Honeycrisp™

If any of you have ever dared to mention the word “apple” around me, you probably know that there is only one variety that I consider worthy of my taste buds.

The flippin’ Honeycrisp™.

This is a story of how my professor purchased happiness.

The Bronx understands!!!!

I literally asked someone to capture the moment. I'm not joking people.

The sunglasses are hiding tears.

Now I don’t understand the exact process of how this miracle fruit came into existence, but the magic happened at the University of Minnesota. Despite not studying at the U of M, this fact  makes me more closely-related to the celebrity apple than you are.

.... also a Minnesota creation.

I am riding this high horse because, if you have ever tried a Honeycrisp™ apple  in your short, bittersweet life, then you will know: this thing is different. This beautiful apple is different, and different is good. And from that moment on, every other apple has been but a sad comparison, a sad reminder that were not eating a Honeycrisp™.

Honestly if at this point you still haven’t tried one (and are in the states), stop reading and go buy one. Holy crap, its fall for you guys. GO BUY A FLIPPING HONECRISP™ APPLE AND WEEP FOR ME. WEEP FOR THE GIRL IN BRAZIL WHO CAN’T EAT THE SWEET FRUIT OF JOY and so goes to the beach to drown her sorrows in sunbathing.

Just kidding, I'm good.

In all seriousness, I’m fascinated with the process of “creating” something that occurs in nature – selectively choosing and grafting strains of fruit in order to grow something that would not have happened naturally. I have tasted and seen the beauty of the Honeycrisp™, which is created according to the same metaphor used to describe non-Jews becoming part of God’s people, part of His “family tree”.

And a more well-known bit...

“I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5

When someone becomes a child of God, they are taken off of the “vine” that they inhabited, and transferred to a new vine. They no longer find their energy for living from the roots of the old vine – because they are no longer connected to it. Go ahead, try to find sustenance in the roots of your old vine! Gol’ darnit it don’t work! Becaause... your source of life is new.

And what happens when the source of one’s life changes??? What happens when all of a sudden, my “branch” is grafted onto a new vine? The branch of my life produces a different fruit. It can never produce the old fruit. And the fruit of the vine of Jesus is like a flippin’ Honeycrisp™ apple. It is more perfect than any other apple.

Of course no fruit can ever be perfect, and of course some people may not appreciate that little package of sweetness and beauty like I do. But the scientists who created that apple at the University of Minnesota are probably still at it – tweaking and perfecting something that is already an incredible improvement to other apples. 

I have been taken from a vine that produced nothing, and have been grafted onto the vine that produces sweet and beautiful fruit. My life is so far from perfect, but I can tell you that I am a different apple on the vine of Jesus than I would be on my own vine. And because I draw my life strength from Him instead of myself, I am no longer strengthened or satisfied by things that are meant to self-satisfy.

Last night I was brought to joyful tears when I got the news that someone I had been praying for (but honestly had not thought about for a while) has been grafted onto the vine of Jesus.(Metaphor-talk for: this person acknowledged that she had sinned and separated herself from God, and trusted in Jesus to both forgive all of her sins and to take charge of her life – Jesus became the source of her life.)

Already, there are signs of a completely different attitude and approach to life in this individual – which brought me to think: how could someone who has not experienced the same transformation understand what it is like to become part of the family of God??? Jesus already had this metaphor covered (for real, read this) but it struck me with a new depth a few minutes ago.

 Try to keep up:

• You are a branch on a tree that is either dead or straight up nasty.
•  “Jesus put me on your tree!,” you say, “I’m straight up nasty and don’t have true life!”
•  Jesus grafts you onto his tree and says, “I hope you like things that taste really good, because we only produce awesome fruit here. Just stay with me child.”  
•  All of a sudden your life/“fruit” IS DIFFERENT. And more delicious each day that you are on Jesus’ vine.
•  PLOT TWIST: this tree doesn’t die. Once your old tree is straight up rotted out, you still gon’ be with Jesus. 4EVR.

Evidently this doesn’t have anything to do with Rio, but significant things for me usually take place internally – hence my lack of event upkeep over here. I’ve also promised myself to blog right away once I get hit with a thought, because if I wait too long I will complicate any insight and confuse it until it disappears into nothing.

