A Fiction Prose Reflection, Book VII of XI

byChrisWhite – 2025

On the Series:
This series weaves together the eleven cardinal virtues: Hope, Charity, Prudence, Kindness, Faith, Love, Temperance, Fortitude, Wisdom, Patience, and Justice, through a synthesis of literary prose and poetry. Each reflection reaches into the marrow of human experience, drawing on both original verse and timeless lines from poets who gave voice to the sacred. This, the seventh installment turns to Temperance, that quiet, old-world virtue often mistaken for denial but rooted in wisdom deeper than want.

THERE’S A PORCH just off the two-lane road that runs through Maury County, shaded by a pecan tree and blessed with the kind of view that asks you to sit a spell. An old man named Caleb lives there, barefoot most days, slow-moving, kind-eyed. He keeps a rocking chair for company and a chipped plastic glass of sweet tea that never seems too full.

When you ask him what he believes in, he doesn’t get political or sentimental; he doesn’t say government or good luck. He says:

“Enough. I believe in enough.”

He tells it like a story. How his daddy used to bring home a single cold Coke on Sunday afternoons when they’d chopped wood all morning and sweat had run down their backs like rainwater. They’d split it, half and half, served in two slightly dirty jelly jars. Caleb says he’s never tasted anything sweeter, and he’s never needed more.

“Wasn’t about the Coke,” he says. “Was about the timing. The sharing. The knowing we’d earned it.”

He doesn’t care for big buffets or cars with too many buttons. Says the more you pile on your plate, the less you remember what the first bite tasted like.

Caleb’s not a philosopher. He’s not good at quoting scripture, Lord knows he’s tried, but when you bring up the world’s troubles, how people fight over more land, more power, more of everything, he just rocks back, his foot tapping the porch plank like a metronome for better thoughts.

“Folks forgot how to stop,” he says. “Forgot that joy don’t live in excess. It lives in peace.”

He’s not wrong. You feel it when the sun sets and the world quiets. You feel it in the second spoonful of blackberry cobbler when you know deep down the first was enough. You feel it when the laughter starts to fade and you let it, instead of forcing one more joke. That’s temperance: the sacred art of not going too far.

“When first I saw the gleaming crest
Of temp’rance’s silver star,
I watch’d it, till its radiance blest
Illum’d the world afar.”
—John Pierpont

Pierpont called temperance a silver star, gleaming in a sky otherwise overcast by indulgence. And Charles Harpur, writing in the 1800s, gave it a prophet’s voice:

“A POWER is stirring—a broad light has shone
Amid the nation’s—in the wilderness
Of the world’s social horror and distress…”
—Charles Harpur

They wrote of temperance not as lack, but as light. Not as restraint, but as restoration.

And here, in Caleb’s story, you see it, not as sermon, but as life. You see it in the buttered biscuit done just right. You hear it in the cricket song between two sips of quiet. You feel it when someone pours you a drink and doesn’t ask what you’ve earned but offers only what you need.

So take what you need, not more, not less,
Savor the simple, let go of the rest.
For life ain’t a race to gather up more,
But a lesson in knowin’ what’s worth livin’ for.
—Chris White, The Measure of Enough

Temperance is not the absence of sweetness. It’s the trust that sweetness will return, if we don’t waste it. It’s what lets delight be delight, what makes the cup special, what keeps the feast sacred.

Caleb says we all get one good porch, if we’re lucky. One view worth watching, one cup worth sipping, one love worth tending. And that if we try to build too many porches, we won’t sit long enough on any of them to notice when the dogwoods bloom or the light changes to purple-orange across the gravel road.

Temperance is the virtue that teaches us how to cherish.
Not by hoarding, but by holding gently.
Not by consuming, but by receiving.

In a world so loud with wanting, it may be the virtue we need most.

So let us lean back in the chair. Let us stop reaching. Let us sip slowly from the plastic cup.

Let us remember the taste of enough.