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« Back to All Daily Grace

Clutching our camouflage

7.5.2021
|
Daily Grace

Oak trees are the last to lose their leaves in autumn, a phenomenon I never noticed until I began a daily practice of sitting still. One sunny November afternoon, I decided I would make bench-sitting part of my daily routine. During those months of sitting in quiet solitude, I learned that I am a lot like that oak tree clinging so fiercely to its leaves.

I suspect a lot of us are. We clutch our camouflage—the person we present to the world, to ourselves and even to God. Sitting in silence every day helped me see my “leaves”: busyness and productivity, drive and efficiency, achievement and success. I used these leaves to insulate me from my deepest self.

When a Japanese gardener “prunes open,” he or she cuts away not only dead branches and foliage, but also a number of perfectly healthy branches that detract the tree’s essential structure. I was afraid of who I’d find if I began to prune away my layers of self-protection.

In both gardening and in life, “pruning open” takes discipline, insight and years of trial and error. It is the path toward smaller, rather than larger; toward quiet, rather than loud; toward slow, rather than fast; toward simple, rather than busy; toward dismantling, rather than building; toward less, rather than more. Pruning open is the way in.

This message is an excerpt from “Pruning open” by Michelle Derusha in the January/February 2021 issue of Gather magazine.

Daily Grace has been offering you things to ponder and things to pray about for more than 10 years. For free. Women of the ELCA provides many other free online resources, too—see welca.org/resources. Please support Women of the ELCA at welca.org/give.

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Women of the ELCA
29 Jan
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Happy birthday, Katharina von Bora Luther! 🎉⭐️🎂 From "A Bold Life of Faith: Katharina von Bora Luther" by Linda Post Bushkofsky, A resource from Women of the ELCA, 2009. womenoftheelca.org/filebin/pd… #KatiesBirthday #2122KatiesFund #KatharinavonBoraLutherwasborntoday #Jan29 pic.twitter.com/fC9yD265al

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