I settled into my usual spot
on the bench in the orchard.
I’d been coming here weekly
listening for the Wisdom of Creation.
This day in late Spring,
I noticed the peach tree
broken by the weight of too much fruit.
An entire limb
torn away from her trunk.
This Is what an unpruned life
looks like, I thought.
“This is what YOUR unpruned life
looks like,” Spirit confronted me.
Ouch.
The truth landed hard.
Many of the balls
I had been juggling
had begun falling from orbit.
I missed deadlines,
and double-booked myself.
Yes.
I was living an unpruned life.
The hard thing about pruning
is removing fruit very much alive….
pulling off three fruits
so the one left
can mature and ripen.
It feels brutal.
But as the peach tree instructed me,
an unpruned life
produces greater violence.
Thomas Merton’s speaks to
the violence of a busy life.
“To allow oneself to be carried away
by a multitude of conflicting concerns,
to surrender to too many demands,
to commit oneself to too many projects,
to want to help everyone in everything,
is to succumb to violence.
The frenzy of our activism
neutralizes our work for peace.
It destroys our own inner capacity for peace.
It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work,
because it kills the root of inner wisdom
which makes work fruitful.”
It took witnessing the violence
of the unpruned peach tree
to notice the cost
of my frenetic busyness:
the frustration of friends and colleagues
asked to reschedule time with me
because I had not kept track
of my commitments.
The impact of missing deadlines
on those waiting
to publish the newsletter,
or submit a grant proposal.
My unpruned life,
inflicted violence.
But what to prune?
“Notice what gives you life,
and what takes life from you,”
Spirit counseled.
Like the suckers growing
from the base of the tree,
these are the first things
to be pruned.
What sucked the energy
from my days?
I knew.
But pruning these would disappoint people.
So I had refrained.
The missing limb on the peach tree, though,
motivated me to release commitments
or look for new leaders.
After noticing what drained me,
Spirit invited me to notice
what made me come alive.
“Prune your life down to that,”
she counseled.
This felt more brutal.
Many of my commitments
did not make my heart sing,
but they blessed others.
“But do they bless you?”
Spirit persisted.
“Not always.
But so what?”
I pushed back.
“A faithful life
isn’t’ only about me.”
“When you spend your energy
keeping a lot of things going,
everything stays small,”
Spirit countered.
“Nothing grows into its fullness.”
You will not be able to attend to your work in the world
diluting your energy
on too many small things,
no matter how “good” they are.”
Frederik Beuchner’s words
came to mind.
“Dont ask what the world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive,
and go do it.
Because what the world needs
is people who have come alive”
Spirit challenged me
to get clear on my unique contribution.
To focus my energy there.
And to trust She would care for
what She pruned from my life.
Pruning removes all that’s not essential,
so the tree’s resources are available
to grow the most beautiful fruit.
Pruning uncomfortably grows us
into offering our best selves
to the world.
I’m grateful for the wisdom of the peach tree.
May I continue
to live into her lessons.
Shalom,
Pastor Mary Laymon