Sunday, July 24, 2011

The things I learn from vinedressing

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he will take away. And each one that does bear fruit, he will cleanse, so that it may bring forth more fruit." (John 15:1-2)
I think I've mentioned before that our new house came with a Great Big concord grape vine, which was a bit of a surprise find, because it had grown all through some adjacent shrubs. As I've learned to tend this vine, all manner of Scriptural metaphors that were opaque to me before have come alive with meaning.

Our first year's harvest was when the vine was still intertwined with the shrubs. Though I found a respectable amount of fruit considering how well the clusters were hiding, many of the grapes were inedible due to mold or fungus. So, that winter I cut down the other shrubs, extricated the vine, and strung it on a makeshift arbor. The vine survived my inexpert handling, and bore some fruit the second year, but the harvest was sparse. I'm not sure how much this might have been due to trauma from all the handling and how much was because it was just a bad year for grapes, but there were few grapes, and they still had mold problems.

So I started reading up on the care and tending of concord vines. I had a friend come over to show me how to do the mid-winter pruning, where the last season's growth is cut back to optimize the vine to bear in the new year. But I read something else interesting: about the mid-season cleaning of the vines.

This is the vine early in the year.
Lots of leaves!
The vines start leafing out in springtime, throwing out big leaves and swift-growing tendrils that wrap around stems and fences. It's very impressive growth. Then the buds and flowers come, though it's easy to miss the flowering stage. The flowers are little tiny things that don't look like much - little six-stemmed stars just a few millimeters across. You have to look very deliberately to find them.
Grape flowers

Once the flowers are gone and the fruit starts to develop, there comes a point you have to cut away the leaves around the clusters. This is what I didn't do the second year, but the experts say is vital. Grape vines put out an immense amount of foliage, often large leaves that shade the entire area under the vine. But being shaded isn't good for the grapes. They need to be exposed to the light, and able to have air circulate freely around them. If they aren't, the clusters will remain damp from dew and rain, and mold and fungus will grow (this was the problem the first year when the grapes were growing all through the shrubs - they were too shaded, which was why so many were lost to mold.)
These clusters are too shaded.
They'll be prone to mold and fungus

So earlier this week I took my secateurs and went out to trim back the leaves and expose the clusters to the light and air. It turned out to be a tremendous task - far more than just trimming a leaf or two here and there. Once you get in among the vines, you find that nearly all the clusters are shrouded by leaves that need to be trimmed away mercilessly if the clusters are to see the sun and feel the air.

As I was doing this, I was pondering Jesus words in John 15:1-2. Most translations I've read say that the Father will "prune" the vines that they may produce more fruit, but I can't help but wonder if this translation (Catholic Public Domain Version) might have the more accurate nuance. Pruning is typically done off-season, during winter or some other time when the plant is not bearing fruit. Grapes are the only fruit I've heard of that calls for actually dressing the vines in the middle of the season to help the fruit along. People in that agrarian culture would surely have understood the need for and purpose of such "cleansing", and some of Jesus' disciples may have actually done it.

With that in mind, I found myself wondering in what way the leaves and clusters correspond to elements of our spiritual life, and how the Father's "cleansing" would help the fruit along. I came up with an analogy, which will break down at some point as analogies do, but it seemed to have some useful correspondence. What if the grapes themselves correspond to the "good fruit" our lives are supposed to bear - charitable deeds done for the good of others and glory of God, Christlike attitudes, humility, and the like? What if the leaves are pious practices of the type that can be observed: prayers, Mass attendance, Scripture reading, and so forth? By this I don't mean empty external actions, but truly well intended practices that are intended to form us into Christ's image.

Presuming that rough correspondence, how does that help us understand Jesus' promise that the Father would "cleanse" the "vine" of our lives, that we might bear more fruit?

One obvious point is that leaves are necessary, and always come first. Were one to strip all the leaves from a vine, it would die. Likewise if we were to strip from our lives all the external spiritual disciplines such as prayer, fasting, worship, and the like, our spiritual life would quickly end.

But the point of the leaves is the fruit. A big, leafy vine may look like it's Really Something, but if it's not bearing fruit, it's meaningless. By the same token, a vine full of fruit but with no leaves will never ripen, because the leaves are needed to make the sugar that goes into the fruit. So it's not a leaves-or-fruit question, because the fruit needs the leaves, but the point of the vine, including the leaves, is to bear fruit.
These clusters have had the
shading leaves trimmed away,
so that sun and air can reach
them.  They should ripen well!

