It Would Not Be A Paradise

South Bend on Purpose is a podcast about place, belonging, and South Bend hosted by Jacob Titus, Dustin Mix, and John Garry.

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This week, we are reading "Paradise on Fire" by Jahnari Pruitt and reflecting on what it might be saying about our life together in South Bend.

PARADISE ON FIRE

No I don’t think heaven would be a paradise. Not in the way they told us. Not a floating cloud with your name on it and a God that loved you enough to let you into his church.

No I don’t think it would be a paradise…just a space big enough to spark in.

And each person would just be a flat that could dance its own dance and be as brilliant as it wanted to be.

It would not be a paradise. But at least there would be room to burn… To wash feet in the smoke. To be made New as Joan of Arc Remember how she prayed on the pyre… And no one No one at all came to her. But Here. Here we would need no one to come for us. Here we would have no use for a savior. Not in nowhere...Where we would only have the memories that everyone else in the world forgot…

No it would not be a paradise. But it would be bright…Fire so hot that you don’t even feel the flames.

Like fire so hot they turned blue and blue is the color of healing so you know that it’s right and beautiful and truer than that other place you came from so it’s ok to stay…slowly becoming holy again.

-Jahnari Pruitt