By DONALD DeMARCO
I began my breakfast one morning in recent memory with a peach, one that had reached its zenith of ripeness. Succulent, juicy, and pleasing to the palate, its consumption was an auspicious way to inaugurate the day. But, on further inspection, this tasty globe of fruit fell short of perfection. A stone, hidden in the center, warned me to be careful. I did not want to chip a tooth. Why must this stony inconvenience be part of an otherwise splendid morsel? Not completely satisfied with this gustatory delight, I began thinking about the arrival of stone-less peaches sometime in the future.
We now have seedless grapes, seedless apples, and seedless watermelons. One pundit has welcomed the future watermelon in a rind-less form. We even have wingless chickens (convenient for the consumer, but not for the chicken). The march of progress, I thought, should include the peach.
It was early in the morning and my philosophical sensibilities had not yet awakened. Suppose, I then thought, that rather than quibble about the stone and discard it, I planted it. In time, and with proper care, a peach tree would emerge displaying innumerable peaches, each possessing a seed-containing stone of its own.
Authorities on the subject inform me that a standard peach tree grows to 10 to 15 feet high and can yield six to eight bushels of peaches per year. Now if we planted the seeds of each of these mouth-watering delectables, we would have an orchard. And if we continued the process, we would, in just a few generations, have enough peaches to feed everyone in the world.
The peach stone is an inconvenience; it is, however, at least in its potentiality, a cornucopia, a treasure trove, a bonanza, a food bank, and a never ending gift to posterity. The biological origin of the more than 6 billion people that now populate the world had its origin in the single zygote of our primal parents, a cell no larger than a grain of sugar.
St. Thomas Aquinas writes, in his Summa Theologiae (III, 60, 1) about things of nature containing a “certain hidden sanctity” or a “sacred secret” (sacrum secretum). When we falsely interpret the peach stone as an inconvenience, we fail to appreciate its prodigious secret, one that God has inserted as a reward for the perspicacious. For Aquinas, nature is a window to the Eternal Law, revealing something of the mind of God.
To modify a citation from G.K. Chesterton, “If a peach stone can grow into a tree that provides nourishment for human beings, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey to the stars?”
I prefer to speak of the peach stone as the peach’s “core,” a word derived from the Latin cor, referring to the “heart.” This delicate morsel, we can say, has a “heart.” Blessed Cardinal Newman’s famous motto is “cor ad cor loquitur” (heart speaking to heart). Suddenly, I viewed the peach as a microcosm of myself, equipped with a fleshly exterior and a hidden heart. Its heart, like the hearts of humans, can touch others and enliven them, as Christ did for His apostles, and disciples, and all who encountered Him. The Heart can bring things to life, and so too, the heart of a peach. The peach stone is really a seed-protecting tabernacle.
My morning delicacy not only contained seeds of prodigious potentiality, but a moral lesson for all of us. There are times when what appears to be an inconvenience turns out to be a blessing. As G.K. Chesterton has reminded us, “An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.”
If we could somehow remove all inconveniences from our lives, we would have, in the same process, removed everything that makes life meaningful. Real progress is seeing the value of inconvenience and capitalizing on it. When the baby cries out in the middle of the night, a terrible nocturnal inconvenience for sound asleep parents, he is opening the door to hugs that are mutually humanizing.
The ordeal of training for an athletic event is a way of gaining strength and overall fitness. When the moth struggles to free itself from the cocoon, it is drying itself so that it is able to fly. According to a charming fable, birds were once wingless. When God gifted them with wings, they complained about this cumbersome inconvenience and demanded their removal. But God told them that if they only lifted their burden, they could fly. Burdens need not be stumbling blocks; they can get us airborne.
We wonder how convenient certain conveniences really are. Fast-food drive-thru eateries are built for convenience. A recent study, however, reports that 70 percent of drivers who went inside to get their coffee did so in shorter time than those who went through the drive-thru. Remaining in the idling car, in addition to contributing to pollution, is more inconvenient in terms of time, than doing a bit of leg work (which is good for one’s health). The convenience lies in not getting out of the car, a dubious convenience since it comes at the price of causing several attendant inconveniences.
The drive-thru is not a friend of environmentalists and not encouraged by health professionals. It also minimizes social interaction.
The TV remote, the jet plane, the microwave oven, the clip-on tie, I-pads, computers, and wash-and-wear clothes all represent victories over inconvenience. But these victories should not form a philosophy. The peach stone tells us otherwise. Let us not be misled. Inconvenience itself is not an ideal. Certain inconveniences are really work orders from God. It behooves us to recognize them as such and to put them into practice.
At any rate, eating a peach is food for thought.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is professor emeritus of St. Jerome’s University and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College. He is a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest two books, How to Navigate Through Life and Apostles of the Culture of Life, are posted on amazon.com.)
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