In Praise of Pruning...

I was out in our backyard yesterday, doing some trimming and weeding.  Our roses had just finished their first, big round of blooming for this season. They needed to be pruned a bit.

Pruning helps a rose bush grow more beautiful.  Without pruning, the energy needed to grow more blossoms will be wasted on the production of its fruit—the rose hips.  Without pruning, the bush will eventually revert back to its natural state and shoot out ugly, gangly, vine-like branches. Soon enough, the whole thing can become a tangled mess.

So I pruned away.  I thought that I was close to finishing the job after working the clippers for twenty to thirty minutes.  Stepping back to get a different perspective, I noticed several old blooms that I had missed on the backside of the bush.  So, I worked my arms through the thorns, towards the far side of the rosebush, got scraped up a bit, but successfully pruned away the previously overlooked dead blossoms. 

I stepped back again, brushed off my arms and then I moved to my left.  There again were some more old blossoms that I had missed, plus some ugly spider webs and some big, dead, brown leaves that had dropped from the sycamore tree in the schoolyard that’s behind our house.  The dead leaves, the spider webs, the faded blossoms had all been invisible to me—until I had moved to my left.

I sighed, for in the garage my very cool bike—with its Dura-Ace components—was waiting for me to take it out for a ride.

More pruning…

Now I moved to my right—more messy stuff that I had missed, more pruning.

Then it occurred to me—I’m a lot like this rosebush.  I can’t grow without pruning and a change in perspective. I need to be willing to move around whatever I’m working on in order to see what’s incomplete about it. I need to be faithful to the task.  I need to invite the perspective of others into my life, those who can see what I can’t see about myself.  I need to keep working until I hear the words “it is good.”

Also, without a change in my perspective, I can’t help those who have asked me for help in their growth, their pruning.  Perhaps the most important change I can make is to practice the Golden Rule and put myself in the shoes of those that I’m leading, the students I’m teaching, the people I’m serving.  I need—all of us need—to keep working, keep pruning—with love—all the while avoiding the thorns, until we hear the words “it is good.”

Happy springtime!