Watermelons

Sydney is the smallest big city I've ever experienced, you often see people you know in the most unlikely of places. Why, just today I saw Sam. He was in the train station, walking the opposite direction. I hadn't seen him in three months, not since I abruptly quit my job at the chicken shop and started working at Fratelli.

We stopped and exchanged pleasantries, as the kind people of Sydney are in the habit of doing. He walked with me into Woolworths and we chatted while I selected the best avocado from the lot. I saw the watermelons and commented that they were delicious. So he bought me one. A watermelon. And I carried it home with me on the bus like a baby.

I often fall asleep on the bus. It's an awful, intermittent  sleep, interrupted by frantic panic whenever the bus comes to a lurching halt, jerking me awake in fear to check my surroundings to ensure that I have not, indeed, missed my stop. I can't seem to help sleeping, especially when the temperature is so perfectly temperate and the rumble of the engine simmers along... Never mind that my cranium is being banged against the glass window at a speed fast enough to make my eyeballs rattle... Sleeping has always been one of my skills, even if it be lesser known.

Being on a bus really doesn't bother me, though from what I've seen, it should bother any normal person. The bus driver is usually so unobservant that someone could be stabbing a small goat in the backseat and he wouldn't even flinch. Forget trains, if a scientist wanted to look at society through it's respective petri dish, he would look at the concentration of humanity that resides on a bus. If society were a pond, buses are where the little slimy floaties on top of the water hang out. People kiss passionately and grossly, cry, talk extremely loudly on and to all types of technological devices, hold staring contests with their reflection in the window, and try to pretend they're far away from people by listening to music. One time I was overcome by hysterical fits of laughter in a crowded bus, and while people started to look at me weird, I don't think anyone could hear me over their own music.

But back to watermelons... despite their enormity of inconvenience on public transport, is there anything more refreshing to eat? I don't mean the water content of the melon, I'm talking the drooling, slavering, "I-think-the-melon-ate-my-face," "Am-I-five-years-old?" kind of a feeling. I chopped the first quarter into nice, bite sized pieces, like a responsible adult. Then I was still impatiently hungry, so I upgraded to just the melon and a spoon, you know, to speed things up a bit. That didn't hold my attention for very long. and I soon lost my propriety entirely and ate the entire quarter of the melon using only my hands and face. I ended up covered in watermelon juice, sticky but so... happy.

There is a point to this story... albeit on a little trail for jackrabbits.

I'm not saying one should be an absolute slovenly slob, however, I started to think just how much stuff that we do for other people to like us, or at least maintain a respectable version of us in their heads. It's actually crazy. Beloved, we just need to let loose sometimes. It's an orphan mentality driven by fear that dictates what you do because of people's possible negative reactions (or even positive). I take myself way too seriously. The church does. It's because we think our value lies in the gifts we carry or the things we've accomplished or our intellect that we just can't be ourselves sometimes, because that would be too... well, it wouldn't be important enough. We have to be grandiose and spiritual and proper.

Tell you what... Go eat a watermelon with your face. Go sing a song that sounds less-than worship leader quality. Laugh hysterically on a bus because something was funny. Leave your phone at home and go run around in the woods for a day. We have to be comfortable being us, and being alone being us, and living life outside of rigid rules and expectations. We are children, after all, children of the Kingdom. Let go any expectations that you think God has of you (which are law-based) or that you have of yourself and just... live with Him. Like His kid.

This blog post might leave some people scratching their heads and saying, "Well, that didn't make any sense." I don't really care. I wrote it as a reminder for me...and to remind everyone how delicious watermelons are.

All my love,

B