Pruning, Part 1

A cluster of three pecans on the tree | photo by Karen Miedrich-Luo

The Pecan branch cracked and whined as it split and peeled from the very healthy tree in our back yard. The leaves were green and glossy and the large pecans were voluminous. It was overladen with fruit, full to breaking, and it took my husband two hours to cut it so the trash truck would haul it away. The one branch was a good twenty feet long and each branching finger held dozens of thumb-sized pecans. It never occurred to me to prune a healthy tree. Last year we felled a dead Pecan and also pulled a seven-foot seedling growing too close to the fence. The seedling sheltered a large Azalea which was then left to bake in the hot August sun. No matter how much we watered, it baked to a crisp. Our neglect, even when everything seems healthy, has unintended consequences.

I have a tendency to become overripe with the many things I learn along this path. Blessed by God's gifts and the fruits of His labor in my soul, I often forget to prune or water or fertilize the seedlings He plants. I wait for the harvest, but for my own enjoyment.

I need, and was created to need, God, and I communicate with God through prayer and He communicates with me through Scripture, yet, I am most blessed when I release what I learn. The Psalmist declares that the person who delights in God's law is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither (Ps. 1:2-3). But if I don’t properly care for the tree, the healthy growth cracks with overripe fruit; the seeds find their way to the ground, but I am damaged. I imagine that pruning might prevent the breakage, but it certainly seems counter-intuitive. I tend to be a “live and let live” person. If something appears healthy, I let it be, but things are not always what they seem.

The story of Hagar caught my attention while slow-reading in Genesis this year. Hagar was Sarah's maidservant and when Sarah lost hope that God would give her the promised son, she devised a plan to use Hagar as a surrogate mother. The plan worked, Hagar birthed Ishmael between Sarah's knees, and the boy was raised as Abraham's son. But then the promised son came through Sarah and Ishmael taunted the young boy, Isaac. Sarah demanded that both Ishmael and Hagar be banished from the family inheritance. Abraham cast them both into the desert with few provisions even though it was against the moral law of the day to cast out a slave and her children. (F. LaGard Smith, The Narrated Bible in Chronological Order.)  Abraham prayed about it, but God released Abraham to do as Sarah demanded. Why? At first reading this seems so very heartless and even the Godless tribes of the surrounding lands recognized it as such. But it wasn't heartless in God's grand plan.

In the desert, dying of thirst, Hagar cried out to God and God responded. God spoke to Hagar through an angel who comforted her and promised that the boy would father a nation. God spoke to a slave woman. It was Hagar who later found a wife for Ishmael. She was free to do that! God pruned her from Abraham's household and gave her freedom and a promise to pass on to Ishmael.

(This post first appeared at Write/Create and is no longer available.)

Lectio Divina

Reading the bible in a year has been my chosen form of meditation for the past six years, although I rarely read every passage every day, and, come December, the book of Revelation and the minor prophets are given short shrift. An Advent book of devotions such as Ann Voskamp's The Greatest Gift, or more often, Phyllis Tickle's Christmastide from her book The Divine Hours have been of better comfort than the Apocalypse. I find it hard to read deeply, or pause to follow a rabbit trail through the unbroken snows of Mt. Hermon, if it catches my eye, because I have a spiritual train to catch. So I have set different goals this year in which I will follow rabbit trails and read slowly - very slowly. The bible is still and always will be the rock and the road on which my pillars stand. Hopefully, this method will allow more opportunity to reflect on other works without the clock reminding me to move on quickly. And with my mind attuned to this new goal, I keep bumping into confirmation from poets, professors, and neurological discoveries indicating this is a better way to read anything.

Along with slow reading, I also aim to engage in slow writing. This blog is a way-marker for me and it is who I am at the moment I write it into existence. But I will confess that I strongly edited myself to remain upbeat and inviting and perhaps, at the time, to generate a persona that was upbeat and inviting, always. The last several years have been a struggle for me to be cheerful. I don't like what age is doing to my body and mind and I am often cranky about it. What I write in the future may or may not have a sunny disposition. I say that not for the reader, but to give myself permission to bring myself to the page, not who I want you to see.

Consistency is not my strong point, it is a supreme struggle. But it is my hope to write regularly what I discover as I read. If you choose to read this blog, even once, I thank you immensely for your time. Attentiveness is so scarce where there is an abundance of meat and sweets on the internet. And God knows I don't make it easy for you when I don't post links to my references because I don't wish to endorse anything here. As always, my blogs are signposts along the way to fellow travelers. Godspeed.