our days in conversation with God. But there’s a passage from Scripture I often return to as well when I’m tempted to choose the loudest, brightest, shiniest of objects.
“Then the Lord said [to Elijah]: ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord; the Lord will pass by. There was a strong and violent wind …but the Lord was not in the wind; …was not in the earthquake; …was not in the fire.” (1 Kings 19:11-12)
Elijah found God in “a light silent sound.” In the quiet, the stillness, after much careful consideration.
And because Elijah waited patiently and examined the workings of God, he avoided leaving God’s holy presence with a tropical flavored beer.
