Pruning the Good
Becoming Gardeners of Habits and Virtue
Glance about yourself in today’s current climate. What do you see?
In the face of wanton excess, moral disintegration, and societal decay, I find myself, like many of you, desiring to combat the spirit of the world with an onslaught of noble and revitalizing pursuits.
When social, religious, and familial traditions and customs are thrown to the wayside, we seek to create new or restore old practices to root our families and communities once again.
As social media and entertainment steal every bit of our lives, we attempt to confront this by structuring our days to be productive and active, hoping to leave no time for mindless scrolling. It can be easy to fall into an all or nothing mentality: we could have a day completely comprised of laziness and doom scrolling, or one entirely devoted to productive pursuits.
Confronting the crisis of unhealthy, highly processed and artificial foods, we attempt to go all in on healthy, local, fresh, and homemade food.
In the face of propaganda, clickbait, and disinformation, we seek to properly form our intellects by reading great books and returning to classic thinkers.
We try to fight sterility, modernization, and the machine by getting our hands and feet dirty outside in the garden, on the farm, on a mountain hike, in a forest camping, or simply on a gentle morning walk.
We have been put into this world to tend the garden. Left to its own devices, the natural world takes over, growing where it pleases, getting out of hand. An overgrown field, long abandoned by an aging farmer, is very different than a tended garden. Both are abundant and full of life, but one is wild, while the other has been planned, guided, and pruned with an end in mind.
Life and goodness are found in the natural world in both its untamed wildness and its well-planned gardens. Without man’s intervention, the natural world would go on growing. But God has placed us here to steward the earth. We are gardeners now, weeding and pruning the natural world for both nourishment and beauty. To prune is to acknowledge something as good, and to trim it in order for its goodness to be multiplied.
prune: to cut off or cut back parts of for better shape or more fruitful growth
Now let us return to our noble attempts to restore the culture and pursue the good life. Should we also prune those? What does that pruning look like?
For myself, I find it so easy to get overwhelmed by all of the good things that I try to accomplish each day. I know that to serve the Lord I should go to church and read the scriptures. Why then am I not doing that 100% of my time? I know that I should get outside and exercise. Why am I not running out my door this very instant? I know that I should return my friend’s call and invite a few people to dinner soon. Why not tonight? I know I should read more. I know I should write more. I know I should cook three healthy balanced meals a day. I know I should limit my screen time. I know I should dust my house. I know I should prep this and schedule that and do, do, do.
That’s not even touching on the causes I stand for or the ideals I hold. Shouldn’t I be on the front lines for every cause I support? Shouldn’t I be overturning my entire life this instant to conform with my standards and ideals?
Yes, we should live out our beliefs and strive for virtue. But maybe we can first take a deep breath, pause, and prune back some of the panic and overwhelm. There are literally countless good things we could be doing to be smarter, wiser, kinder, stronger, healthier, and holier. But let’s not let our efforts become an overgrown field, where goodness exists but without direction. God made us stewards of the earth, let’s use some of the skills he’s given us to prune the garden of our lives.