Pruning

 When a vine dresser prunes a branch, it is so that it will bear more fruit.  It has born fruit in the past but now it needs some cutting away so as to bear more fruit.  I think of this in terms of changes in one’s life.  I was bearing fruit at an active priest in the city.  The monastery, where I am away from previous work is the time for me to be pruned in order to continue to bear fruit in my work.  Something is being cut away.  Think of being a grandparent, a widow, loss of job, moving, divorce.  You are filled with a sense of loss, or change, such as the empty nest.  But maybe it is a time of pruning, so that some new fruit may be born in your life.  Change does not mean your life is over, but that the past is past.  I try not to live in the past.  I remember it, but I don’t want to live in it.  New life a ahead.