The Good, The Bad and the Better -- A Lesson From Making Soap

It's a simple chemical formula combining different types of oils, water, lye and sometimes scent. If you want to impress someone, you can tell them that the chemical process of making soap is called saponification. That just sounds more impressive.

People have been making soap for a very long time. My grandma would talk about the lye soap her grandmother made that burned her skin. It probably burned because back in the olden days, they didn't have computer generated formulas that analyzed just how much lye was necessary to cause the transformation process to begin.

Lye is caustic. Gloves and eye protection are recommended when using it. It is in fact, the typical main component in products that aid in unclogging sinks. Picture a white powder than can eat its way through compacted hair and other disgusting oddities in your drain. Yuck.. Lye is that powerful.

Each ingredient carefully weighed in the exacting process of making goat milk soap

The formula generates its own heat as it is mixed
in the pot.

I continue to be amazed knowing lye is at the heart of the equation that produces such a gentle, nourishing soap I safely use all over my body.  If I were to apply lye directly to my skin, I would be burned and in pain. It would be an awful experience. It took me forever to actually make my own soap because I was so intimated by  the caustic lye.

Lye + oils =soap
Something harmful/bad + something else = good

We can't get through life without sad things happening to us and those we love. We fail, we're disappointed, relationships end. people die --- and on and on the litany of negatives  goes on. But the positive spin, is all the rest of the good things in life that are mixed in.  When it's all blended together, and if we are intentional about looking for it -- we can just about always find amazing things resulting from negative experiences.

Beautiful goat milk soap curing in the molds they were poured in.

Back to Nature

 People talk about getting back to nature. I always want to ask them when we got separated from it. Because, even through we live and work inside four walls -- we're still part of nature, we are in fact, a product of nature.

It snows in Michigan. I grew up here, so I am fully aware of the weather in this beautiful state. And for the most part, I deal with it in a positive manner. I can safely drive in it and make my peace with large measures of it. Snow can mean fun and snow days. Even though I'm not a winter sportsperson of any flavor, I fully embrace snow angels and snowman making. I survived the massive snows of the late 60's providing volumes of memories of pioneer-like over-embellished stories of snow survival. 

Final analysis-- snow is just not a big deal if you treat it with the respect it requires.

Having provided that qualifier, I must confess that at this arthritic stage of very late middle age, the required lower temperatures that go along with the frozen precipitation cause me a great deal of pain.  The arthritis part isn't as bad as what the temperature and barometric pressure does to my head. Oh the pain.
So follow me here--the natural occurring phenomenon of snow and freezing temperatures results in human pain. They are connected. Even if I'm inside the house, and most of the winter I am, the correlation is unchallenged.  When I've been in pain for a long time, I can get snippy.  I'm crabby. My spouse might suggest another word for it, but I'm not asking him.

The other night I was in one of those snippy/crabby moods. I was ranting and banging kitchen cupboards because I couldn't find something.  That brings me to the next part of nature that we're not separated . . .

My miniature schnauzer Truffle, is my emotional barometer if you will.  I looked at her shivering in my husband's lap.  She wasn't cold, she was upset because of my outburst. Feeling like a heel, I went to directly to her and we lavishly demonstrated our love and care for each other. She was quite relieved to know I was okay.

Truffle is like that. She responds to and attempts to counteract my negative emotions. I think that's amazing. It is miraculous, but not that uncommon.


Truffle ready to be with me, whatever we go.

 

If you consider these things, there really is no "getting back to nature." We're just part of it, integrally part of it. But not in charge of it. I hope to go forward with a greater appreciation of how all things are so amazingly connected. Our actions, words and decisions have repercussions every where. I am both awed and intimidated by our responsibility to each other.