So hopefully this marks a new beginning for this blog – a new strain of apple ;)

Love you guys – whoever you are. Nothing could possibly make me happier than for you to join me on the tasty tree.

Mugs of wine

The state of my room often feels like a good indicator of the state of my mind/heart. Recently the room has been pretty messy – the kind of messy that I don’t really know how to clean up or where to put things or in what order to wash the articles of clothing lying on the floor.

I feel right now like this will transfer into my writing here, but I guess sometimes I need to just push through. I can’t sweep the floor until I put all the junk away – control the disaster first, organize later. Throughout the week I’ve even had a few verbal quips run through my mind that have made me excited for my next post, but I’ll be lucky to remember any of them at this point… or remember how I had conceived them in a written context. With this blog on my mind I’ve been surprised at how my brain works in overdrive (even when I don’t want it to) to represent the stimuli that I am taking in daily as metaphors and turns of phrase and pictures and allusions and gifs.

Yup. I made my very first gif, and now I don’t remember at all how I had intended to use it.

Whatever this was supposed to be, it's fabulous.

Wow it been 20 days since the last post –-- no wonder I have no idea where to begin. So here is a spewing of stuff:

• Spending a lot of time doing events with an organization that brings together exchange students to Rio from all over the world in order to participate in cultural and other events in the city. This group has been a huge blessing! I’ve met some awesome girls from all over who are kind, welcoming, funny, and the right amount of crazy. Holler at my two brave Brazilian Ana babies whose maturity made me believe that they were at least a bit older than myself. The past weekend I went on a trip with this group to the beach city of Búzios, which is located a few hours outside of Rio and turned out to be the experience of a lifetime. I have never seen beaches and water so clear and gorgeous and pristine. My friends and I inadvertently picked the best room in the hostel. Private beach. Free breakfast. Free boat tour to said awesome beaches. Saw a stranded penguin. Toured the town and other beaches with 3 friends in a should-be-illegal buggy. Didn’t kill anyone in the buggy.

hello hostel yeeeee boi

Brazilians almost let me drive this thing - never driven a manual transmission in my life.
Recipe for death.

•  I love Wednesdays. One class at 11am, then the day free. This past week I walked to a restaurant with a friend after our classes, bought an açaí and listened to the fine musical stylings of a man playing guitar across the street. As he was packing up to leave I ran over to give him a few bucks and struck up a conversation – he gave me his business card and I now am obsessed with the idea of hiring him to play for my hypothetical birthday-party-on-the-beach.

Rainforest goodness. Recipe for life.

•          I’ve been late to my first classes every day.  One Tuesday that I was feeling especially guilty, the professor happened to post on the door that class would commence 30 minutes late that day. Situations like these make it difficult for me to distinguish real time from Brazilian time. I think I am slowly understanding more of what my professors are saying – I’m only taking classes in Portuguese, so it is a challenge to grasp actual academic content, not to mention process and engage with the class. If I learn a new word, I call the day a success.

•         Went to a beach town on Saturday and had pretend surf lessons. The “instructors” pushed us into the oncoming waves and said “get up!” Fall, rinse, repeat.

•         This Sunday was amazing – I went back to a church that I had visited before (as a result of a miraculous encounter with someone who knew the WORD [after we met in a Bible/Christianity class that I almost didn’t go to because I knew I would need to drop it] and brought me to visit his church), and had one of those moments where the sermon spoke directly to me. “The more you seek personal satisfaction, the less satisfaction you will find in Jesus." The service was followed by the afternoon spent with some awesome ladies from the church getting to know their neighborhood, eating good food, and eventually joining in their ministry at a nearby hospital praying for children and their families. Awe. Some.

This blog is a bagunça.

The End.

[By the way, the title is a reference to a goodbye dinner I had with one of my friends who was only here for the summer + a bit. Looking at the menu with the intention of ordering a glass of wine, my friend read English translation: “mug of wine.” So girl orders a “caneca de vinho,” assuming the phrase had been adopted to signify a classier liquid-carrying object. (Wine seems very simple here – Red or white? Dry or smooth? End scene.) Turns out if you ask for a mug of wine, you get wine in a coffee mug. And there was much laughter.]