I’ll admit, it is odd to speak of persimmons at this time of year. An iconic Autumn fruit, persimmons are hardly congruent with the freshness of Spring or the tartness of the Summer fruits. Persimmons are comforting, tinged with warmth on the backside of every decadent bite. Nevertheless, I have come to believe that as a symbol of the Kingdom of God, they are eternally in season, waiting just around the corner of our expectations to surprise us.
Let us begin in downtown Wichita, a place where you can find exactly what you would expect and none of what you wouldn’t. Imagine any generic collection of concrete parking lots and window-clad buildings jutting into the sky, a grid of one-way streets and endless stoplights. Every now and then perhaps an interesting piece of architecture to make your gaze worthwhile (e.g., the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, or the Commodore). While downtown Wichita is by no means an urban nightmare (tame in comparison to megaplexes like Houston or Chicago), it certainly isn’t a nature-lover’s dream.
Way back then, sometime around October, Patrick and I were walking quite intentionally through this soul-numbing concrete sea one afternoon, and talking of the Romero Catholic Worker. Mainly I was trying to determine if Patrick was feeling as anxious and restless as I was about our lack of a house to start our house of hospitality and a garden to grow our food. His exhortation was said with conviction, but to my exasperated heart it sounded like a platitude: “we just have to trust that God will provide in His time.” Suddenly, and only because my face was quite literally downcast, I noticed on the ground in front of me a familiar amber-colored smear on the sidewalk. In shock, I stopped walking, but my thoughts picked up where my feet left off: “Is that …? Could it be …? No way …” I craned my neck upward, and sure enough, soaring high above me were the boughs of a persimmon tree, laden with Autumn’s pearls: golden, honey, and rust colored sugar bombs. It was apparent to me even as I began to collect them–pocketing one for every two that I put in my mouth–that this was unbelievable: a persimmon tree, in the middle of downtown Wichita …
Ever since my first encounter with persimmons in Appalachia while I was in college, they have been the hallmark of Autumn, my favorite season. Not an Autumn has gone by that I have not, with dear friends, celebrated its coming with the inaugural consumption of the season’s first persimmon. I had relinquished that this year, another of the “heroic sacrifices” that I would be making for the sake of the Catholic Worker (so I told myself). After all, saying “yes” to one thing–in this case, relocating to the center of the center of the United States–was saying “no” to many other things. And I figured that saying “yes” to God was worth more than a persimmon, even if persimmons were–to me anyway–Autumn’s pearls.
But there I was, taking in with all my senses the undeniable fact that what I had thought was a “no” was not in fact, and that my “yes” had included more in the bargain than I had thought to negotiate for. I could not explain why in tarnation there was a persimmon tree right there, in downtown Wichita, but still, I could see them, I could touch them, I could taste them, I could smell them. This was Providence, and it tasted like persimmons.
And when Providence sets before you something like a persimmon, the only proper response is to dump out whatever you were grasping at with your hands so that you can hold it.
Is this ringing a bell? Doesn’t it sound a bit like an old story, something about a single priceless pearl and a crazy merchant who sold all that he had just so he could have that one? And wasn’t there something about a kingdom, and heaven, too? But what has that got to do with persimmons? If I may be allowed a cheesy comparison, let’s say for now that persimmons and pearls are synonymous. And pearls, like persimmon trees, are found in unexpected places.
Where would you expect to find a pearl? Anything of great price should be kept in a place fitting for it, right? It should be at home among other things of value. So then we should look for pearls in palaces, temples, and sanctuaries. Definitely not in dingy motel rooms, and most assuredly not in the murky depths of my own wounded heart. But that’s where I have found them (like the persimmon tree): where they were least expected to be.
The Expected was my starting point, I suppose. I would not (and most assuredly could not) love people and encounter poverty if I did not begin each day in the sanctuary or the chapel. But inevitably, the nearness of the Goodness, Truth, and Beauty of God in the sanctuary of the parish church has continually led me back to a dingy motel room that has become as familiar to me (if not more) than the sanctuary, because of the amount of time I have spent there. And imagine my astonishment several months ago when those same transcendentals (Goodness, Truth, and Beauty) flooded my heart in that dark, musty motel room. Immediately I was ready to give up every assumption that I had held dear for the sake of holding onto this. This… What was this? It was the discovery of the beauty and goodness of a human being, a pearl of great price.
In the sanctuary or the chapel it seems comparatively easy to encounter mercy, because we are led to it. The altars, the vestments, the monstrances, the structure of the building itself is pointing us to the eternal and transcendental. But the same flood of mercy unexpectedly overwhelmed me in the dim lamplight and smoky haze of a motel room, as I beheld the woman sitting on the edge of the bed across from me, as she forgave me for the wounds I had caused in ignorance, as she expressed her resolve to rise again in spite of the endless onslaught of setbacks. In her, Providence had placed before me not a project, not a lesson to be learned or a goal to be accomplished but a soul to remind me where to go looking when I lose sight of Him, when I begin to lose hope in the miniscule, inconsequential acts of ordinary life. When I said “yes” to the Catholic Worker and loving the poor, I didn’t just say “yes” to voluntary poverty and long hours and numerous sacrifices (the heroic and the vapid). I said “yes” to the discovery of pearls in encountering human souls.
I had so readily taken for granted the pearl that inhabited that room because she was at the time homeless, because she was sick and weak and given to crankiness and criticism. But underneath all of that? Her resilient faith, her near-indefatigable spirit, the sincerity in her motherly advice to me about anything from love to gardening. Here was a soul, hardy and vigorous though refined by fire, and I had happened to discover it. Or it had discovered me.
Our restless hearts are always searching, stubbornly holding onto the belief that there is something precious just beyond what we can see. This is Hope; flowers grow through the cracks of sidewalks, Love persists in wounded hearts, through the darkness of Good Friday pierces the light of Easter. On the edge of a gravelly, urban parking lot grows a persimmon tree and in a musty hotel room stays a priceless pearl.
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