But, just as too many leaves around the clusters can hinder the growth of the fruit, likewise the fruit of our lives needs the "light and air" of accountability and public examination to stay free of "mold" like self-delusion and pride. To use a historical example, St. Francis of Assisi started his movement as a group of men committed to a way of life living according to certain rules. But he submitted his rules to the authority of the Church, who investigated the movement and ruled upon it. Some of the original rules which Francis proposed for his Order were denied by Church authorities - they were "pruned away". St. Francis accepted this, and the Franciscan Order was born. Had he not accepted the pruning, his movement might have remained a small, local activity that might have just dwindled away, or degerated into rebellion or heresy.

On a personal level, sometimes we have to accept cutting back of things which seem like great spiritual practices in order to bear good fruit. When I first discovered the Liturgy of the Hours, I dreamed of finding time to say all the offices through the day. Eventually I had to settle for Lauds and Vespers, because my vocation as a father and breadwinner didn't permit me to take breaks for all that praying. If it's a question between fruit and leaves, the fruit will win every time.

Sometimes the "pruning" in our lives can seem severe, even brutal. It's like this with grapes, too, but it doesn't mean the plant is being killed. It doesn't take many leaves to keep a vine going - in fact, grape vines are always throwing out new leaves all through the season. Unlike deciduous trees, which grow a crop of leaves at the start of the season and that's all they get for the year, grape vines are sprouting new leaves all the time. Come to think of it, it's kind of like that in our spiritual lives as well. If the new baby or the new job means I can't attend daily Mass like I used to, maybe the Lord will cause a new avenue of blessing to "sprout" in my life. Just because a familiar set of "leaves" was trimmed back doesn't mean all is lost, it just means that the Father was trimming back to make me more fruitful.

Another thing I learned with my pruning is that you can never tell where the fruit might be. As I started cleaning away thick foliage, I found grape clusters in the strangest places. Totally hidden by leaves and stems, they awaited the pruning back of the leaves to be revealed. Had I not trimmed back the leaves, I never would have found them. In similar manner, sometimes the Lord has to trim back parts of our lives that seem healthy and impressive in order to bring forth some hidden fruit that even we might not have known was there.
A pruned-back vine, with plenty of leaves
and developing fruit.  Hopefully it will yield a rich harvest!

I think I've taken this comparison as far as it'll go, at least for now. I hope I remember some of these lessons the next time the Father starts to take His divine "pruning shears" to my life.

2 comments:

Eric McDonald said...

Thanks for sharing your knowledge of grapevines and tying it into John 15. I'm writing a Bible study on this chapter to share with international students at our local university and wanted to make the illustration come alive. You provided great material for doing that! -Eric

dennisD said...

The text tells us we are the branch and to remain with the vine to bear fruit. Bearing fruit is a result of remaining with the vine. Therefore our job is not to bear fruit but to abide with the true vine. Abiding with the true vine will inevitably result to bearing fruit. BTW, verse 2 of John 15 says "2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit." My question is why "take away" a branch that does not bear fruit instead of pruning it? The answer is a vinedresser does not take away a branch but lifts it up and then prunes it for it to bear fruit. If we are the branch, will God being the vinedresser take us away instead of pruning us? Of course not. You see there seems to be a mistranslation of verse 2 with the word "take away". In the original Hebrew writing of the John 15, the word used is "Airo". Airo has 3 possible translations - 1) Lift up, 2) to bear away and 3) to remove of take away. IMO the English translators chose no. 3 meaning possibly since it fits their theology. But the correct translation is no. 1 and that is to lift up. You see, God being the vinedresser lifts us up then prunes us in order for us to bear fruit. He does not take us away. It is the branches that do not abide in Him that are thrown away and withers (verse6 - 6 If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers). Again going back to verse 2 which says "Every branch in Me"... this points to a branch that is in Him tho not bearing fruit... what does the vinedresser do? Answer: He LIFTS UP (Airo) then prunes it. Verse 3 says we are clean because of the Word. How do we get the Word? By hearing and by hearing we get faith (Romans 10:17).