I grasp the tree branches, hoisting myself with one grunting pull up into the leaves. Cobwebs cling to my hair and face, dead branches scrape at my arms. We haven’t yet added a ladder to our household items.
Snapping off some of the dead branches around me, I survey the plums. Branches sag with the weight of clusters of fruit—in threes, fours, and fives, all plump and purple, dull with orchard dust.
I begin to pluck. Most give easily at my tug, their skin unbroken. I try to toss the fruit gently into my containers, taking care not to bruise them. I work quickly, with an ear to the front yard and my children’s voices. I should have waited, I think anxiously, until the toddler goes down for a nap.
*
After the effort of harvesting, plum season proved to be disappointing. The plums didn’t taste as sweet as I would have liked and were unappealing snacks. My children have inherited my pickiness and refuse to eat them.
The birds and the bats, on the other hand, are eager to get their share of the harvest. I can’t begrudge them much: unlike the vegetables in my garden, I haven’t labored over this fruit tree. Someone more diligent than I planted, cared for and pruned it. The rain, not my hose, provided it with water.
Tucked as it is behind our shed, hidden from view, I wonder about the tree’s beginnings. Did it spring up from the waste of someone’s afternoon snack? Or was the shed added after, by someone unwilling to give the tree more effort, yet also unwilling to remove it altogether? Whether sown in care or in ignorance, the tree has matured; its fruit is pure gift.
What if no one really wants that gift? Yet there the plums are, weighing down the branches in their bounty. Beautiful in their insistence to grow, despite my indifference, despite my negligence. Their presence rebukes me. Refusing isn’t an option. I have no choice but to pick them.
*
As with my garden, so I’d like my life: full of things that I want to be there. Gifts are welcome, so long as they conform to my expectations of what is good and acceptable.
But what does it mean to receive something unwanted? When we’d rather put our hands out—palms down, not up? Should we receive something unwanted?
In her book Word by Word, Marilyn McEntyre reflects on the word receive. She recognizes that often we get gifts that we haven’t chosen—sometimes insignificant, sometimes life-altering. Yet she encourages a posture of open-heartedness, one that says, “‘Yes—thank you—I accept,’ whatever it may cost, knowing the gift, yet to be fully disclosed, holds more promise than we imagine.”
At the heart of this posture is the recognition that the gifts we receive have a giver. The things that come to us, while perhaps surprising us, do not surprise him. And more: this promise, that even gifts that do not immediately fill us with joy, are nonetheless instruments of the giver’s grace. “The only way I know,” McEntyre writes, “to be honestly willing to receive hard things as gifts from God is to consider how they foster the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”
This willingness keys the discipline to receive hard, unwished for things as gifts, not because of the delight they bring in the present, but in the future fruit that they cultivate. The fruit, however, is not guaranteed; it requires us to receive, not once, but daily, the things that have changed our lives or cost us something. It requires us to open our hands each day in humility and thankfulness. We see only the disruption, the inadequacy, the pain. Yet we accept in faith, trusting that “now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.”
*
Situated as we are in a large city that attracts many overseas tourists and international students, our church family usually welcomes many transients, men and women here for a brief period of study or work. Many of them buoy us up, putting their hands to work, not shying away from the conversations required to know and love truly. And then they go. Saying “goodbye,” it seems, is part of our church’s liturgy. But I’d rather keep my hands in my pockets than accept it. I’d rather turn my head away, pretending not to notice what has been offered.
Yet at the end of each church service, our pastor raises his arms, usually above his head, to bestow the blessing on the congregation. When my hands are not already preoccupied with holding a child, I bend my arms and turn my palms upward in a posture of receiving. I want to take hold of the blessing that God offers, take hold of it not just with my ears but with my whole body. Like Jacob gripping the Lord in their wrestling match — “I won’t let you go until you bless me!”
My grip loosens quickly, though, when the blessing, the good that the Lord wants to do for me, is cross-shaped, when the gain looks like loss. Can I instead say with Joseph and Job that I am willing to receive all things as from the Lord’s hand, from his good hand?
*
A few months ago, a woman who attends our church’s English Conversation Corner brought a gift for me. As we gathered in the church kitchen for our usual tea and coffee preparations before we sat down together to discuss new vocabulary and questions around the week’s topic, she offered me a simple brown paper bag. Inside—treats from Japan, her home country: simple sweetened rice crackers individually wrapped. Her kindness was unexpected. She’s not the first person from that group to give me a gift, and yet each time it happens I am taken aback, surprised by the gesture and the generosity that prompted it. This time I learned, coached by a friend, that the proper way to give and receive gifts in Japanese culture is with both hands.
Both hands: no half-heartedness in body language, no casualness about receiving. This posture does not allow for reticence, even if I may not be excited about this particular treat. Despite any inward hesitation, outwardly my body is forced to communicate gratitude and respect.
*
In Russian folklore, the Lyeshy is a wood-demon. One story tells of a woman who finds a baby Lyeshy lying on the ground, naked and crying. Out of compassion, the woman covers the baby with her cloak. Soon after, the mother of the baby demon comes, and, seeing what the woman has done, rewards her with a pot of burning coals. Receiving this strange gift, the woman carries the pot home. When she reaches her cottage, the coals are transformed into golden ducats. Worthless to valuable, all in the receiving of a gift.
If such a gift comes from a wood demon, how much more from my heavenly Father?
*
Soon my bins are full and I must descend. The branches again snag on my hair and clothes as I reposition myself. The climb down does not require as much effort; easily enough I drop to the ground. I reach back up to retrieve my containers, my gaze forced up into the branches, up into the sky behind them. The sunlight pierces through the tree, sharp and white, without apology. Looking any longer than a moment will leave bright spots in my eyes, circles of light that will remain in my vision even when my eyes close. My hands, both of them outstretched, grasp the containers to bring them down to me.
I turn, stepping carefully to avoid the fallen fruit, some of it already filling the air with a sharp, sickly sweetness. Later I’ll grab the rake and gather it up for the compost pile. But for now, I walk back to the house, arms heavy with plums.
