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This is another-- this is a
reference to that story where

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Jesus went up to the fig
tree, expecting to find figs.

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And finding nothing there,
cursed the fig tree.

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I know some scholars would say,
"Well, being the Son of God,

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wouldn't he have known that it
wasn't the season for figs?"

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[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]

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But still the story has become
a kind of very popular metaphor

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for a certain type
of withered soul.

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"On a Winter's Night."

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"It's the cursed fig tree,
backlit, a bitter halo

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in the distant light.

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Though I don't know how it
came here, transplanted,

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still out of season, surviving
amputee of God's will.

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The man who climbed
into a fig tree

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to glimpse Christ in
the crowd was blessed,

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but the barren tree
was blasted, lopped off

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by a word from Christ,
to forever signify

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all fruitless souls.

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A trope of useless love,
it grips now a plain hill

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in the southwestern desert.

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And what I see is how it
thrives, as love does,

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stubborn beyond the
pointing finger,

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beyond the uttered curse.

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For while its limbs are but
stubs, it's dense with life.

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So many new sprouts sporting
out of its trunk and roots,

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it rises within the thicket
of its own persistent self."

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