Pruning

A healthy flower bush needs to be trimmed back at times, so new growth can develop.  I think of my time here at the monastery as a  pruning.  A few people are wondering why I don't keep doing all the good work I used to do in active parish ministry.  I need to be pruned back from such work so that some new growth can develop.  I don't quite know what that will be.  Maybe it is the ministry I do up in the monastery and on computer?  In the aging process, instead of thinking about it as becoming more limited in doing what you did or do, think of aging as being pruned back from younger work, so that you can do something new.  Now, there are some people who think my past ministry, being so liberal, was in need of being pruned, and they are quite happy that they don't have to put up with me anymore.  So I make those people happy too by my being out their sight.