Pruning

I’ve been noticing the trees and bushes around my property lately. I’ve done a little cutting and pruning. There is still a lot to be done, including the removal of a peach tree that died a year ago.

I notice that it’s a good apricot year for most of those trees that I see. I should have thinned out more branches on the apricot trees we have. There is lots of fruit, but the apricots are small.

I was thinking back to my childhood home and remembering some of the trees and bushes that we had. The homesite has been a vacant lot for a number of years now. So, I’m just left with the memories.

One thing I remembered was our currant bush. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think that people have currant bushes like they used to have. We had one in our backyard. My grandparents had one as well.

It’s never occurred to me to plant one in my own yard. I guess I wasn’t overly fond of the berry as a kid. Actually, made with enough sugar, the jelly wasn’t bad. As I remember, there were red currant and black currant varieties.

As I thought about currants, I was reminded of a semi-famous (in LDS Church circles), allegorical story which relates to the pruning a currant bush.

Church leader, Hugh B. Brown, told the story. He had bought a run-down farm and was getting it back into shape. There was a currant bush on the place. It had grown huge and out of control and wasn’t productive. Hugh B. set about pruning it.

Evidently there was a bit of moisture on the stumps of the branches of the bush as he cut each one back. In his mind, Hugh B. imagined that the bush was crying over having been cut back. He even imagined the bush saying to him, “Why are you doing this to me?”

He answered the bush and explained that he knew what was best for it. It wasn’t a shade tree; it was a currant bush. He told the bush that someday when it was productive as a currant bush that it would understand why he had to be so severe with the cutting and pruning.

Of course – as the story goes, Hugh B. Brown, years later found himself in the military. He ended up in a situation where he was “pruned and cut back” and had to understand what it was like to be a currant bush. His “gardener” had other plans for him rather than what he thought he should grow and evolve into.

Most of us have been “pruned” in one way or another. Parents are constantly deciding whether to “prune” their children a little or a lot.

I remember years ago telling my son that, “No, it’s not OK for you to go alone up Fairview Canyon and snowboard by yourself – hitchhiking up and down the mountain road.”

He had been cut back a little and thought that we should understand that he wouldn’t get hurt or have an accident; that he wouldn’t get into trouble, etc. etc. The “buddy system” was talked about a little bit and the decision didn’t change.

He seemed to take the “pruning” in good stride and made alternative plans. He went and hung out with a girl. (Maybe I should have let him go up the canyon)

For some reason, at that time, I recalled the time that my parents “pruned” the idea that my friends and I had of sleeping out in the Richfield cemetery. (Don’t ask why we wanted to do it. We were teenagers. That’s explanation enough.) (If you don’t want to be “pruned” and really want to do something, don’t ask permission; ask forgiveness later.)

We ended up in our sleeping bags at the Lions Park and were rousted out of a sound sleep by a couple of cops shining lights on us. We probably would have had a better night’s sleep in the cemetery.

We all need “pruning” in our lives. We need to be restrained from doing dumb things. We need to get the dead wood out. We need to let the sun shine in. We need to get productive and be what we were intended to be.

Some of us are currant bushes. And the world needs good currant bushes. Some are mighty oaks, but still need pruning. We all need to occasionally submit to a “gardener” who knows which direction we need to grow.

Think about it as you prune your trees and bushes. And, by the way, does anyone have a good start for a currant bush that I can get?

— Merrill

(P.S. – If you want to read the whole Hugh B. Brown story and get it right, rather than depending on the abbreviated retelling from my poor memory, you can find it by searching the word “currant” at www.churchof jesuschrist.org on the internet.)

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