When Brazil Nuts turn into Grapes

Recently again I heard about a kid in a shop who asked his mother where the milk came from. When she told him that it came from a cow, he laughed at her, as if laughing at a joke. It wasn’t until she took him to a dairy farm that the boy was shell-shocked and soon took his friends to see this milk machine too.

A similar thing happened to me over Christmas when I was in Brazil last year. My friend’s father has a cattle ranch just outside Rio Branco in Acre and what caught my attention wasn’t the fact that meat came from cows, but rather the interesting origin of the Brazil nut.

I’d always found this rather large and tasty nut in between a bag of mixed nuts and never really gave it much thought, up until that day.

While learning about the origin of this nut, it soon made me think of some people who were like Brazil Nuts. These people are neither Brazilian nor are they crazy, but rather decide to take on the form of the Brazil nut’s origin.

You see, first of all, this nut comes from a tall tree. A very very very tall tree. One doesn’t just pluck the nut from the tree’s branches but rather needs to wait until it falls to the ground. My friend’s father actually told me that one of his workers died two weeks prior to that day; when a Brazil 

nutcase fell from the tree and landed on his head. (The man was killed by a nutcase… quite ambiguous actually.)

     So secondly, not only does the Brazil nut come from an untouchable tree, but its nutcase is so hard its practically lethal.

     Thirdly, when this nutcase is finally cracked open, the Brazil nut is, wait for it… covered in ANOTHER hard shell. (Which even though Elisa’s dad tried to open it, can NOT be cracked open by using your teeth. It doesn’t matter if you have big horse teeth, picket-fence teeth, or those tiny little teeth that look like small mieliepitte*, it won’t budge. You are going to need a hammer, a vice or some other kind of tool found in the garage.)

     When the last cover was removed, I finally ate the nut and felt the superb flavour melting into my palate and even though it tasted good with the whiffs of fresh butter, the hassle of standing under a tree, waiting for the bomb to fall, 

cracking it open with a sledge hammer and then cracking open the final layer with another garage tool… well, it’s just too much work.

    
So it got me thinking about some people that resemble these Brazil nuts. They make themselves untouchable and become indifferent to everything around them, hiding their true selves away from the world and unconsciously conforming to the other nutcases around them. When by some odd chance they are forced out of their tower, somehow lose control or get pushed out to open up, they have the potential of seriously damaging those around them.
     When trying to engage these people, they protect themselves by hiding behind their first layer or cover. (To most of them this is a natural, subconscious defence mechanism to keep them from opening up.) Be it words or actions, they’re usually filled either with strong opinions, stubbornness and pride or silence, shame and indignity.

     Finally, after much time and great effort, if the first shell is cracked, you are still left with a person wearing a mask or some fake image that was plastered onto them because of one or various accounts of rejection in their past.
     This fear of rejection had somehow grown into such a large cancer in their lives that it started covering all of them, concealing their true selves in covers and layers like the Brazil Nut.

I believe we all have the potential to be edible and tasty to those around us, (and I’m not talking to the cannibalistic community right now), but I do believe it’s only when we decide to abandon our tower of independence and be broken and broken again by the gentle hands of our Maker that this final layer can come off and we can be made into something new.

     He turns us from a nut into a grape, so that we may become softer, more vulnerable, easier to approach and within reach to be trimmed and pruned again at His choosing to do so.

That was the random moment worth writing about; when I swallowed that Brazil nut at half past six that afternoon on the cattle ranch and remembered that I am a nut no more, and that every seemingly unwanted season of trimming and pruning is actually just another way to remind me that I am a grape in the brilliant process of becoming wine.

With love and greetings from the vine, Ed.

(* corn cornels)