While my husband and I were paying for our meal at a favorite restaurant where we live in northern Japan, the owners sneakily handed us a bag brimming with eight beautiful persimmons. Although they suggested we let them ripen a couple of days before eating them, I taste-tested one that evening and realized with a sticky grin they were already ripe. I was glad I snuck some early as our four boys devoured them later that night.
A few days later, I was given an even bigger bag from another friend. (I don’t know how common this is in other parts of Japan, but neighbors often generously share their overflow of in-season produce with our family.) I told our boys that we would wait a day or two so we could enjoy them with friends who were coming over for dinner.
The wait was tough, but we persevered (whew). Then, as soon as we finished clearing the table after dinner, I started peeling and slicing several. Then I got curious and concerned: these looked like the sweet kind, but what if they were the icky, astringent kind?
Within seconds of tasting a tiny sliver, I jumped up and ran to the trashcan to spit it out. It sucked all the moisture out of my mouth, along with all memories of happiness and pleasure. They tasted awful. There are many varieties of persimmon—round, oblong, hard, squishy, seeded, seedless, various shades of orange—and I assumed wrongly that these were the slice-and-eat variety.
Yet these same persimmons—this same exact variety—peeled, hung outside, and slowly dried over several weeks to months lose their gag-producing astringency and become amazingly sweet. Like two spoons full of sugar sweet. Like adding-one-whole-one-to-my-plain-yogurt-is-too-sweet-for-me sweet.
Some chemical transformation occurs that is a bit beyond my current brain power to grasp. Yet tasting the difference got me thinking: just as miso is transformed by koji, time, and darkness, dried persimmons are transformed by time and simply hanging around.
This transformation occurs passively—by remaining outside in the sun, rain, wind, and cold. The persimmons’ job is simply to hang out and to slowly, slowly, slowly age. Many weeks later, they emerge sweet and preserved (in contrast to miso, which emerges from a dark, hidden place salty and preserved).
Yet drying persimmon isn’t simply passive. They rot if they remain on trees or sit on a kitchen counter. The process is time intensive and a labor of love involving hands that pick, peel, string, wait, and harvest.
Growing up, my family dried apples and applesauce (the tastiest “fruit leather”) by our wood stove. Very occasionally, we would speed up the process in the oven at a low temperature for many hours. I tried this with a couple of persimmons as an experiment, perhaps feeling a little cocky (“people will be so impressed with my unique method and will want to learn from me”). Many hours later they emerged from the oven looking very pretty, but I discovered with yet another sprint to the trashcan that the speed-dried persimmon still tasted disgusting. They were dried to the right consistency but were still inedible.
I am thinking once again about the process of remaining and of passive perseverance. I am thinking again about people who haven’t yet “sweetened with age” and instead are pretty darn astringent. I am thinking again about a speaker on a recent retreat who said as an aside, “There’s a reason they’re ‘elders’ and not ‘young-ers.’” Age, time, experience, and maturity are needed and only happen when people have weathered the elements—remaining and emerging changed . . . transformed.
I think about other forms of waiting and transformation. The obvious “bullfrogs and butterflies” examples come to mind (as does the song from my childhood). So does pregnancy. Women go about their normal lives—planting gardens, cooking meals, teaching classes, hanging laundry, giving presentations, eating black pepper potato chips while watching Parks and Rec reruns—and somehow a tiny human grows inside of them. It’s something miraculous and is remarkably passive.
During a recent mission retreat, we celebrated two couples who are retiring. Both are quite impressive and accomplished: they’ve written books, have fancy titles and degrees, and have been involved in church planting, training pastors, music ministry, parenting ministry, mentoring, and more. Yet the main thing that comes to mind when I think about them is: they care.
They are weight-bearing pillars who are “long obedience in the same direction” people. They have suffered and struggled—and minister with tender humility and empathy. We are better as individuals, as a family, and as a mission because our lives intersected with theirs. They worked hard (still do!), yet I imagine that a lot of what formed them over these decades of ministry was hanging on perseverance which built in them character, integrity, steadfastness, and faith. It was something holy getting to honor and celebrate them.
Scripture is full of commands and invitations like “look at the flowers in the field who do not labor” (Matt. 6:28) and “remain in my love and remain in me” (John 15:10). There is a tension between passivity and activity, between “remain in me and I will give you rest” and “fight the good fight,” “strain toward the goal,” and “feed the hungry, visit the prisoner, clothe the naked.” There are so many passive and active verses swirling together in Scripture that my head spins a bit.
Yet this morning as I eat my plain, full-fat Greek yogurt with half of a dried persimmon, I am “considering the persimmon” and its transformation from astringent and inedible to delicious and nourishing. And I whisper, “I hope I age as well as you, dear persimmon.”
