Maybe you did not realize it, but we are square in the middle of a season called “Peach.” I have long forsaken the use of months’ calendar titled names as I now use food to designate the seasons of the year. “Peach,” for instance, is a most glorious season of the year and is highlighted with many varieties of fruit for which the honorary seasonal name is derived. “Peach” is always the season just before “Apple,” that season which comes a little later in August and continues into the early autumn months. Of course, you know the peach is a great summer fruit containing the needed healing properties to fight off that dreaded condition known as “humidit.” A good juicy peach will not solve humidity, but it will take your mind off of it for just an instant.
We all have our favorite recipes for peaches. From sorbets to cobblers, ice cream to salsa, or brandied to frozen (for later use), there is no way to misuse a peach so long as it eventually winds up in your mouth and headed for personal digestion. My favorite recipe for a peach involves a kitchen sink and a paper towel. While leaning over a kitchen sink, with your tie tucked in your front shirt pocket, you rip open a peach, bury your face in it, and suck out the juicy deliciousness of the peach, all the while taking care that not a drop of the nectar falls into the basin of the sink, therefore eating both halves in quick succession from the right hand, while the left hand instantly reaches for the next peach thus, completing a fluid and slurping transfer of fruit to mouth. This recipe insists that you not stop the sequence until all of the peaches are gone. The paper towel is used only at the very end while catching your breath.
My grandmother had some peach trees. They were the object of her guarded existence. The peaches were of the Georgia Belle variety and were known to be particularly succulent. Come the middle of July, she would secretly, by night, place her land mines, install trip wires, and cover the trees in cheesecloth in order to prevent any sort of wild varmint or kinfolk pestilence from robbing her of a single peach. Here efforts were all for a good cause, since at around “mid-Peach,” we grandchildren would begin our siege of the peach trees requiring great speed, dexterity, with quick and orchestrated flanking procedures that would have made Vince Lombardi weep out of pride. A caught peach fiend knew of the great possibility of ear pulling, shin kicking, or death by lead, fang, or claw. Grandmother was a force to be reckoned with and you have never seen a “little church going Christian lady” act suchly.
I remember long nights of dreaded humidity when I would dream of endless rows of peach trees hanging full of peaches that grew wild with no impediments of search lights, guard towers, or canister bombs. Just the thought of a peach drove the humidity a quarter of an inch from my body for a short period of time. But this was only a dream and was short-lived. There was never enough of the cure to rid us of the humidity. Humidity always won.
Once, a great friend, who grew and sold peaches, invited me to help pick his crop. I remember how he spoke the most precious words in the world as he said, “you may eat all you would like as you pick them.” Without going into much detail, you can surely imagine that I gathered nary a peach in my basket, while following his instructions, and wound up wonderfully sick in a way I cannot go into here. Suffice it to say, on that wonderful feast day, the humidity was wonderfully cured and, even in my most challenged condition, I was able to offer many contemplative smiles.
For those of us smitten by the great allure of the peach, there are only two prepositional seasons of the year: the season “of” the peach and the season “without” the peach. Either I have a sore back and fuzzy lips from leaning over the sink, or I am pining away for the first fruits of “The Season.” Then, just as the season of Peach goes away, we are offered salvation by the season of Apple, a season marked with sweet dreams of Stayman Winesaps, Romes, and McIntosh. The season of Apple is followed by the season of Pumpkin, followed by the season of Turnip, followed by the season of Collards, followed by the season of Baked Goods, and on and on.
All of this recollection of past days of the “season of Peach” reminds me of the painful reality of delayed gratification. I know all about delayed gratification. I know what it is to be required to wait. I know what it is to long for something that cannot presently be.
Any season or period of longing is a most uncomfortable place for us to be. None are good at waiting. In our immediate gratification world, we want “it” and we want “it” NOW! The fact is when we long for situations that have not yet come to reality, we have no recourse but to pine away and soothe our yearning with prayer. All of us long for healing, peace, mending of relationships, future blessings that are now only a dream, graduations, careers, investments that come to maturity, or some other fulfillment that has not yet come. We always want that which we cannot have. However, we are taught to be patient, to trust the Lord, to not act out in haste. Psalm 90 consoles this situation best as we are passionately reminded to “wait for the Lord.”
