Immortality in Remission

Last week I attended the first session of a Bible study on women of the Bible. I'm not impressed with the workbook, but digging into Genesis and looking at Eve with DiDi has already been fruitful.

During this morning's peek, I was drawn to Gen 3:22-24:

Then the LORD God said: See! The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil! Now, what if he also reaches out his hand to take fruit from the tree of life, and eats of it and lives forever? The LORD God therefore banished him from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he had been taken. He expelled the man, stationing the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword east of the garden of Eden, to guard the way to the tree of life.

Prior to this Adam and Eve were allowed access to this tree, and presumably (to my mind), ate from it.

I wonder if it was those days of freely eating that fruit which allows us eventual physical immortality? Is there some lingering effect that will be triggered at the end of time causing us to burst force bodily into full bloom like an ancient pine nut after the forest burns down?

Take off your shoes

Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God. And only he who sees takes off his shoes, the rest sit round and pluck blackberries.

--Elizabeth Barrett Browning

To bring her all these things and watch her eat

I love this passage, both for the floridity of it's food list, and for it's tenderness. It reminds me of some of Chantelle's fruit poetry...

From The Cookbook Collector:

Sentimentally, he thought of Jess. Irrationally, he imagined her. Sadly, he despaired of having her. But this was not a question of pursuit. ... His fantasies were nurturing, not predatory. If he could have Jess, he would feed her. Laughable, antique, confusingly paternal, he longed to nourish her with clementines, and pears in season, fresh whole-wheat bread and butter, wild strawberries, Comte cheese, fresh figs ad oily Marcona almonds, tender yellow beets. He would sear red meat, if she would let him and grill spring lamb. Cut the thorns off artichokes and dip the leaves in fresh aioli, poach her fish--thick Dover sole in wine and shallots--julienne potatoes, and roast a whole chicken with lemon slices under the skin. He would serve a salad of heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella and just picked basil. Serve her and watch her savor dinner, pour for her, and watch her drink. That would be enough for him. To find her plums in season, and perfect nectarines, velvet apricots, dark succulent duck. To bring her all these things and watch her eat.

Cracked with the strain

While journeying home
I dream of a house
and in the house a room
and in the room a table
and on the table a wooden bowl
cracked with the strain of containing.

Fruit of all kinds;
pineapples spike the air with tropical promise
electric oranges, juice ready to burst
at the pressure of my teeth
apples and pears wafting harvest
pomegranates ripe with seed
berries fragrant and fragile
lemons shining yellow
dates dark with syrup
mango lush as a woman’s hip
peaches cleft with down
figs, densely feminine
bananas curved in arcs of invitation
grapes promising wine.

Their scents assail me
a cloud of seduction
beckoning
promising
demanding
whispering to be touched;
smooth and bare
furred and soft
rough and scratching.

Desire stunned, I gape
Breathless.
Though I didn’t know I was hungry
I want to tear off peels
and break off pieces
stuffing my mouth
in a frenzy of feasting.
And after that initial ravishment
to slowly quiet
my still-burning appetite
one fruit
one bite
at a time.

I close my eyes
and the image lingers
verdant
fervent
thirsting to be consumed.

But mine is not this feast.
Though I stretch out my hand
it is beyond my reach.
I can’t let it touch my lips
nor steal a bite
nor feel the tender flesh melting on my tongue.

Mine is to hunger.
The fruit at which I can but stare and breathe
a promise;
the gift not in the eating
but in the yearning.

While journeying home
I dream of a house
and in the house a room
and in the room a table
and on the table a wooden bowl
cracked with the strain of containing.

--Chantelle Franc

Final notes from Chance or the Dance? Ch. 8

"...it is in the nature of union to produce fruit, or, conversely, that the fruit owes its life to a prior union. Further, he might observe that it is in the nature of that union to be ecstatic, and he might thus conclude that joy is somehow written into the sources of life. And he will undoubtedly see that there are pain and agony involved and will have to come to terms with what he can see only as an intrusion or an ambiguity--that pain is somehow bound up in the whole process of joy. ... And he will see at work over a long, long span of time the difficult notion that reward or fulfillment commonly follows rigor and renunciation and austerity... and is not available on demand."

