Sprucing Up

They’re not even ours. The twin spruce trees with gnarly intertwined branches belong to our up-the-hill neighbor. Given the vagaries of property lines here in coastal Maine, however, they are right outside our dining room window. They’re what I gaze at over every meal, almost close enough to touch. I love these trees. And someone has butchered them.

When we arrived last Sunday, we first assumed the culprit was the terrible winter weather, which had wreaked havoc on so many trees, rooves, and docks. Upon closer examination, however, we realized that the careless topping—with no regard for shape or beauty or the health of the remaining branches—was all human activity.

We’d been worried about the spruce trees last fall, when Porter had excised a section of witches’ broom—a cancer-like proliferation of shoots that can lead to a tree’s demise. I was heartsick. Those spruces provide refuge to chickadees, finches, sparrows, chipmunks, and a particularly impish red squirrel. I wouldn’t be the only one sad to see them go.

It’s pretty clear why our neighbor had severed the tops, however. She’s up the hill, and the harbor is down the hill: the trees in the middle were blocking her view. She doesn’t know about the chickadees or the finches or the red squirrel. She doesn’t know these trees. She sees them only as a problem, and only from afar. Off with their heads! (I suspect she’d raze our house if she could.)

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.” -John 15:1-2

Never one to be out-pruned, Porter fetched the ladder and the loppers and went to work. He carefully cut back every dead branch and trimmed away the barren twigs so that the trees—though hardly restored to their former splendor—gained a new, spacious beauty. These evergreens will shelter God’s creation for another season, delighting all who choose to linger with attentive regard.

Now, this would be a lot of paragraphs to spend on spruce trees if the spiritual metaphor weren’t raising its hand like an excited schoolchild.

Quite simply: who are the people in our way? Who do we overlook, our eyes fixed on more attractive horizons? Who do we dismiss from afar, deciding they’ve outlived their usefulness? Or the sad inverse—who looks at themselves and feels the same way?

I have a dear friend in her eighties who struggles to reconcile her declining body with her still-vigorous brain. An otherwise healthy friend in his sixties is watching Alzheimer’s destroy every competency he used to take for granted. For them, as for so many people, what has been lost is vast and devastating.

But what remains? In each case, there is goodness, kindness, depth, faith, and even wit. They love and are loved. They matter to a great many people.

How can the commitments, activities, and self-perceptions that don’t serve them anymore be gently pruned away, opening a spacious, gracious present, where what remains can flourish?

I have more questions than answers. But I’m here in Maine all month, inviting the spruce trees to become a portal to prayer. May they teach me how to love well those who find themselves diminished by age or infirmity. And may God the divine arborist take away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, pruning what remains for a fruitful harvest.

How can the things that don’t serve you anymore
be gently pruned away,
opening a spacious, gracious present,
where what remains can flourish?