My Mama is arriving at the airport in Denver right about now and will soon be boarding a plane that will take her to another plane that will take her to Africa. I've taken a similar journey. Perhaps you remember my journeys to Africa, perhaps you are new to me and don't know. (If that's the case click here to start my story about Africa.) Regardless today I find myself "in" Africa in my thoughts and heart. In fact, lately I've been having dreams about all my beloved friends in Africa in which we are together. This past Saturday night I got to have some face time with a dear friend from Kenya, whom I will see again next week. Bits of sunshine. My Mama couldn't find room in her luggage for me so I'll have to be content with staring at the picture of the carepoint where she will be in Swaziland and fighting back the green-eyed monster that I can't be there. I'm grateful my Mama gets to visit a continent that has become a part of my heart. I'm grateful for Africa. Africa has been the birth place of freedom in my personal and spiritual life. That's a lot of pressure for a continent to provide but it happened. Doesn't happen that way for everyone, it may not for my Mama, but it did for me. Sometimes in my daydreams I can smell the air in Kenya, I can close my eyes and see the people I have met or passed by, I can hear the Kenyans and the mzungu worshiping God together, each in their own language. Sometimes I cry for the longing to return and the missing of a community near and dear to my heart. But I don't despise any of it. If I hadn't gotten on the plane the first time I wouldn't know how grateful I am for Africa.
There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.
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