Monday, June 1, 2009

Movin' to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches...

So I don't know why these words from a Presidents of the United States of America song popped up in my head today...but they did.

I remember seeing the music video to this song when I was a sophomore in college when I was in a music dorm. I had joined a rock band that year and was learning how to improvise music on my violin. Here are some of the lyrics to this song, which is mysteriously called: Peaches.

Movin' to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches

I'm movin' to the country, I'm gonna eat me a lot of peaches

I'm movin' to the country, I'm gonna eat a lot of peaches

Movin' to the country, I'm gonna eat a lot of peaches

Peaches come from a can, they were put there by a man

In a factory downtown

And if I had my little way, I'd eat peaches everyday

Sun soakin' bulges in the shade

Now I don't pretend to understand these lyrics. I saw some lyrics to some other songs by the Presidents online and they have a similar quality of nonsensicality about them. Brilliant!

But it does remain that I'm leaving this week to go to South Africa to help local businesses. As a team, we are actually staying on a farm...so technically I am moving to the country for a little while. Now I don't know if I'm going to go eat a lot of peaches but I will go enjoy whatever fresh produce there is to be had. Apparently, South Africans are big on huge meat buffets.

Now I know the trip isn't going to be all fun and peaches. In fact, my recollection of the music video has the one element that makes everything better. This element can even slice bread:

Ninjas.

For some reason (brilliance no doubt), ninjas do backflips into the video from out of nowhere. I don't recall exactly how many there were or what they are doing to the guy moving to the country, but it is obvious to my perfect memory from back in '96 (or maybe '97) that they are threatening the peaches.

So you can see now that this music video may be a good allegory for what is going to happen in South Africa. I'm moving to the country to help people in local businesses there bear professional, personal, and spiritual fruit. And while I am going to help fruit to be borne, I will inevitably partake of some of it too and be changed when I come back to the US.

Now you may remember the story of the Tree of Life, where Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden for partaking of the fruit that would give them knowledge of good and evil. Continued access to this tree would have given them immortal life, but they were cast out to live by the "sweat of their brow" (Genesis 3:19-24)

It occurs to me that everytime we do things that build up our character and experience, we learn more about the separation between good and evil. We have the continued choice to choose between both but hopefully we would choose good. It seems as if our relationship with God allows us to toil to bear fruit on a spiritual Tree of Life where we learn over time to discern what to do. Sometimes our actions allow others to partake of the fruit we bear. Sometimes we are gifted with fruit from others.

And there will be ninjas. We learn to protect our peaches from ninjas with various skills. I fully expect to have to fight ninjas off while I'm out in the country. At some point in my life, I realized that I could not just study and read in order to gain knowledge. It took me a while to figure out that ninjas would just laugh at me if I threw books at them. So learned that I had to toil away in order to allow fruit to be borne and truth to be experienced.

Peaches, the song, even has a happy ending for us:


Millions of peaches, peaches for me

Millions of peaches, peaches for free

Millions of peaches, peaches for me

Millions of peaches, peaches for free...Look out!


Praise God.
Praise God for ninjas.
Praise God that I have a black belt in kendo to fight the ninjas off with.

No comments:

Post a Comment