Jack Hardaway
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We have a wild tumble of vines in our backyard. It would technically be called a thicket or a briar patch.
Muscadine, wisteria, brambles, green briar, cross vine, ivy, morning glory, sweet pea, jasmine, and then sometimes tomato and cucumber volunteers splash up out of the green storm gasping for air and sunlight.
It is an overgrown tumble of sappy green stickiness.
It is a haven for living things.
When I get to trimming it back the vines drip a juicy glue of sap, the branches snag and cling, trying to pull me into the prickly green abyss of flourishing wildness.
The pruned branches fall to the ground and they quickly wither and dry in the sun. Eventually I mow over the dried husks and turn them into mulch.
The sticky green sap of living things.
God is like that.
Jesus is like that.
The juicy, gluey sap that makes us grow and that snags and clings pulling us into the wildness of communion with the Holy.
When we lose that connection, that abiding in the vine, then we diminish and wither.
The Gospel of Jesus the crucified and risen messiah, shows us a different vision of the Universe, a truer seeing of the world, and life, and humanity.
The life, the vine, the branches, growing and abiding, and abiding, and abiding. Eight times we hear that word today. Abide. Abide. Abide. Abide. Abide. Abide. Abide. Abide.
It is a contrary and countercultural understanding of things.
Remain. Abide.
Our world tells us to leave, to abandon, to forsake, to reject.
When we are limited to the cheap media rhetoric of NPR verses Fox News, we are not seeing true. We are diminished. We wither.
There is a third way.
The way of abiding.
God abides. God is steadfast.
The creeping vine gathering us out of our deadliness and into the verdant wild liveliness of communion with the Holy.
Abide in the vine.
Be havens for living things.
(Lang, Lukas and Zoe. You are getting ready to leave. To graduate and head off to college. As you leave, remember, remember to abide.)