I spend a lot of time pruning fruit trees and bushes.  While I was tending my small orchard, I started to see God’s hand in my life reflected in the act of pruning.

When a gardener prunes, first she must look the plant over, inspecting the overall form and the growth of every branch.  Sun and air must be able to reach every branch and thus every fruit.  The inspection goes quickly for a well-tended plant, but longer if more work is to be done.  How, the gardener wonders, can I make this tree bear as much as possible for as long as possible?  The gardener must study the plant carefully before and after every cut.

Then, the actual pruning starts.  Shoots growing straight up out of a limb are all removed.  They suck the strength out of a tree, block sun and air, and rarely bear.  Doesn’t that sound like sinful habits?  It’s great if God can somehow lop them off and get them out of our life.

Then crossing branches must go.  There can be two lovely, strong, healthy branches, but if they cross, the gardener must choose one to remove.  To choose, the gardener has to predict the way the branches will grow in years to come.  Will one go on to shade another branch, to cross another, to droop too far when loaded with fruit?  Then that branch must go, and it often must be cut at its base.  But the branch doesn’t know why it is removed, and truly, it did nothing wrong.  The gardener, however, can see that removal will improve the plant.  While removing such a branch, I can see many times in my life when God removed something, and I thought it was so unfair and unnecessary.  Now, I can look at my life and be thankful that God let the better branch live for me.

Tree branches want to grow up, but they need to be spread out, again to get that sun and air.  So, a gardener can attach weights to branches to get them to spread.  These burdens have to be placed carefully so as not to break the branch with too much weight.  The weight is moved as the branch goes from 20 to 45 to nearly 90 degrees.  The weights stay through storms and through winter, sometimes for six months and sometimes for two years.  Have you ever carried a burden and later realized that the carrying opened you up to be a better person?

Throughout the pruning, a gardener must step back, over and over, to look at the whole plant, because each change effects the rest of the plant.  I think that if I can observe the needs of a plant, surely God sees what we need.  Know that God the gardener is studying you, deciding what to remove from your life and what to add so that you bear good fruit, fruit that will last.

Previously, I shared with you the story of a time when, at least for a few hours, I actually possessed a gun.

This is a second story and this time about a gun that “possesses” me.

These days as we recall gun tragedies in schools, our stories go back usually to beginning with Columbine and the student massacre that took place there. And while it is probably true that the horrid tales of modern day school massacres should be traced to Columbine, the reality is that  there is to be found a long history of gun violence in our schools.

And while this is not a tale of mass shootings or multiple deaths, it is a tale of a gun tragedy in a school and in our time. It is the tale that, for me, personally, marks the saga of modern day school gun violence.

This story unfolds in late April of 1984 on the West Side of Detroit in Precious Blood Grade School.

It was Holy Week and for the students Easter Break was right around the corner. In fact the final half day of classes before the Great Easter Break was coming to its final minutes. No doubt, with Springtime and Easter heavy in the air, the excitement among the students had to be running very high.

Minutes to go!

And in the eighth grade classroom one  young lad at that moment proudly decided to produce a unique token of his excitement.

He had brought a gun to school!

And this, minutes before that final bell, was the perfect time to produce this item and allow his friends to be properly impressed.

And, indeed, they must have been.

All the while, that is, until, somehow that gun went off. That weapon discharged.

A single bullet.

Just enough to tear across the room and lodge in the skull of an unsuspecting eighth grade girl, a young lady named Kelly.

And in an instant Kelly was gone.

Dead!

I was the pastor of Precious Blood Parish at that time and, thus, that school was directly in my care. One of “my kids,” Kelly, was dead and still another, perhaps a couple of others, responsible for her death.

In an instant what had promised to be a calm and quiet few hours before entering the Easter Triduum suddenly turned into nothing short of a nightmare not just for me but for so many.

There were grieving, shocked parents and frantic, fearful parents and bewildered, dazed boys and girls and sirens everywhere and police and media and questions – questions mostly  with no answers right then.

Try, just try and sit down on an evening like that with parents who have just lost their daughter and try, just try and find some words to make sense!

And the next day, with media still hounding and legal authorities still searching for answers, that day that in our calendar is called Holy Thursday, I and the faculty and the parish staff spent in sessions with grief counselors, all just trying to put our own spirits and souls somehow back together.

And on that Friday which we call “Good” there was the usual Service that focused on that long-ago cross and death even as we continued to deal with a right-here-right-now senseless death.

In the evening the church building was filled to overflowing, not for prayer and worship, although there likely was plenty of that present in  hearts and minds, but rather for a neighborhood and community meeting to gather and talk about what had happened and how some healing might begin.

And in Easter Week – the Funeral!

And a whole lot of years have passed  since that moment, those days and yet, in all honesty, every time a new story of a school and youngsters and a gun or guns emerges, well, for me it is like tearing a bandage off an old wound and opening it yet again.

I continue to be called to grieve and so I do.

And as I do, I can only imagine what some parents are going through and some kids and some teachers and some First Responders. Sandy Hook! Uvalde! And so many others!

And I can also suspect that, even after all these years, there are those who were part of this story who, likewise, still feel the pain and those wounds. This sort of hurt just does not heal.

A single bullet has taken one life.

It has also wounded countless others.

I know.

I continue to be one of those.