Picking Strawberries with Julie

I’d seen Julie around town for a couple of years before we became friends. She would show up here and there, but a connection was never made. Then we both attended a women’s retreat for spiritual seekers. At the retreat there were such radical offerings as shamanic journeys, drumming circles and a sweat lodge. As I was preparing to leave after three days, I saw Julie in the hallway and we decided we needed to become friends.

A month or so later, as I drove to her house for the first time a small voice whispered to me that Julie was to become one of my teachers. Julie did massage therapy, so I had made an appointment. And so indeed she has been one. After I enrolled in Atlantic University, we would meet for breakfast or lunch and she’d listen to me talk about Ken Wilber’s book on the stages of spiritual development. I could always I count on her keeping me from losing my spiritual self in the safe, walled-in world of intellectual exploration.

A couple of days ago we went out to a U-Pick strawberry farm, something I’d never done before. We talked and picked. Then, serenely, Julie sat back on her heals. She put a strawberry in her mouth and savored it. All conversation ceased for a moment. That it had not occurred to me to take a moment and taste this beautiful fruit surrounding us seemed to point out so much of how I live my life.

My morning had been busy preparing for a teen writing group I’ve been facilitating this summer. I was to meet Julie after the writing group ended and had rushed from the library to her house, then out to the field. Later, I knew I needed to get home in time to prepare for another meeting and had a long to-do list I hoped to attend if there was time.

I picked a huge, luscious strawberry and ate it. Never have I tasted a more perfect strawberry. Several more times, we stopped and sampled. Each one was even more perfect than the last.

After a couple of hours of spiritual discussion, we agreed finally that no matter how we create our lives, whether we are busy or bored, it doesn’t really matter. In the grand scheme of things, all of life is about experiences—good, bad, exciting or mundane. Each experience has great value, and then at some point, no value. And the more we tried to wrap our minds around this paradox, the more we giggled. Finally we gave up. There were buckets of strawberries needing to be prepared. The moment of their perfection, fleeting.