When I was growing up, we had 36 pecan trees in the back yard. One tree, near the clothes line, had five different varieties of pecans: Mahan, Stuart, Texas Giant, Desirable...and I can't remember the fifth...perhaps just Native. I was always given little lectures as he worked in the yard, on the trees. Somedays, it was about budding, or grafting a limb of a different variety onto a strong tree. Some days it was about spraying for web worms. Some days, it was about proper watering...or a lecture about tap roots...or about pruning.
I remember how I would be internally screaming for him to finish, to find something else to do, wishing he would find someone else to talk to...and then after he died, I took my golf clubs out to just hit a bucket of balls...and I could hear his voice, chattering in the background of my head, reminding me of what to do...and I just started crying. I actually missed his lectures. So annoying when I was a kid, some part of me recognized that behavior as love.
Jesus speaks about it, not really in parables, but more in wisdom sayings. Perhaps there is a better term, can't think of one now. This one is something like, "as the vinegrower prunes the vine, so that it will bear more fruit, God prunes us, to make us bear more fruit." The idea is simple. Something is taken away so that something better can be given.
It seriously sucks in that time between the letting go and receiving. Seems like an eternity...so long in fact, some people return to the old stuff...the old ways...the patterns that, if not good, were at least familiar.
A wise nun on Facebook posted:
Change. Pruning. Grafting. Growing. Water, fertilizer, sun, shade...winter, spring, summer and harvest. All of these things involve a kind of suffering. All changes have a bit of suffering. Holding on and letting go. Cutting away the deadwood, allowing something new and unknown to happen. But change, and pruning is good. It forces us to beyond what we think we know so well...only...perhaps we had forgotten. Introduce a little change and your are forced to rethink everything.
It's true, you know. Change the behavior and the attitude follows. Knowing what behavior to move toward is a bit scary. Being attractive is an uncomfortable experience, yet I risked it on Sunday. I watched some people do a double-take when they looked at me. I had mixed feelings. I don't want to be noticed for such shallow things. I want to be noticed as completely and totally in love with God.
Just writing that down makes me wonder what is going on. I recognize that I need to be engaged but not attached to people. I am in the world but not of the world. I try to appreciate both the good and the bad as gifts. I struggle with ambition, with a hunger for education, knowlege, wisdom. And I desire to always be busy with the work of God. Then why do these thoughts trouble me? I lack the peace of being content with whatever lies in front of me in the moment. Why would I doubt anything, knowing what I know?
I suppose that to surrender completely to the love of God would mean abandoning any ideas I still hold about wanting to change ther world. That I just need to live in it. But that seems so contrary to the gospel message. I'm called to change the world, right? Right?
And then I begin to understand just a little more. I asked God to prune me, to prepare me for the next thing. And I realize that is what this emptiness and hunger are all about. This is not fasting. I am not learning discipline...that lesson will be for another day. But now, He seems to be cutting out my illusions of relationships...not that I will be denied them, or that I should spurn them...but that I need to let them be of a different origin and without agendas. I have long wanted power, but power will not satisfy me...I know that now. I wanted fame, I wanted wealth...I wanted to be held, cherished, appreciated...they are all good things...but I have to learn to stop wanting them. When I stop wanting them, I will have them.
And such is the way of this last month, feeling so lost and alone and hating the changes I forced on myself because...I knew I had to make them. Hurt now or hurt later. If you don't prune the branches, they will break when the next storm comes...no matter how lovely they may have been...they will go away.
It's always a struggle to know what to prune. Ah...you are thinking ahead of me. I'm am not the one to do the pruning. God is. You are too smart for me.
I have a friend, who reminds me with her gentle words, to pray. Some day, I hope she writes it all down. And then, I hope she shares it. But she inspires me. God grafted her into my life to teach me things that needed to come from a woman. But God tricked me...like he did three years ago, when I saw the priest walking down the aisle toward me. "Oh hell, he's going to say hello again. Why doesn't he just go talk to someone else...?" And the world changed forever.
And then it changed again.
And again.
What I thought I knew, I didn't know. What I wanted to do, I really didn't want. Where I wanted to be, I discovered it was some place else. I do not know what I want or need. I know only hunger and that hunger doesn't always have a name. And life is not a fairy tale...but it is a grand and wonderful story, with kissing parts and boring parts and tragedy and joy and miracles and challenge. We are all heroes in some sense of the word. We sacrifice for the good of the other...and someone lays down his life for us out of love for us.
So I guess, when you get the chance to rest in the hammock, or bask under the sun, you ought to do it. Tomorrow you may be carrying a large rock up the hill and not know why, only that God said do it.
The idea is always to produce good fruit, but what does that mean? I'm not always sure. The discipline of desire...will allow me to love more perfectly...myself and others...is always a work in progress.
There are good days...and yesterday was definitely a good day...but I realize it began on Thursday, when I went with some women to a new church to pray...what happened on Thursday played itself out in a beautiful song on Friday.
I have had writer's block for so long, or so it seems. But that was probably because I was not being intentionally with God. What began a week ago, the exposure of my challenge, on the feast of St Maria Goretti, was kind of a kick in the backside to remind me that trauma never really goes away, but you have to learn to let the feelings come and ask God to heal them. I cried in a woman's arms last Friday. I have not done that since my mother's funeral in 1995. Every well meaning soul in the church came along and tried to stop it from happening...trying to stop the miracle...and you know, they almost did.
Cindy, who holds others in their little deaths...allowed herself to be held by another...and in that moment, a bit of dead wood was cut away. Don't have to carry so much now. That's a good thing.
Didn't realize it until yesterday, as I talked it out with some good people...and in this very moment. I finally see the miracle.
I can be so blind.
I hope there is something of use for you here. There is more to think about...I pray for your spiritual journey, that God brings you that which heals your heart. Pray for me, too.
Love, Cindy
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