We are like the orange…

Sitting outside on an unusually crisp and cool morning with my orange in hand, I begin peeling back the skin and tossing it into my bowl so I can get to the “good part.” A hundred different thoughts about the past and the upcoming week flood my mind. Then I remember that I’m trying to learn to be “more aware,” living in the now. I just want to be in that moment, enjoying my orange. So I close my eyes as the cool wind sweeps across my face. With each bite, the juice squirts out of its casing, and I notice how the orange is the perfect fruity mixture of sweet and sour. Not as sour as a lemon, not as sweet as a strawberry, just “right.”

I didn’t like eating oranges for the longest time because they’re a hassle. Peeling takes patience (which I’m not always the best at), your hands end up all sticky, and now you have “trash.” But I’m getting more chill as I get older. So I patiently sat there peeling my orange with my now sticky hands thinking about how the peel actually protects the best part of the orange. And it made me think how we, as humans, are built like an orange. Our human bodies are sometimes a hassle, but it’s protecting and housing the most important part of who we are, our spirits. I’ve heard it said before, we are not fleshly beings with a spirit, we are spiritual beings with flesh. As I peeled and ate my orange, that reality has never rung more true.

Let us live aware of the spiritual journey we are on, and that the material things around us, including our own flesh, are a means for our spirits to experience life, not the other way around.

Live in the now; let your spirit fly free…