.....a lemon

Yogis,

The FLOW (Friday Leaning Out the Window) club had its first meeting on Friday night!  There are currently 20 members, but we have room for….oh I don’t know…..thousands more.  See my previous post if you would like to join!  For me this week the night sky was clear and the snow packed ground gave the air a crispness with a somewhat bracing edge to it.  Invigorating!  And around 11:00 the moon rose to shine her light on me and the snow as I drifted off to sleep. 

So back to the lemon……..

I was at our local natural market planning to pick up my 3 weekly lemons.  Usually they are firm and bright yellow but this time they all looked slightly sad.  Their skin not so smooth with some small brown spots.  A group of limp lemons.  I checked the whole basket but they all looked the same.  So I somewhat begrudgingly picked three and put them in my basket.

As the week progressed and I used these less than perfect lemons in my morning water, squeezed on my salads and in my lentil soup I noticed something.  They were actually the best lemons I have had in quite some time!  Juicier with a fuller more complex flavor.  I had incorrectly judged them by their cover.  They hadn’t been what I was ‘looking for’. 

I, of all people, should know better.  For several years now I have received a weekly fresh picked farm share as a member of a CSA (community supported agriculture).  The biodynamic food has not been sprayed, colored or waxed.  Often the produce in the box does not ‘look’ like the works of art you see in Whole Foods, but once you bite in…..wow!  The gnarly carrots burst with flavor, the smaller mushier looking strawberries take you back to your childhood, and the lettuce asks for almost no dressing up.    In fact as the host of the CSA site I tell the new members not to judge the apples and turnips by their appearance, but by their depth of character. 

So why had I judged the lemons?  

As humans we are very visual and we are given an image of what everything, including our own bodies, should look like.  And when the outer skin does not live up to the unrealistic metric, we often pass it by without a glance.   But in the process we might be missing the juiciness. 

It has gotten me thinking.  Do I take the time to see things as they are, or do I just ‘look’ at them.   Very little of the story is revealed by the outer layer.  The flavor sits below the surface.  People, no different than the lemon. 

Lately there is a new movement to direct all of the ‘unwanted vegetables’ with blemishes, bruises and odd shapes away from the trash cans and into grocery stores in low income neighborhoods.  Those shoppers may get the last laugh J

Finally this video came across my path this week.  It tells the lemon story a different way.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0qD2K2RWkc 

Looking deeper,

SARAH