The Raisins - Gail Henry

When this writing task was presented to me by Geneva, the oddest quotation came to mind. I would love to say it was Yeats or Emerson, Oprah or even Einstein, but instead it was a short line from a storyteller that I used to listen to with my sons. The storyteller was Jay O’Callahan and the story was called “Raisins. ”The line I remembered was “Horrible, horrible! I like ya anyway.” Even though we listened to this TAPE probably in the 1990’s, we still quote this line to each other all the time. Since I could not get it out of my mind, I had to go back and listen to it again. That meant I had to pull out the tape (yes I still have it) and a tape player (yes I still have one ) to replay the story.

The story is quite fantastical (as it should be for children) and tells the tale of two young siblings on an adventure inside a storybook. In the story they are walking on a giant cookie and end up meeting lots of raisins—it was a raisin cookie. Imagine a wrinkly raisin, only human sized. Upon meeting the children, the raisins are surprised because they had never seen humans before and did not understand their legs and arms and tongues. The Raisins call these appendages worms. When the children explain they were NOT worms but arms, legs and a tongue, the Raisins exclaim in wrinkly, dismayed voices, “Horrible, horrible! I like ya anyway.”

Raisins are not the prettiest fruit around, so what a surprise that they are the ones remarking on the children as odd. From our point of view, we would say the raisins are odd. This twist captures O’Callahan’s whole meaning—that others we meet can be very different, even scary, but it is important to move past these differences and end with ‘I like ya anyway.’ This wonderful story struck me immediately as I contemplated the horrors of Buffalo, NY, and then the readings (Acts 11:1-18 and John 13:31-35) and sermon from May 15th. O’Callahan has captured the most beautiful way to say to children (and adults) that even with our differences, we should love one another as Jesus has loved us in our own imperfectness.