The Raspberry Patch

Early this week, on a bright day before the rainstorms began rolling in, I walked out to the backyard raspberry patch – a place of wild, bountiful berries.

Dressed in old shoes, a cap, long jeans, and a matching blue long-sleeved shirt, I began picking around the perimeter of the bushes. Don’t try wandering near or into a brier patch of raspberries with shorts and a T-shirt.

There are plenty this year, more than at any previous summer. Equipped with a light plastic bowl holding about 5 pints, it didn’t take me long to gather up a profusion of those sweet-tart organic fruit. Picking raspberries comes with some risk: you need to be ready for a few scratches, bug bites, and sticky sweat as the sun beats down on your person.

Since I wanted to harvest more than a few pints that day, I knew that I would have to venture into the middle of that prickly thicket, thorns or not. That’s when it occurred to me that life – in some respects –can be compared to a raspberry patch: If you live only at the margins of life, you don’t get to savor the full abundance of its fruit. But if you wade into the middle of life’s brier patch, you may find it much more rewarding.

Sounds contradictory, doesn’t it? But the thought is authentic. Part of the troubles in our community, state and nation, is that there are too many healthy and able people who expect others to pick their raspberries for them.

Take care of yourselves and enjoy the remainder of summer – it will be gone before you can blink. (Ah – luscious raspberries: I came out with about 8 to 9 pints.)