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com
We all have our favorite recipes for peaches. From sorbets to cobblers, ice cream to salsa, or brandied to frozen (for later use), there is no way to misuse a peach so long as it eventually winds up in your mouth and headed for personal digestion. My favorite recipe for a peach involves a kitchen sink and a paper towel. While leaning over a kitchen sink, with your tie tucked in your front shirt pocket, you rip open a peach, bury your face in it, and suck out the juicy deliciousness of the peach, all the while taking care that not a drop of the nectar falls into the basin of the sink, therefore eating both halves in quick succession from the right hand, while the left hand instantly reaches for the next peach thus, completing a fluid and slurping transfer of fruit to mouth. This recipe insists that you not stop the sequence until all of the peaches are gone. The paper towel is used only at the very end while catching your breath.
My grandmother had some peach trees. They were the object of her guarded existence. The peaches were of the Georgia Belle variety and were known to be particularly succulent. Come the middle of July, she would secretly, by night, place her land mines, install trip wires, and cover the trees in cheesecloth in order to prevent any sort of wild varmint or kinfolk pestilence from robbing her of a single peach. Here efforts were all for a good cause, since at around “mid-Peach,” we grandchildren would begin our siege of the peach trees requiring great speed, dexterity, with quick and orchestrated flanking procedures that would have made Vince Lombardi weep out of pride. A caught peach fiend knew of the great possibility of ear pulling, shin kicking, or death by lead, fang, or claw. Grandmother was a force to be reckoned with and you have never seen a “little church going Christian lady” act suchly.
I remember long nights of dreaded humidity when I would dream of endless rows of peach trees hanging full of peaches that grew wild with no impediments of search lights, guard towers, or canister bombs. Just the thought of a peach drove the humidity a quarter of an inch from my body for a short period of time. But this was only a dream and was short-lived. There was never enough of the cure to rid us of the humidity. Humidity always won.
Once, a great friend, who grew and sold peaches, invited me to help pick his crop. I remember how he spoke the most precious words in the world as he said, “you may eat all you would like as you pick them.” Without going into much detail, you can surely imagine that I gathered nary a peach in my basket, while following his instructions, and wound up wonderfully sick in a way I cannot go into here. Suffice it to say, on that wonderful feast day, the humidity was wonderfully cured and, even in my most challenged condition, I was able to offer many contemplative smiles.
For those of us smitten by the great allure of the peach, there are only two prepositional seasons of the year: the season “of” the peach and the season “without” the peach. Either I have a sore back and fuzzy lips from leaning over the sink, or I am pining away for the first fruits of “The Season.” Then, just as the season of Peach goes away, we are offered salvation by the season of Apple, a season marked with sweet dreams of Stayman Winesaps, Romes, and McIntosh. The season of Apple is followed by the season of Pumpkin, followed by the season of Turnip, followed by the season of Collards, followed by the season of Baked Goods, and on and on.
All of this recollection of past days of the “season of Peach” reminds me of the painful reality of delayed gratification. I know all about delayed gratification. I know what it is to be required to wait. I know what it is to long for something that cannot presently be.
Any season or period of longing is a most uncomfortable place for us to be. None are good at waiting. In our immediate gratification world, we want “it” and we want “it” NOW! The fact is when we long for situations that have not yet come to reality, we have no recourse but to pine away and soothe our yearning with prayer. All of us long for healing, peace, mending of relationships, future blessings that are now only a dream, graduations, careers, investments that come to maturity, or some other fulfillment that has not yet come. We always want that which we cannot have. However, we are taught to be patient, to trust the Lord, to not act out in haste. Psalm 90 consoles this situation best as we are passionately reminded to “wait for the Lord.”
