"But this season of pruning is different for me. My own life has been pruned back in a storm that saw me losing my life’s calling as a teacher and principal after 37 years working in the orchard of the school community I love deeply. In the past eight weeks since I’ve been home, I’ve been picking up the branches and debris and bringing it to the fire pile and trying to figure out what is left of the tree for bearing fruit into a new season of my life. When a tree is storm-damaged, you have hard decisions to make. The scars need to be dressed so they can heal properly. Sometimes more cutting needs to be done and just maybe something else can be grafted on. Part of healing the wounds has been the surprise gift of being able to look after my two grandsons over an extended seven week stay after Christmas. Part of the balm has been Swallowfield itself.
Joan Chittister says, “In community we work out our connectedness to God, to one another, and to ourselves. It is in community where we find out who we really are. It is life with another that shows my impatience and life with another that demonstrates my possessiveness and life with another that gives notice to my nagging devotion to the self. Life with someone else, in other words, doesn’t show me nearly as much about his or her shortcomings as it does about my own…. In human relationships, I learn that theory is no substitute for love. It is easy to talk about the love of God; it is another thing to practice it.”
And so begins a new season. As always, even with good pruning, I need to trust the harvest to another. And that’s a good thing. But pruning trees is a slowly learned art and it helps when you have great mentors or a great community to help teach you the art.
Around that same time I received these words from my friend L. who knows far more about disappointments than I. She said, “I truly believe we are shaped more by disappointments than blessings. They cut us to the core… Yet the challenge is to remain vulnerable to life, to others, to God....with no guarantees how it will all turn out.”
The three years that have passed have been such a gift to me and I believe I have been shaped deeply by them, so much so that I would not trade any part of the experience.