"It will occur to him that one of the oddities of love (erotic, paternal, filial, social) is that its motion is outward and away from itself, and that it experiences this motion as joy"

"...life issues from death--that spring rises from winter, and the oak from the dead acorn, and dawn from the night, and Pheonix from the ashes.

These are old moral saws. Nothing new here. Bromides. But then there is nothing new anywhere. The business of the poet and prophet has always been to take the saws and astonish and delight us into a fresh awareness of what they mean by discovering them suddenly in this image, and in this, and this. And the rest of us may see it all either as a pointless jumble of phenomena, or as the diagram of glory--as grinding tediously toward entropy, or as dancing toward the Dance."

He's built perfection out of hunger

The Rumi poem in the previous post from this morning echoes the theme of a separation between truth and love.

It reminds me of an exhibit I saw a few years ago at the Corning Museum of Glass; a collection of unbelievably lifelike plants, flowers, and fruit all made of glass.

They were in cases and could not be touched but were so incredibly real that in many cases you could not tell that they were not.

So there they were, these creations of man, mimicking the wonder of God's creative power, but lacking the softness, the scent, and the fruition of His work.

Beautiful imitations. Brittle and fragile and forced, like facts without love.

The poem below says it well (and even mentions peaches).

The Ware Collection of Glass Flowers and Fruit, Harvard Museum
by Mark Doty

Strange paradise, complete with worms,
monument of an obsessive will to fix forms;
every apricot or yellow spot's seen so closely,
in these blown blooms and fruit, that exactitude
is not quite imitation. Leaf and root,
the sweet flag's flaring bud already,
at the tip, blackened; it's hard to remember
these were ballooned and shaped by breath
they're lovely because they seem
to decay; blue spots on bluer plums,
mold tarring a striped rose. I don't want to admire
the glassblower's academic replica,
his copies correct only to a single sense.
And why did a god so invested in permanence
choose so fragile a medium, the last material
he might expect to last? Better prose
to tell the forms of things, or illustration.
Though there's something seductive in this impossibility:
transparent color telling the live mottle of peach,
the blush or tint of crab, englobed,
gorgeous, edible. How else match that flush?
He's built a perfection out of hunger,
fused layer upon layer, swirled until
what can't be swallowed, won't yield
almost satisfies, an art
mouthed to the shape of how soft things are,
how good, before they disappear

Know me more

In future I may call this the summer of the peach.

I found a longer and a shorter version of this poem, but preferred the shorter (below).

Upon reading, it occurs to me to wonder if the fruit Eve bit was a peach...

Know me more

Share a peach with me
softly ripe
and by it
know me more.

--Chantelle Franc

Day 13: Synchronicity

Yesterday's sermon centered around the spiritual gifts, and God's plan in giving each of us specific gifts according to His purpose. He used the analogy of us all being different types of fruit trees, and more specifically, comparing apples to peaches.

Yes; he centered on the peach tree.

Though it wasn't his main focus, the deacon connected with my own meditations of becoming fully ourselves.

I love the way He interweaves things.

Day 11: more on peaches

I woke with peaches on the brain again.

This time I thought about how the fullness of a fruit's existence isn't realized unless it is consumed. If it sits on the tree until it falls off and then withers and rots, God will make use of it by providing food for creatures, fertilizing the soil, and maybe even growing a new tree. But for the true magnificence of a peach to be realized, it must be eaten by a human, who can not only comprehend the beauty of its deliciousness, but can also wonder at its creation.

That made me think about what this means for us, which led me to CS Lewis' quote:

"...it is in the lover that the beloved tastes her own delightfulness."

For our true magnificence to be realized, we also must be consumed. We must share the abundant fruitfulness of our being, even to the point of complete ravishment.

Perhaps utter ravishment should in fact be our goal.

So... my tasks are to identify what parts of me are delicious, to work on building up those parts, and then to be generous even to the point of pain in sharing them.

Sounds simple enough.

Day 10: the perfect peach

I woke thinking of peaches this morning. Not sure why, except that I ate one last night. It was very good, but the color and texture on one side was just a bit off. Not nastily so, but enough.

In my peachy waking I thought again about our becoming more intensely ourselves in the fulfillment of time, as I wrote of here. When the banished world returns to the garden of Eden and we dance there, partaking of the fruit of all the trees growing on the banks of the river of life, what will that fruit be like?

