Life Is A Pineapple

So here it goes again...I have had a writing drought...but alas, the time has come to eat pineapple. When I was young I disliked pineapple very much. I disliked many things, such as puss, killer spiders, and cooties. What that has to do with anything I don't know, but the point is that I didn't like pineapple. When my mom would make a fruit bowl salad I would pick around the pineapple and enjoy the beautiful tastes of the other fruits. I went to visit some friends in Hawaii one summer when I was in high school. There were pineapple fields everywhere there, and wow, I thought that I was in the land of filth and disgust! Ok, so not really, but I didn't like pineapples. Well, at least that's what I thought...until I tried one fresh from the field! My friends' mom brought home a fresh pineapple one day and cut it up to give to us. I decided it wouldn't hurt to try - and I was not disappointed! It was DELICIOUS!!! The sweet juices splashed their way down my throat, rejoicing all the way! The pulp was tender, and had a strangely satisfying texture to it. At that moment my life changed drastically for the better. I discovered something beautiful, and though I still reject the lower forms of old pineapple, I still have a wonderful taste in my mouth from the fresh and beautiful form of pineapple.

Life is a pineapple. For much of my life I have had to live around the degraded and lowly pineapple...what I mean by that is that life has not always been a fun and "beautiful" thing. Pain surrounds us everyday. The world is full of things that may look enticing and good, but are far from it in the end. Many times we can avoid some of the pains of life, just as I would refrain from eating pineapple growing up. Sometimes we cannot avoid it to get the joys in life, such as when I would have to pick around the pineapple to get to the delicious stuff in the fruit bowl. There have been times in my life that I have experienced the fresh-from-the-field pineapple; pineapple that has come fresh from the source. In life those are the times that I experience the things of the Spirit...things of the Lord. That is where the true joy and beauty comes from. I have recently received the blessing of experiencing the fruit of the Lord. I will not go into detail, for it is a personal and sacred thing to me, but life since that experience has been different. I still have the pain around me, and I still have to sift through the things of the world...but I have the memory and taste of that experience with the Spirit to sustain me. The Lord loves me, and he loves all of us. Life is hard, but we can experience the joy if we go straight to the source. And so it is: life is a pineapple...