I will choose the fruits; like those farmers who separate the good and bad ones, being green, overripe and ripe from one basket to the other. In the basket of good fruits I would place the friendships that I have consolidated, others that have remained firm, some that have always been there, even though they are distant. I would choose for this basket all the goodness that has multiplied and awakened in my heart, believing that I serve God by serving my neighbor; In this basket there would be no lack of countless opportunities that I have had to speak of the love of Christ, expositions that did not lack the Gospel and the Truth, and I know that I will present all of them with joy on that Day as someone free and liberated by all truth.
I include the growth of pains, so that they – the pains – are not in vain.
This basket would not be without the simple things that did me so much good; the books that made me think and reflect on everything and everything, they were pleasurable hours that only reading can provide; this basket could not be without poetry, the beautiful poems of Camões, Drummond and of course, Fernando Pessoa. I would not leave aside the sleep lost before waking, and thanks to it I was able to dedicate myself to meditations, prayers and readings.
I would put the beautiful fruits in a coffee with two cups of water, one and a half cups of sugar and two tablespoons of coffee (my wife's surefire recipe, a sweet and ripe fruit); but this coffee had a different flavor on some days, because it was accompanied by country music like “tristeza do Jeca”, “Comitiva esperança”, “luar do sertão”, “oh chuva”, “tocando em frente” and some others of my own. playlist which I called “urban hinterland”. Seven in the morning with a good coffee, these songs and a good book gave me a lot of morning satisfaction.
The baskets of ripe fruit are plentiful, there is a bike, stand up paddle, tennis, good conversations and laughter. Encounters, life, an outstretched hand, kisses, affection, love, there are people I love and people I respect.
In the basket of green fruits I would put friendships that have just begun, which time will tell how true they will be as they mature, my projects shelved waiting for the right opportunities and moments to mature. In this basket is all of two thousand and sixteen, a whole year to mature.
There is a basket of rotten fruit, this fruit I would very much like not to exist, but it will always exist. What is left for me to do is to put them in separate baskets so that the ripe ones do not rot and contaminate the green ones.
In this basket there are things that usually bother my soul. The self-interest of people who use others as fashion models in a boutique; they serve as ornaments, but do not accept any form of retaliation, only as bait for other people's consumers. In this basket of rotten fruit I add the tired and boring liturgies, where the greatest relief is when we get home, where we sometimes regret having left in the face of them; they are supposed meetings in the name of Jesus, but they are nothing more than liturgies and worship services for men, where Christ is never glorified, and what matters is the show of departments and people. Sometimes I have the feeling wherever I go that God is not present in many services, I could not stand such banality.
In this infamous, unworthy and fetid basket of rotten fruit I happily throw rotten fruit, like those that do not value the word of God, where endless messages calling for “tomorrow’s services” take up more time than the exposition of the Word of God itself, so they forget about “today’s services”, music, theater, dances… they don’t even count, they seem like empty manifestations that at most generate human emotion, disguised as “glories”, not to mention the low artistic content. How I wish these fruits were ripe and tasty, like people who go to services only to worship those who are worthy of worship, who do not need personal demonstrations and promotions or any manifestation of the human arm, only to worship with the cross at the center of our services – let us call for Christocentricity in our liturgies, less men and more God.
There would be no shortage of religious separatism and fundamentalism, the abominable rotten fruit of prejudice; of power and mandate over others in the name of “god” saying what is and is not allowed, as if spirituality were a checklist of moral and behavioral situations. In this basket I put the fruit of those who are willing to trample over everything and everyone for their own cause and call this cause “God’s cause”. Rotten fruit that transforms “churches”, institutions, ministries, power and religious gatherings of any kind into something more than people, are rotten fruit that has forgotten that God’s cause is people.
Along with this rottenness, all the envy, slander, murmuring, resentment, fear that may have grown in me, I do not want them next to the ripe fruits.
By Grace Alone,
Fabiano Moreno