Will a peach lose it's peachy essence at the end, becoming some sort of washed out spiritual form? Is that the type of meal Yeshua himself plans to eat with us in paradise?

It seems unlikely.

The peaches there must be intensely, purely, and perfectly peachy. Without blemish. Firm of flesh and juicy beyond belief. Inhaling their perfume alone must be nearly orgasmic.

And if the fruit of the trees and vines are to reach perfection of their very selves, becoming a distillation and concentration of their very beings, how could we do less?

Do we become spirit which simply reflects the shape of Yeshua, having lost our "us-ness"?

It seems unlikely.

I wonder what distillation of Eva will be like? What aspects of me will intensify, and which will burn away? Which parts are the real me, the essence of me, the true and the beautiful and the delicious?

Gives me something to think about, and to start working on now...

Obedience is the fruit of faith

Obedience is the fruit of faith; patience, the bloom on the fruit.

--Rossetti

(This was good for me to hear today.)

The promise of apple blossoms

I woke thinking about the fall of Adam and Eve, and of how certainly I would make the same choice that they did.

I thought about the beauty of God's creation, and of the splendor of that first garden and all that was in it. And I wondered about that tree; how lovely must it have been?

It must have been very lovely indeed.

I took a look at what the scriptures had to say:

Gen. 3:6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

It was pleasing to the eye, and desirable.

I'm guessing that was an understatement. A vast one. I'm guessing that the tree was incredibly beautiful, and the fruit magically enticing.

And I thought about my own struggles.

How delicious it would be to approach the tree, to press up against its roughness, to smell the fragrance of leaf and bark and temptation.

I would climb up and rest among the boughs, feeling the wind swaying my cradle, and reach out now and then for a taste of certain sweetness.

I completely understand the desire Lewis describes; to want to get inside to where all the beauty comes from.

And it is hard to understand how sin can be so thoroughly enmeshed in beauty. The beauty is so very understandably desirable.

How can the wanting of such beauty be wrong?

And then God, in his generousity, sent this reading in my morning devotional:

2 Cor. 12:6-10 Although if I should wish to boast, I would not be foolish, for I would be telling the truth. But I refrain, so that no one may think more of me than what he sees in me or hears from me because of the abundance of the revelations. Therefore, that I might not become too elated, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

I can't say that I pray that my thorn be removed, because it is too enmeshed with the beauty. The beauty is too beautiful to sacrifice.

But He shows me that in this struggle, in this recognition of my weakness, in the knowledge that I too would eat of the beautiful fruit, He is strong. As I acknowledge the draw of the beauty, He grows in strength in me. As I surrender all pretense of courage and honor and fortitude, He rises up.

So I dream of the tree, and rest in His strength, trusting that the garden He has created for me is perfect in every way, despite the beauty of the tree beyond it's borders. Perhaps even enhanced by it.

And I am comforted by the sight of it in the distance, and the scent of apple blossoms, promising fruit.

All curves and sweet intoxication

I am besotted.
As soaked with love
as a wine-steeped pear;
drenched red
with heady sweetness
and the desire
to be consumed.

--Chantelle Franc

An apple by any other name

I sought the impossible;
a word to describe you.
The closest I came
was
delicious.

--Chantelle Franc

His fruit is sweet to my mouth

Warning: here goes my mind again...

I heard part of a Christopher West talk on the Theology of the Body over the weekend, and once again my mind traveled to interesting places. He echoed one of my favorite topics of contemplation, saying that all of the sacraments reflect the essential reality of Christianity as a marital covenant between us (the bride) and God (the bridegroom). He spoke of how we are to understand the Song of Songs, and touched on communion as consummation.

My mental meanderings connected to thoughts I'd had at mass that morning, about how the placing of His body upon my tongue seems too rushed, too formulaic, too much of one-more-person-in-an-assembly-line. I thought of how lovely it would be to linger with His hand approaching, then resting against my mouth; His body approaching His bride...

I believe in the wisdom of a celibate priesthood for many reasons, but began to wonder what it would be like to be married to a priest.

What would it be like if your husband celebrated the mass with you alone, standing in persona Christi before you, delivering Himself to His bride first through the precious species, and then through his/His body itself?

What would it be like to consummate both weddings in the Eucharistic celebration, the three of you whispering the closing prayers together at the end?

We will not desire candy in heaven.

