I started my Spring pruning yesterday, on what would have been my fathers-in-law’s 102nd birthday. He too was a dedicated pruner and fruit grower. By the time I am done all the pruning I will have a large fire pile of clippings. Unlike other years where I mostly prune in solitude, I downloaded a podcast by Robin Wall Klimmerer, author of the beautiful book, Braiding Sweetgrass. She talks was about the mostly unknown world of mosses. The old apple tree I was pruning is a forest of mosses and it was rather delightful to be learning about mosses as I gave the apple tree its annual trim.
Klimmerer has a deep and sacred sense that we are one with the created world. We are partners with the Creator as we bring out its abundance. An apple tree planted and not pruned will grow but over time its fruit will be smaller and smaller, and it will produce little. When I work together with the tree, understanding how it bears fruit, how it will be pollinated and how to protect it from diseases, together with the Creator a bountiful harvest will come. It leads me to humility and gratitude.
To quote John Philip Newell in Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul, “A major feature of the [Celtic] wisdom tradition we have been drawing on in these pages is gratitude. Remembering that what shines most deeply in the face of a newborn child is sacredness, and this sacredness, deep within each of us, infuses every creature and life-form lead to a deep posture of gratitude. Gratefulness for the sacredness of one another and the earth, including gratitude for the gifts of sight and sound, of touch and taste and scent that we may know one another and the body of the earth, is what we are being invited to reawaken to. It will change the way we live and relate and act.”