Fifth Sunday of EASTER (Written on April 28, 2009)

For the Lectionary (what's a lectionary?) of May 10, 2009: John 15:1-8

 

Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

 

BURNED MYELINS, PRUNED ROSES by Larry Patten

Outside my office window are six rose bushes. My wife and I planted them twelve years ago. Several are floribundas (I think that’s what the variety is called) and rather than a single flower, they produce an explosion—an abundance—of buds from the same stem. Another rose seems to annually rehearse for the lead plant role of Jack and the Beanstalk. Every April and May it races toward the sky, outgrowing all the other bushes, casually creating bursts of red buds.

Until my wife prunes it.

But the roses keep growing. In the springtime, our entire backyard flora is brazen. From the blossoms on the orange trees to the basil I just planted, it’s grow-grow-grow! out there.

There was another time of pruning last winter. However chores evolve in relationships, my wife prunes. One day, tools in hand, she trooped outside in the foggy, dreary Central Valley December and did the deed. Each rose bush became no more than a stick stuck in the muck. Pruning, whether in the dormant wintertime or the spring nips and tucks to enhance the blossoms, is necessary. It helps growth.

And so, when I read John’s gospel where Jesus described God as the vinegrower—the one who “prunes to make it bear more fruit”—I understood. I easily imagined myself, though a twenty-first century microwaves and e-mail user, transported to first century Palestine and nodding my head in agreement at the Bible’s pruning analogies. Little has changed over two thousand years. Pruning has value.

Except last week, I heard a different version of pruning when I attended an Alzheimer’s support group. This year it’s obvious my father has dementia. My parent’s relationship, begun in the first months of World War II, has now changed again. Once the major changes were mostly positive: the birth of children, buying a new house, retiring, and so forth. In the course of their six decades together “pruning” took place, times of sacrifice that usually produced growth. I’m a living example of their pruning. They saved to help me attend college and achieve independence. How many “branches”—vacations not taken, house repairs delayed—were “pruned” for their children’s well-being?

Now another major change: dementia. Does my father have Alzheimer’s? We don’t know for sure.

The support group’s facilitator mentioned an autopsy was the only way to confirm an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. A neuropathologist examines the brain and discovers—or doesn’t discover—the disease’s physical evidence. According to the New York School of Medicine’s research,

The brain has cells that are similar in many ways to electrical generators. These cells have axons that function like wires coming out of an electrical generator and communicating with other cells. The axons are covered with myelin, a fatty substance that is similar to rubber insulation on a wire. Just as rubber protects the wire, the myelin protects the axons and ultimately the neurons.

With Alzheimer’s, the myelin is destroyed. Gone, as if an electrical wire’s rubber protection burned away. I thought of pruning.

Not good thoughts. Not thoughts of roses blooming in the spring. Not thoughts of a metaphorical vinedresser, divinely diligent, snipping here and nipping there to encourage growth. I read John, and for the first time in my life, I shuddered with the Gospel words.

Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

And burned. Wires frayed or fried. Memories fractured. One handout provided at the support group bluntly stated, “The Alzheimer’s patient is grappling with the loss of a lifetime of once-learned, once-stable images. They can no longer process new information.” My father’s world shrinks and shrivels. My mother’s world, as the primary caregiver, becomes a bramble patch of thorny decisions and demands.

Where is the good pruning?

A woman at the support group, nearly the same age as my mother, and with a husband in an Alzheimer’s care facility, said, “I try not to ask God why.” I agree! Oh, how often I’ve also taught, preached, and counseled that honest response. In the awful times of disease, divorce, or loss of job, don’t ask the crippling “why” question. Instead, claim the “what next” question. Build for the future. Trust God’s call to the next and the new.

I know it’s true. I watch the roses and I know it’s true. But I also watch my father and I can’t help myself. Why?

Years ago, through happenstance and persistence, I dined with writer Frederick Buechner. Strangers to each other, I had him to myself for a leisurely meal before his evening lecture. In the breaking of bread we talked. At the time, his family was literally trying to save their anorexic daughter. He shared about sitting with her in the hospital, her face bright and attentive, their conversation animated. With all the support of family and physicians, there were no guarantees of her future. And so, as they delighted in each other’s company, the father watched his daughter fill a spoon with food, lift it to her mouth, and then not eat.

I think she recovered. I think things turned out well for his family. But at that time, he didn’t know. All he could do was support his daughter. Laugh with her, touch her tenderly, and watch a spoon move toward the mouth and then lower, still containing the nourishment. And yet inside, Buechner said, there were only tears.

Pruning. We humans get our wires crossed. Frayed. Destroyed. Oh yes, I am weak enough, and faithless enough, to always ask, Why? Sometimes all we can do is simply support the other. Sometimes there is no recovery. I watch the roses in springtime, and my father in his forever winter.

in Peace,

Larry