All Things Deciduous

Blackberry training, day 1.

Beloved:

     Autumn was busy as a factory around here yesterday.  Cecilia came in the afternoon to help me with yard work.  Blackberry and raspberry vines which have done as they please all summer are pruned and tied to the garden fencing, trained as they say. (see photo)  We threw the sunflower canes in a pile for birds to eat from this winter.  Two hundred plus tulip, daffodil and allium bulbs are snug below ground and within the berry guarded fencing.  We moved lavender and hydrangeas.  I pulled up a dead peony tree only to find a tiny green shoot on it so I put it back, apologizing profusely.  
     In the morning it was crowded and still wild with summer growth.  Now it’s tidy and sparse.  In the garden and the woods, energy procurement and storage is Job 1. For peak performance next spring, the bulbs must freeze and get four months of total bed rest.  The same for all things deciduous.
     Oh that the metaphor were so easily applied ~ that we might learn to lose what is no longer useful and take our own long season of rest.  But ours is a much tighter energy cycle, clocked by hours instead of months and so easily overidden by wrong thinking.  We work on and on, dreaming of the that future season wherein we shall,  ‘have time to catch up,’ a phrase with no external reference.  The work may or may not suffer for our lack of wisdom, the world either for that matter.  The spiritual question is, “Do I?  Are there gifts that go with living true to the design of God that I forfeit when I overide that design?"  Seems to me it depends on what we want and hope for here and now, today.

I pray, O God, to want and hope for life as you designed it for me,
     clocked in hours that add up to seasons
          run on daily bread and rest
               if I am wise enough to take as they are given.
                    Amen.

~peace & prayers, pastor annette

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