The Uncomfortable Truth About Pruning
Hey There! Don: Do you remember your very first job? My very first job as a dishwasher was not that glorious. I have both wonderful and brutal memories of it. It's interesting if we look at scriptures in Genesis, the very first job that we, as humans had collectively, were gardeners. We took care of the trees, we watched the animals. There's something about our early connection in and around a garden with trees. There's something about the nature of how trees grow, what nourishes them. What does it mean to cultivate something in an organic and beautiful, healthy way? Trees are both wild and fruitful. And yet there's a way that we are to be in relationship with those wild and fruitful things. The first house that I owned, I lived in the East Valley, and I was pretty excited to be a homeowner, and the front yard had horrible non-landscaping. I talked to a friend of mine who picked out a tree for me, put some grass down, and gave me instructions. Dig a nice deep well around this tree and water it every seven to 10 days. As I began to dig this well, the soil was really hard and really exhausting. So I gave up pretty quickly and decided I would water it a little more often. And so about a year later, he came back over to my house and looked over at the tree. I was pretty happy with the tree. It had grown! It had gotten established, and he took me over to, and he goes, Wooster, what have you done to this tree? And I told him, "Dan, I've taken good care of the tree. I water it a couple of times a week. I mean, I've really paid attention to this tree." And he goes, "you have been watering it twice a week. Why would you do that? And I say, "because I care about the tree, and I want it to grow." And he says, "have you noticed where these roots are? They're all on the surface because roots go to where the water is. Your constant and shallow watering has drawn the roots up to the surface. This tree might've grown, but it's not well established. I asked you to dig a well and water it so that that water would slowly drip down deeper, and the roots would follow it. You've kind of done a disservice by putting so much on the surface that these roots haven't gone deeper." This is the same concept that we've been talking about in our lives and activities; they've gotten narrower. Some of our normal activities have kept us spread out from each other. Things that used to take a lot of our time, attention, and went in multiple directions have really been edited down. Let's talk about that surface kind-of-rootedness that keeps us busy and active - not that those things in and of themselves are bad, but they're pretty surface-y. They go in a lot of different directions. I wanna know...have we missed something in being so extended on the surface but maybe not drawn as deep in terms of our system? Renee, what do you think about that? Renee: Well, it makes me think about this last year that we've had. It was unprecedented. A tornado came through in our area in Arizona, and we had a tree that was completely taken out by the winds and storm. When we woke up the next day, it was such an astonishing picture of a tree being pulled out from the ground that I couldn't orient myself to understand what had happened. But obviously, the tree didn't have deep enough roots for it to withstand the storm. I think that anytime we come into our own storm, we realize that our roots are not as deep as we thought they were. There's a verse that we were looking at in John 15:1. Jesus is making this statement. He said, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit. But while every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser." I think that that identification of Jesus claiming to be the real vine, not the fake vine, not the wannabe vine, not the looks like a vine, but the real source of the vine, is someth
