Let's Talk Luke 13

As it was Sunday, I went to church. I actually am enjoying church a lot these days, though I suspect that it is mostly because I have a little group of friends I go with, and each and every person in the group is wonderful, and I love spending time with them, church or not. Because it's break right now, I had to go earlier in the day and none of those particular friends were around, having gone home. At Christmas mass back home, I was struck by how much I missed those friends and wished I was enjoying Christmas with them instead of my family. I like singing with them, and how one of them has such long legs that he has to sort of scrunch into the seat, I even like how one of them checks his watch at least once every mass. So, today, I was sans that, and I missed them.
Also, I ended up not donating my money, because I couldn't find it. I was really annoyed, because I made a point of making sure I brought some. After mass, when I was searching my pockets for keys, I found it. Of course.
Annoyed priests are funny. Someone was sitting in the back of the church and repeating the prayers really loudly and on a five second delay. It was clearly an adult male's voice, and possibly someone with special needs. When it first started, people were turning around and trying to see who it was. I resisted until after Eucharist, and then I started looking too (because they were still doing it, and why hadn't anyone politely asked him to shush?) The priest was clearly annoyed, his eyes turned into slits after the third or fourth outburst and stayed that way.
The reading was Luke 13, the Parable of the Fig Tree. The priest mentioned something today that was really interesting: figs do best when they are neglected. The way the priest described them, it sounded like they were actually a crop that required a lot of work in the beginning but could be profitable and low maintenance later, like coffee or cocoa. (Which made me wonder briefly if figs get intercropped a lot.) But after a certain point, they flourish with nothing. The priest gave a different interpretation of the parable than this, but this struck me as an important detail. The fig tree is the ideal Christian: God plants us, and we always are at our best when things are tough, because that's when we flourish.
This seems better connected with the previous Lenten reading, where a different priest lectured about how God loves us best when things are awful and we choose to keep going.
I know that some of my friends consider this crazy, to love stories like this, but I really do. I derive strength from it. Last week, I was upset about some stuff because I knew what I had to do, and I knew things could get bad. (They turned out, given the situation, relatively well and much better than I imagined.) I like knowing that God smiles at me when crap happens and I still keep the faith.
Lent this year is turning out really well. I feel like, for the first time, I've been really doing it, not just in ceremony, with getting the ashes or even giving things up, but with putting trust in God and listening to my heart.