“The soul moves forward by being enamored.”
Richard Rohr
Everyday, without fail, I am amazed at the garbage inside me. I swear when I am angry. I can be a monster when I’m tired. I think the worst of people. I criticize my own creative ideas.
They say you can tell a tree by its fruit.
But am I the only one consistently finding rotten fruit dangling off her branches?
We inherited an Asian pear tree when we moved into our house last year. By late summer we were perched in its limbs plucking sweet, crisp, juicy pears for free. But the whole harvest wasn’t perfect, not even close.
There were mangled black ones and bees boring holes into the delectable flesh.
One of my favorite things about living in Europe was the real fruit.
The bananas had squishy bruises, they came in all shades of yellows, and brown spots seemed to be flaunted.
The apples were small and disfigured with their seeds still inside.
When I came back to America, the produce aisle looked like a bunch of plastic fruit with wax coating. Is this stuff fake, I wondered?
To think what they have to inject inside and spray on top of the fruit to keep it from looking like anything but fresh and perky.
How dare a piece of fruit reveal its struggles, how far its traveled, how its been tossed around in crates, or picked on by bugs.
Oddly enough, I am more comfortable eating fruit from Europe. It has unique and varied taste, distinct flavor, and unmistakable character.
How often do we try to eliminate our shadow side, the bruises from our falls or the black holes that are feeding the bees?
My soul stretches up towards the sky in praise of the God who tends to my tree and celebrates my fruit, who knows I am a good human.
His wooing is the way I keep going and growing.
