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Squishy Fruit
Matt Butler, Prep Faculty

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about fruit and unconditional positive regard. Fruit really is so finicky. I just hate it when I buy what appears to be a perfectly good bag of apples to find that one, or even two, have some squishy or questionable spots. Bad apples. Hmm.

This past summer and fall I was out in Long Island, New York, and Yakima, picking peaches and apples, and man, do I get the heebee jeebees when I encounter a squishy piece of fruit. So many times, I would spot this perfectly beautiful apple or peach but then when I reached up for it, my fingers would squish through the rotten back side. Now, I don’t know how many orchards Jesus walked through in his life, BUT – turns out, as far as I can tell, good trees DO bear rotten fruit. There’s just so much that goes into it. The weather, being one. I just heard a news story about how the $1 billion NW cherry crop this year is likely to be hard-hit by the extended cold winter we had. Ugh, that cold, dark, wet, winter, we had. It’s not just the quality of the trees – there are all these other outside factors that affect it.

In so many ways, we are – collectively – the tree – and the fruit that we bear are the students we send forth to “set the world on fire.” As Jesus says, “Every tree is known by its own fruit.”

By that measure, the fruit of our work has been good.

But, man, those outside factors, the ones that also influence the fruit – and the trees – they’ve sure been something lately. It’s been real easy to focus on all the tough stuff in our world of late — no one needs reminding of the specifics.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about Fr. Paul Fitterer, S.J. and unconditional positive regard. Unconditional positive regard is the game-changing 20th Century humanistic approach to relationships conceived by Carl Rogers. And – the Ignatian Presupposition is the, literally – world-changing 16th Century approach to relationships conceived by Ignatius of Loyola, as I learned from Fr. Paul.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, or could use a refresher – Ignatius, in his Spiritual Exercises, says, “Always interpret another’s actions in a light most favorable to that person.”

Take a minute to really think about that. What would our world be like if we all lived in this way? “Always interpret another’s actions in a light most favorable to that person.” As Fr. James Martin, S.J. explains in The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything: “While most people would agree with (the Presupposition) in principle, we often do just the opposite. We expect others to judge US according to our INTENTIONS, but WE judge others according to their ACTIONS.

About 20 years ago I walked into the gymnasium at SPU to watch the district tournament basketball games. I was promptly astounded by the talent of a Prep player – who, as I looked at the program, turned out to be future NBA star Martell Webster ’05, then a Prep sophomore. After taking note of his name, another name leaped up off the page, one Matt Barmore, then principal of Seattle Prep.

Matt had been a colleague of mine at St. Ignatius in San Francisco about a decade earlier and, though he wasn’t at that game that day, the president of the school was – Fr. Paul Fitterer, S.J.

When I became a teacher at Prep, I took a risk – as someone with no religious background of any kind, to take up spiritual direction with Fr. Paul. It was nothing like I imagined it would be – and everything I hoped it could be. Paul talked me through my spiritual meanderings. As a rational history guy, I confessed that I really had trouble with the divine nature of Jesus – that he was more Godly than the rest of us – and the resurrection.

In a response that challenged everything I thought I knew about “priests,” Fr. Paul admitted that he too once had those same doubts. In my hikes up “The Mountain of God” with my sherpa Paul, I felt so cared for – met, as we say we should with our students – met, where I WAS AT. It was cura personalis incarnate. I still wasn’t sure that I was a fruit that fit on the Seattle Prep tree, but Fr. Paul assured me. It was just one of SO many instances where I was welcomed into this community.

And it is community that we do SO WELL here at Prep. And, when a long, cold winter sets in, it is that aspect of our identity that we must lean on and put our trust and faith in. It’s funny, when you look at the Grad at Grad – the hallmarks of the fruit we hope to bear – a product of who we are – there isn’t one explicitly about community – that thing that breathes so much life into this place. The one that relates most closely to it, though, is LOVING. Loving is about relationships.

And loving is what St. Paul told the Colossians to be, to one another, in the face of the harsh storms of criticism and contempt they faced, surrounded by the wider culture of syncretistic Gnostic religions, as they were in first century Asia Minor. He basically said, “stick together” in these tough times. How? Love one another.

And that wasn’t easy – no doubt – when so many still weren’t sure WHAT they believed. Right or wrong, good or evil. Had Jesus been raised from the dead? What did that mean? If I’ve learned anything from teaching Collegio for 15 years, it’s that the best answer is “it depends” and rather than “either/or” we should seek to embrace a “both/and” understanding of how things are.

Simple? – no. Comforting? – nah. That stuff that helps you feel like I’ve got this world figured out? – not in the least.

Bitter AND sweet.

Only because Fr. Paul said I could, I will tell you that I disagree with Jesus, in the parable about the trees and fruit from the Gospel of Luke. Or at least I disagree with the translation, or interpretation. There is no good person and no evil person. It’s not either/or. We’re – all – BOTH! In the words of a Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn – “the line separating good and evil passes right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”

And, because of that, we need each other. In these incredibly challenging times, in which it is so tempting and natural to feed our negative thoughts and outlooks, we must stick together.

“From the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks.” And – in defense of thornbushes and brambles – you know what, they actually do produce good fruit – blackberries are one of the most delicious of all fruit, and the surest sign that summer has come.

 

Matt will be relocating this fall to Almuñécar, Spain with his wife and two children. We wish him all the best in his next adventure. Remember Matt, “You will always have a home at Prep—siempre!”

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