Blue Eyed Ennis: Recipe For The Little Prince

Recipe For The Little Prince

Cover of "The Little Prince (Turtleback S...

Cover via AmazonAs the first readings this week are all about Genesis and the creation I thought this little recipe would stir the creative juices.

Thanks to Rick Loftus at Ten Thousand Virtues Blog for permission to reproduce this.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. "
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

"Recipe for the Little Prince (from My Favourite French Recipes, by the Ultimate Chef):

For the shell:
23.4 kilograms of oxygen
6.48 kilograms of carbon
3.6 kilograms of carbon
1.08 kilograms of nitrogen
540 grams of calcium
432 grams of phosphorus
72 grams each of potassium, sulfur, chlorine
36 grams of sodium
18 grams each of magnesium and iron
just a pinch of the following: cobalt, copper, zinc, iodine, selenium, fluorine, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, chromium, boron

For the filling:
Two Divine fistfuls of Love
One heaping handful of Innocence
One healthy serving of Loyalty
One substantial portion of Candour
A dash of Courage
A scoop of Wanderlust
A cauldron of Passion (may also be substituted with Ardour if balanced in a 9-to-1 ratio of Cleansing-by-Weeping)

Persistence-fortified Questioning

In a large mixing bowl, sift together the shell dry ingredients and gases, then stir them into a salt water bath, striking with lightning occasionally to ensure proper combining.

Bake over a well-raked volcano until set.

As the shell cools and congeals, combine elements of the filling.

Once they are unified, use your largest-sized pastry tube to blow the filling into the shell.

Sprinkle with stardust to complete.

May garnish with rose petals and baobob crudite. Never serve with mutton nor lamb chops. Serves millions.]

* * *

On December 30, 1935, French aviator Antoine Saint-Exupéry and his navigator André Prévot crashed in the Sahara desert while attempting to break the world record for the Paris-to-Saigon flight. They survived the crash, only to face dehydration in the desert. Their lives were saved four days later by a camel-riding Bedouin.

Saint-Exupéry’s experience led him to write the world-famous children’s book, The Little Prince. Since 1943, teachers around the world have used The Little Prince to teach French to students of all ages.

Even more than the lessons it offers in language, the story gives a moving contemplation of the nature of what it means to love and to be loved.

If you have never read the tale, do so. It is like holding up a mirror to your own face, finding a reflection in which the most essential remains invisible.

Saint-Exupéry dedicated his book to his best friend in the whole world, apologizing to children everywhere that his friend happened to be a grown up. “This grown-up understands everything, even books about children,” he explained as justification. "

5 comments:

claire bangasser said...: Thank you, Phil. This is delightful. I love Saint-Ex and pretty much all of his books. This recipe is super. I can send it to my son-in-law and grandsons :-))))
Thank you!; 7 February 2011 at 19:45
Blue Eyed Ennis said...: Claire, I thought you would appreciate this one ! We both love this Little Prince and it is great to know itis being passedon to the kids ( and adults!)It was by sheer luck I found it.I was looking for something on gentleness and creation and the Rick Loftus blog came up so really it is him you have to thank.Tthe only other book I have read of Exupery's is Wind Sand And Stars,a long time ago.
Blessings; 7 February 2011 at 19:59
Anonymous said...: Oh Phil...this is by far one of my favorite books of all times. From beginning to end...I just wish that I understood all the wisdom it contains. The ending leaves me with some questions. Any insights?
Andie; 8 February 2011 at 13:41
Blue Eyed Ennis said...: Likewise Andie- deep, wise provocative and profound and all wrapped up in a language that children can understand. The ending hits me at so many levels and I don't like to be over analytical with it. In a religious sense it has the flavour of waiting for a second coming of sorts, a resurrection hope and also it plays with memory,loss imagination and the desert experience, even the Dark Night of The Soul and as i'm thinking off the top of my head as I write even the transformation experience the disciples had on Mount Tabor- how thye must have remembered that after the death of Jesus.
i love the way the sense of wonder and mystery imbues the whole story so what are your questions ?; 8 February 2011 at 14:30
Anonymous said...: I think that it is the ending which is what I struggle with the most. I do think that it speaks of resurrection, but I feel as though there is so much more. I never thought of it as the Dark Night...very interesting...and now I will go and read it again. Thanks Phil.
Andie; 10 February 2011 at 10:58

More from Seamus Heaney

“History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longest-for tidal wave of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea change
On the far side of revenge
Believe in miracles....”