No thin veneer

do you think
the purple passion of my love
a thin veneer?
easily cracked?
my love is miles high
and oceans wide
my love is layers thick
and fathoms deep
and any rain of hurt that falls
will water the fruit
which ripens on love's peak

--Chantelle Franc

The Odes of Solomon, Ode 11

1. My heart was pruned and its flower appeared, then grace sprang up in it, and my heart produced fruits for the Lord.
2. For the Most High circumcised me by His Holy Spirit, then He uncovered my inward being towards Him, and filled me with His love.
3. And His circumcising became my salvation, and I ran in the Way, in His peace, in the way of truth.
4. From the beginning until the end I received His knowledge.
5. And I was established upon the rock of truth, where He had set me.
6. And speaking waters touched my lips from the fountain of the Lord generously.
7. And so I drank and became intoxicated, from the living water that does not die.
8. And my intoxication did not cause ignorance, but I abandoned vanity,
9. And turned toward the Most High, my God, and was enriched by His favors.
10. And I rejected the folly cast upon the earth, and stripped it off and cast it from me.
11. And the Lord renewed me with His garment, and possessed me by His light.
12. And from above He gave me immortal rest, and I became like the land that blossoms and rejoices in its fruits.
13. And the Lord is like the sun upon the face of the land.
14. My eyes were enlightened, and my face received the dew;
15. And my breath was refreshed by the pleasant fragrance of the Lord.
16. And He took me to His Paradise, wherein is the wealth of the Lord's pleasure.
    I beheld blooming and fruit-bearing trees,
    And self-grown was their crown.
    Their branches were sprouting and their fruits were shining.
    From an immortal land were their roots.
    And a river of gladness was irrigating them,
    And round about them in the land of eternal life.
17. Then I worshipped the Lord because of His magnificence.
18. And I said, Blessed, O Lord, are they who are planted in Your land, and who have a place in Your Paradise;
19. And who grow in the growth of Your trees, and have passed from darkness into light.
20. Behold, all Your laborers are fair, they who work good works, and turn from wickedness to your pleasantness.
21. For the pungent odor of the trees is changed in Your land,
22. And everything becomes a remnant of Yourself. Blessed are the workers of Your waters, and eternal memorials of Your faithful servants.
23. Indeed, there is much room in Your Paradise. And there is nothing in it which is barren, but everything is filled with fruit.
24. Glory be to You, O God, the delight of Paradise for ever.
    Hallelujah.

Quotes from Letters to a Young Poet (II)

"Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments."

Readiness for Ritual (III): on Intimacy

"In a theological frame of reference, the symbolic orientation of God-imagery at this stage produces a 'God who is the abundance of human intimacy.' God is felt to be the invisible 'third', the radiance going beyond the sum of gifts of those who love. In moments when two human beings come together in a fated intimacy, there is an overflowing sense of fullness to the joy and hopes which these persons share. The strategic point for pastoral ministry here is the conviction, generated by good preaching and good theology, that God is not put off by our delights but gratified in gracing us with the amplitude of joy. The old saw of Irenaeus that 'the glory of God is man fully alive' finds non chauvinist expression in the recognition that 'man' fully alive is 'man and woman' mutually enlivening one another's joy. To use Erikson's terminology, the abundance of delight which is the fruit of such mutual sharing in intimacy becomes the motivation for a generativity that concerns itself with not only the children of one's family, but the children of the whole human family."

What is Mysticism? (I)

From Practical Mysticism, Chapter 1:

Mysticism is the art of union with Reality. The mystic is a person who has attained that union in greater or less degree; or who aims at and believes in such attainment. ... the word “union” represents not so much a rare and unimaginable operation, as something which he is doing, in a vague, imperfect fashion, at every moment of his conscious life; and doing with intensity and thoroughness in all the more valid moments of that life. We know a thing only by uniting with it; by assimilating it; by an interpenetration of it and ourselves. It gives itself to us, just in so far as we give ourselves to it; and it is because our outflow towards things is usually so perfunctory and so languid, that our comprehension of things is so perfunctory and languid too. The great Sufi who said that “Pilgrimage to the place of the wise, is to escape the flame of separation” spoke the literal truth. Wisdom is the fruit of communion; ignorance the inevitable portion of those who “keep themselves to themselves,” and stand apart, judging, analysing the things which they have never truly known.