Mark 11:13

and, noticing a fig-tree at a distance in leaf, he went to it to see if by any chance he could find something on it; but, on coming up to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.


a mirage of food
is no less compelling
than a desired lake
in a thirsty land

a hunger to be satisfied
rises from general awareness
a commander of attention
reorienting every decision

a crowd-size need is narrowed
to one and only one imperative
from mission to maintenance
regardless of any other reality

without sufficient resources
in season or out
we’ll search out
trees or dumpsters


 

A season of belovedness is not yet here. We look for it. We yearn for it. We hunger for it. It is not yet present. Yet it could be.

That which satisfies the resolution of a current lack is yet present. What else have all the healing stories been telling us? That which is out-of-whack, out-of-season, dis-eased can, now, be aligned, harvested, made whole.

All our energy has gone into leaf-making, not fruit-making. Fishing for people is disciple-making not simply carrying prior-revelation forward.

It is not yet time for a new heaven and new earth, a new age. Yet, the experience of wilderness with beasts and angels gives evidence of a season available that is not currently acknowledged. Experience of the emergence of the future into the present can be gained, consolidated, and enjoyed.

The story about a fig tree (a prophetic symbol of Israel, see Hosea 9:10, Micah 7:1, and Jeremiah 24:1-10 for some references) will be interwoven with arguments within the Temple. Both will be found to be exhibiting a linear fault that comes with seasons—that the seasons are distinct instead of each one carrying the others within them. Whichever aspect of the multiverse we are in is available and is less limited than commonly admitted.

To see through “hungry” eyes is to be realistic about the limits we habitually use to keep us in our place, stuck. Our first reaction will be that of sorrow or anger that we use “normal” or “natural” to avoid the investment of energy, work, needed to take our gift, our “belovedness”, into the real world of wilderness that will refine it into being able to engage all the seasons of life from within any of them.

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