Passion Fruit

Not to be out done by my friend Brad, I too have flowers in my garden.  Yes, it is nearing winter in Australia and I have a passion fruit plant that is a bit out of season but the blooms are beautiful.  The blooms are also very short lived.  There is a story about the name of the  passion fruit. 

The story goes, “When Spanish explored South America they discovered that passion fruit was used in native folk medicine as a sedative. When the Spanish brought the passion fruit to Europe the leaves were used as a sleep-inducing medicine. The name 'Passion' was given by Catholic missionaries in South America. The corona threads of the passion flower were seen as a symbol of the crown of thorns, the five stamens for wounds, the five petals and five sepals as the ten apostles (excluding Judas and Peter) and the three stigmas for the nails on the cross.” 

Called to be Light

I had the distinct honour of attending Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali’s lecture on Islam and Christian relations. He is a great speaker and confirmed to me, anyway, that we should get to know our neighbours. He was helpful because he spoke of history of Islam and related stories of historic Christian/Islam encounters both good and bad. I was disappointed that most people that attended the public lecture were my age and older. Don’t young people care to be informed? (this is a tangent by the way)

The most important part of the Bishop’s visit was that he came to college and we had a small group session with him earlier in the day. His focus there was not so much the topic of his later lecture but he brought up the notion of “secularism” (his word). He defined secularism as the trend in Western society to make, change and interrupt laws without considering Christianity or God. He pointed out that the basis for all moral/ethical law in western society is based on the Bible. He works with lawmakers in the UK and is disturbed that most do not understand the ethic that the current laws comes from. He spends a great deal of his time educating lawmakers.

He seriously believed that morally we may be entering a “dark ages”. (I forgot who he cited for this idea). And as church leaders he charged us to be “Light” of the world. He compared the light image to the salt image. He believes that Christian for awhile have been salt and now must be light.

I asked what that looks like in the parish context. He said we must hold to Christian ethic and educate people on what the Bible says. He pointed out that even in a small church someone will need medical treatment that may come from research that buys aborted fetuses or from other far out means. He indicated that he has already had to take a stand against research into human animal cross breeding.

The dilemma. If the research helps hundreds or thousands, is it okay to in a laboratory make a half human/half cat to get the medicine from? Secularism says why not. I ask, “What does us teach us about the value of human life? And its relationship to God?” My answer, “Under these conditions, life becomes another throw away product.”

Called to be “Light”. Could this be why the book of Amos came up about a thousand times (seems like) during my discernment to candidate for ministry? Time will tell, I suppose.