Strawberries
Pure adrenaline drives me forward. I pump my arms and legs through a dark jungle in what’s becoming an increasingly futile attempt to evade the tiger on my heels. There’s no time to think, to contemplate the next best move, to do anything but thoughtlessly run and run and run. I can’t trick the tiger, I can’t slow down. I must focus on my feet and where each footfall lands—I can’t stumble without exposing myself to what feels like a certain and bloody death. Suddenly, I am at a ledge. Peering over, I see empty mist. Clouds prevent me from seeing the ground or judging the distance of my fall should I jump. The stark reality of my death startles me: there is no right choice, no path forward, not enough information for certainty. I don’t know what to do and I have no time to wait. I jump.
Dizzying realization envelopes me: “I am in an abyss, there is no soft bottom to this fall, I will not recover from this.” In my panic, I reach out and, amidst the misty raindrops, impossibly, I find a vine. Grappling with all the strength I have left, I arrest my fall and hang, suspended—my lungs heave, my muscles burn. Above me, a vicious tiger snarls. Below me, gravitational emptiness grabs at my ankles.
In this liminal space, I open my eyes to the vine before my face. I see a big, red, vibrant strawberry three inches in front of me. With my strength dwindling and my adrenaline fading, I pluck the strawberry and eat it. “Wow, this is the tastiest strawberry I have ever eaten,” I think to myself.
So often in life, as in religion, we do not have the luxury of a clear-cut path forward. We’ve crossed the mortal threshold out of Eden into liminality, into complexity—the empty space between the leap of faith and the jarring landing we’ve inadvertently signed ourselves up for. We grip the vine, unsure whether it’s better to try to climb hand-over-hand, line upon line, precept upon precept back up to the tiger we know in the hopes of fighting our way to ideological safety; or to simply drop and let it all go, in an attempt to find a landing that won’t leave us broken.
I do not contend that we have to fight the tiger. I don’t advocate that we must release the vine in blind trust. I do not suggest how we fight our circumstances, nor how we break our falls. I do suggest that we simply can’t escape them. Ignoring such scenes, or lying to ourselves that they don’t exist, carries us nowhere. At some point or another, we are forced to choose between right or good, preconceived belief or new information, acceptance or resentment. These are personal decisions; decisions we all must make for ourselves when our faith and resolve are put under duress. We all find ourselves in situations where action is mandatory, where avoiding choice is, in fact, choosing.
Many of us feel forced off the ledge by circumstances beyond our control—where, who, and how we were born. We are often forced into uncomfortable, dangerous, or unfair situations by the actions, votes, or decisions of others. Through no fault of our own, and independent of whatever we may do to escape the inescapable, we find ourselves hemmed in and under the power of the uncontrollable. I, as a young American, find myself inheriting a divisive, hate-infested political and social climate. My heart aches for the family, friends, and fellow Americans who have and will suffer the loss of their rights, autonomy, and many of their freedoms due to the actions of others. As a young missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I’m often exposed to perspectives that begin to drift from Love is the law to love for the law. It’s increasingly hard during this particularly confusing season of my life to find the purpose of it all—a love of God and a love of my fellow men, and sometimes it feels like the two great commandments are swallowed up in all the programs, prescriptions, and pathways.
The Book of Mormon presents an interesting and unique proposition for the purpose of our lives here on this imperfect earth. “Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy” (2 Ne. 2:25, emphasis added). I might point out the comma in the middle of the second phrase, putting a pause between our purpose and the results thereof. We are not here that we might seek out joy. We are here, that we might have joy. This scripture doesn’t describe a sequence of events; it describes causality. The fall led to our presence here on earth, and our presence here on earth is the cause of our joy. Upon conditions of merely existing, we have ample opportunity to fulfill a divinely appointed mandate—to have Joy, a word I feel could be substituted abundantly for other elemental base words describing the Godliness within each of us: Love, Peace, and Openheartedness. However, as anyone who has yet existed could testify, joy does not come easily. As Enoch proclaims in the Pearl of Great Price, “Because that Adam fell, we are; and by his fall came death; and we are made partakers of misery and woe.” (Moses 6:48, emphasis added) Joy is not found in a lack of opposition. Misery is only possible in contrast to happiness. There is no exuberance without woe. There is no relief without grief, nor is there sense without insensibility. Joy, rather than being a proponent or synonym of happiness, is the ever-present mixture of it all. Joy is unrelated to circumstance, and is just as accessible in the dregs of the bitter cup as it is in the highest moments of our lives.
Why must we continuously paint ourselves as the victims of some great war of fate, as our modern culture occasionally suggests? Why must we gird ourselves in somber resignation, color our radiant faces in the grey grimaces of piety and cynicism? Can we not feel the great flow of wind through our hair as we fall? Can we not feel the pits in our stomachs lightening in the weightlessness of the drop? Can we not listen to the symphony of blood rushing to our heads, embrace the adrenaline in our veins as we finally confront what we’ve been running from this whole time? I argue not only that we can, but we must. The joy, the childlike wonder and absurdity of the benighted life is something we cannot cede to circumstance. Love outsuffers suffering. Hope outlasts hopelessness. If we live our lives in joy, the happiness and misery remain unmixed but unify into one whole, and our eye will be single to the glory of God. In the crux and in the crucible, we must hold onto that Joy to which we are predisposed by nature of our divine humanity.
Inviting others to act in faith is central to my purpose as a missionary. In this light, I’d like to personally extend an invitation to each and every one of you. I invite you to tear your eyes from the page, tear your heart from the chains that weigh it down, and hearken unto the call of Joy. I invite you to contextualize your suffering, your own impossible choices, with the sweetness found on your individual vine. I invite you to learn and live my parable. Perhaps I fall. Perhaps I climb up the vine to find a seemingly unwinnable fight. Perhaps I survive, or perhaps I don’t, but I found the Life, the Light, and the Truth of the situation. I found my place in my own stark reality. I invite you to find the strawberry on your unique vine, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem. I invite you to open your mouth in the next conversation you have, and to let the fructose on your lips spill words of colorful Love into this antiseptic world. I invite you to tune into your favorite song, to break out the old journal you’ve been meaning to write in, to call them, and to begin to knit yourself a plan for how you will face the unfaceable. I invite you to grab your partner and take to slow dancing in the burning room. You may choose to reconstruct or to deconstruct your faith; in a Church, in a person, or in yourself, but in any case, ensure that you move forward accompanied by Joy. Go be that strawberry on the vine for a fellow fragment of God. Step across the division, or perhaps off the precipice, and find unity and Love between state, political, or theological lines. When we step forward with a joyous faith, we’ll find that we’ve lived, regardless of the outcomes.
Jack Richards enjoys trail running, grocery store sushi, long novels, and mixed martial arts. He’s on hiatus from college while he serves a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Art by Édouard Manet (1832-1883).