Where Do You Experience the Bittersweet in Your Life?
by Laci Lee Adams
HUUC Director of Lifespan Faith Development
When you have a dog with serious allergies and a child and spouse with asthma, spring is a bittersweet time of the year. I know that many of you know what I am talking about because no Sunday goes by without one or several references to allergies and their consequences! But, most of us would not take a pass on spring because we don’t like pollen. There’s a balance and a blessing to the bittersweet. The sweet helps us to engage with the bitter!
Many of the lessons of Passover highlight the bittersweet. One element on the Seder plate is charoset — a sweet mixture of apples, nuts, and wine. It is supposed to symbolize the bricks that the Israelites were forced to make during slavery in Egypt. A sweet treat to symbolize slavery? Well . . . one theme of Passover is to remember slavery while celebrating freedom. Knowing that where there is bitterness there is also the potential for/ the hope for/ the drive for the sweet.
There are so many other places where we experience the bitter sweet, from foods to funerals, in the lives of our children, and in the communities in which we gather. I am starting to think that bittersweet is the true taste of a life lived fully.
Where have you tasted the bittersweetness of life? What have those moments revealed to you?
Image source: word cloud created by B. L. Barnes