The big squeeze.

There are times in relationships, in business organizations, churches, families, that things aren't going as planned, and those who are responsible to make it right, begin to squeeze those around them in an attempt to get circumstances to fall in line. Instead of collaborating and trying to get cooperation through teamwork, they try to force the manifestation of the desired behaviors and expectations and results through fear and manipulation and even bullying instead of reaching compromise for the betterment of everyone.

You see this a lot when politics start coming into play in an organization, when cliques form in congregations, or mutiny happens in a family, or selfishness in relationship. When at wits end, the buck gets passed mightily. And there's a big squeeze.

The one who jumps ship of integrity, winds its fingers around once vibrant fruit, not necessarily with care on where the pressure lands across its skin, but with the intention of breaking through what still holds it together, to drain the substantiating juiciness completely out, to resolutely drink it in for whatever temporary self satisfaction and self soothing can be had, at the expense of what could potentially cause it to become just the stripped out skeleton of a once viable object. Massive manipulation.

Sometimes the pressure comes so quickly and more mightily than even intended, and it causes squirting and gushing of hunks of flesh. Some of the substance of the fruit gets disengaged before it has had time to be pressured into the flow and is then chewed and slurped and consumed differently.

And on occasion, a seed escapes. A lovely, still viable hope for recreating something once luscious and true that existed before the great squeeze began. On occasion, a seed releases from the very core of the original creation, gets sifted out as waste, or lands somewhere out of reach, out of sight, off the radar to safety.

Replanted, re-birthed for another time and place. The seed is the only part of the fruit that survives the big squeeze mercifully intact. An authentic soul.