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.” ―

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

and five more......

On his inspiration: 'The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis”

On which animal he'd prefer to be: "I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks."

On fame: "The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself. The prizes can’t help you at all.”

On becoming a poet: "My quest for precision and definition, while it may lead backward, is conducted in the living speech of a landscape and a language that I was born with. If you like, I began as a poet when my roots were crossed with my reading."

On authority "At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. "

Easter Hope All Year Round

Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul -
O gentle Master of the Wise,
Teach us to say: "I will arise." ~
Richard Le Gallienne

"The great gift of Easter is hope - Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake."
-- Basil C. Hume

Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in the imagination...[Celts] excelled at expressing their faith in symbols, metaphors and images, both visual and poetic.
They had the ability to invest the ordinary and commonplace with sacramental significance, to find glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words, signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to eternity
Ian Bradley The Celtic Way

Favourite Quotes from Pope Francis

“Thanks to magnanimity, we can always look at the horizon from the position where we are. That means being able to do the little things of every day with a big heart open to God and to others. That means being able to appreciate the small things inside large horizons, those of the kingdom of God.

This offers parameters to assume a correct position for discernment, in order to hear the things of God from God’s ‘point of view.’ … However the risk in seeking and finding God in all things, then, is the willingness to explain too much, to say with human certainty and arrogance: ‘God is here.’ We will find only a god that fits our measure. The correct attitude is that of St. Augustine: seek God to find him, and find God to keep searching for God forever.”

-- Pope Francis

Carlo Caretto's Love Letter to His Church

How much I much criticise you my church and yet how much I love you !

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than I owe anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.
Then too – where should I go? To build another church?

But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church. No, I am old enough. I know better!"

Did the Woman Say ?

Great Quotes

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

Mary Oliver

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person."

~Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms, 1989

“And

"
"You can get all A's and still flunk life."

"Lost in the mystery of finding myself alive."

Walker Percy

"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

A tough life needs a tough language-and that's what poetry is. That's what literature offers- a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.
Jeanette Winterson

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.”

- C.S. Lewis

The independent hearts of Celtic descendents everywhere still yearn for the solitary place, still rejoice in the goodness of creation, still see the Lord beside them as they walk, still see Him in the face of friend and stranger. The gospel light with its eastern fire still gleams. The truth still lingers in the heart.
Pat Robson – The Celtic Heart

People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help?

They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world."

-- James Hillman

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government only when it deserves it.
--Mark Twain

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice: - we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
-- George Orwell

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your own experience or convictions.
--Dag Hammarskjöld

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For what are we, without hope in our hearts, that someday we'll drink from God's blessed waters?"
-Bruce Springsteen

"Sometimes grace works like waterwings when you feel you are sinking."
-Anne Lamott

"A prayer may be a wordless inner longing, a sudden outpouring of love, a yearning within the soul to be for a moment united within the infinite and the good, a humbleness that needs no abasement or speech to express it, a cry in the darkness for help when all seems lost, a song, a poem, a kind deed, a reaching for beauty, or the strong, quiet inner reaffirmation of faith. A prayer in fact can be anything that is created by God that turns to God."

Paul Gallico

"God does not die when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjold

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

― Paul Hawken

The greatest religious challenge of our age is to hold together social action and spiritual disciplines. This is not just a theological necessity, dictated by the need to integrate all of life around the reality of the living God. It is a matter of sheer survival. The evils we confront are so massive, so inhuman, so impervious to appeals and dead to compassion, that those who struggle against them face the real possibility of being overwhelmed by them.”

~ Theologian Walter Wink

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours?
I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

~ Khalil Gibran

Blue Eyed Ennis

Recipe For The Little Prince

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