Sunday, October 12, 2008

The “Real” Passion in Passion Fruit.

Now some of you may not know what passionfruit is as it is also called in some places Granadilla, (which is technically another type within the same species).
However although there are over 500 subspecies within its Genus and found as natives all over the world, (Including at least 4 sub species unique to Australia), the Passionfruit is native to South America and the word, nor the fruit, has anything to do with love and romance of the Human kind, but rather of the love of God in sending His son to die on the cross for the sins of all mankind.
For you see, the early Spanish missionaries there used the flower of the plant as a teaching aid when explaining the crucifixion of Christ. The filaments in the centre represent the crown of thorns, the plant’s tendrils were whips, and the petals and sepals were the disciples, etc.
So the passion fruit is another everyday item that was named for a purpose long forgotten and because of other meanings of the word, the original name is often interpreted with the wrong motives and objectives altogether.
Again just another warning to us not to jump to conclusions when we hear a word and think of only one meaning for that word, when like the passion fruit, it may have a completely different and even almost opposite meaning.
So, what words or pictures are you currently “seeing”, through just “one eye” and what words or pictures do you now need to look at with both eyes to get the full picture? Over to you to answer that one now.

* Extra From Wikapedia: "Passion" does not refer to love, but to the Christian theological icon of the passion of Christ on the cross. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish Christian missionaries discovered this flower and adopted its unique physical structures, particularly the numbers of its various parts, as symbols of the last days of Jesus Christ and especially the Crucifixion. For example: the radial filaments which can number more than a hundred and vary from flower to flower were taken to represent the Crown of Thorns. The ten petals and sepals can represent the ten faithful apostles. The top 3 stigmata can represent the 3 nails and the lower 5 anthers the 5 wounds. The flower has been given names related to this symbolism throughout Europe since that time. In Spain, it is known as Espina de Cristo (Christ's Thorn). In Germany it was once known as Muttergottes-Schuzchen (Mother-of-God's Star). Popular culture being what it is, however, passionflowers and especially passionfruit are frequently used with sexual or romantic innuendo, giving rise to such uses as a one-time soft drink named Purple Passion.

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