Bearing Fruit
Dear Friends,
In our Gospel passage for this week, we hear another one of Jesus’ “I am” discourses. “I am the true vine,” Jesus tells his disciples. And then he takes another 27 verses to explain to them what this is all about, including, “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.”
So often, when I hear these words of Jesus I focus on the admonition to “bear fruit.” Go, do, produce . . . be all you can be, and then some. Be productive or be cast aside. Growing up as the oldest in a family of four children, there was always a chore to do or sibling to care for as my mother scrambled to meet everyone’s needs – preparing meals, getting everyone dressed, cleaning the house, making sure the homework was done, making it to school or practices or appointments on time. I learned some good lessons about belonging by participating, and by knowing myself as needed. But I don’t recall much about the “silent partner” of bearing fruit, as my spiritual director would put it. I don’t recall being instructed in the fine art of “abiding.” Most people who really know me well, know this is true!
What strikes me the most as I approach my upcoming sabbatical is that Jesus’ vine discourse is just as much, if not more, about “abiding” than about bearing fruit. In fact, the word “abide” occurs 40 times in the Gospel of John. And that’s worth paying attention to, because so much of the time we are urged to stay busy. And if we can’t stay busy, we should at least look busy. We were not taught equally to abide, to stay connected to our life-giving center in God, and to trust that inward place for everything else.
Though I know I will always be wired to be a productive person and to bear good fruit, I am increasingly aware of my inner yearning to simply to abide. It has taken me most of my life to learn that to bear fruit and to abide are not incompatible. And that they are not supposed to be a frenzy of activity followed by a frenzy of overwhelmed rest. (A lesson I am really struggling to learn!) They should be, as my spiritual director also reminds me, “lighthearted children of the same parent.” To abide is to relax into the larger life that is beyond our life, our life in God. It means not straining always to be and do more, measuring and rating the outcomes. Instead, we allow. We breathe and wait. We trust the gardener to plant seeds, whenever and wherever that may be - the right seeds for our current soil’s condition.
My hope during the four months ahead is that we can all come to know better how bearing fruit can happen from a posture of abiding. I pray we can learn to trust the process, discover a different kind of pace and rhythm and balance between the ebb and flow of productivity and rest. “Abide in me,” Jesus says, “and I will abide in you.”
In Christ,
Amelie+
