This photo was taken of a Juniper bush planted in a huge cement pot outside a bank on a city street. Isn't it lovely? The berries (which I recently learned are technically called cones) are just forming. As they mature they will turn a deeper and richer blue. There's meaning there for us.
The juniper, of which there are many kinds, is one of the plants telling of events along the road to Egypt, when the Holy Family ran ahead to safety from jealous King Herod's threats and menace. Herod, a weak, corrupted and insecure leader, afraid of losing power, even to a baby. Pathetic, heh?
The Medieval legend goes that while fleeing (how some Christians feel no compassion for the ones who must flee today, is beyond me) Mary looked for a place to hide with her infant. Just then the prickly juniper opened itself and the Holy Mother stepped into the tree's cavity, surrounded by softness. Herod's hunter-soldiers passed the hiding place unawares. The story is lovely of course, creating an atmosphere of love and welcome around Jesus and Mary. But I'm interested in those light blue cones forming on the bush.
They are immature fruit, meaning, they are in a state of becoming and evolving. They are not there yet. Perhaps they are images of our own state of being. Are we ever really there? Not really, and that's okay. I want to learn to be content with the gradual becoming or ripening of my life —like berries, fruit and cones developing over time.
It seems to me that if I think I've arrived, that every everything about me is a done deal — then I've stopped living. So, are there latent talents I've not explored, creative changes that are waiting for expression? Is there some new heart-sensitivity that hopes for an awakening? What is there for me to learn yet about how to be a really alive human person?
A young nurse wrote recently that she had watched the video of George Floyd's death a number of times, asking about her own emotion and what it might have led her to had she witnessed it in person. She was able to identify the moment when Mr. Floyd surrendered to death. She asked, "Would I have yelled out, 'I'm a nurse, let me assess him!'"
Another friend wrote, "Now is the waiting time — that the virus will disappear and our lives may return slowly to normal breathing, our fears disappeared and we may get out of our caves."
The light blue of the juniper cones are in their process, their becoming, their ripening. Each day is just where they belong along the way to fullness. How do you understand this for yourself? This is the spiritual way or path — no less than Mary's many journeys from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and Bethlehem to Egypt and back, and to Cana and Galilee, to Calvary and Easter.
One pastor said recently, "It's no longer enough to be 'not racist'; one must be anti-racist." What about that ripening? That evolving? Some white folks are starting to get it now. Some.
