My Own Lemon Tree

I wrote this post back in August when I hacked up the lemon tree.

Tuesday before last, when I came home from volunteering at Greenhouse Park, I cut some diseased branches off the lemon tree in the backyard. Ants filled most of these dead branches and I guess they were harvesting some kind of food (aphids) in there (reminds me of the Matrix movie where the machines were harvesting humans like batteries).

Did you know why pruning a plant is good for it? When branches are cut from any plant, the plant will aggressively put down more roots and deeper. This helps the plant to flourish in health and beauty.

When some neighbor or power monger “cuts” me, I certainly feel pain by it. But I can then put down deeper roots to drink Living Water. I can remember to breathe and bask in the sunshine. New fruit grows better than before and any neighbors whether cutters or healers, may receive blessing from me.

Often times the life I experience and the religion I already practice is described best after reading Christian Scripture. When I wrote the above, I was recalling bits from 1 Thessalonians and James about suffering, the Gospel of John about living water, and Galatians 6 about the fruit of the Spirit. I’m pretty sure the Hebrew or Greek words for “spirit” are the same for “breath”.

By the way, it's not really my lemon tree, but as renters I think we're sort of in charge of it.

“Lemons for free?”

True story. A fortunate woman living in Wollongong bought a house. From a vibrant lemon tree in the yard fell more than enough lemons. The woman didn’t like lemons so she put them in her garden waste bin. There were enough lemons that the garbage men noticed and reported the incident.

Council told the woman, “You can’t put your lemons in there.”
The woman said, “But there’s not enough room in my regular rubbish bin.”
They said, “Why don’t you eat the lemons?”
“I don’t like lemons.”
“Share them.”
“Give them away for free? No way.”
“I'm sorry? . . . I thought you said you don’t like lemons.”
“Yes, but I’m not giving them away for free when they're sold at the market for so much a kilo.”
“[Sigh] Why don’t you take them down to the corner and sell them then. You can’t put them in your garden waste bin. That’s for non-food garden waste like weeds and branches.”

I pray the woman didn’t cut the tree down as one last spiteful resort.

Did you know that many trees and bushes share root systems? If you poison a large Camphor Laurel tree, for example, you may see another tree fall dead 100 meters away! So if I treat my neighbor with poison (or stinginess), how do I know it won’t also poison or devour who and what I know and love?

Did you know that your neighbor is not only the one living on your block? Even God is a neighbor. As unknown as God typically is, God treats every neighbor with free sunshine and rain along with the breath of life. What a great neighbor!

Say I have a lemon tree in my backyard, not of my own planting, along with a home which I can afford because I've been welcomed into my particular socio-economic class. Am I the kind of neighbor that accepts these gifts thanklessly? Am I the kind of neighbor who hordes? Do I poison or steal? I’m trying to be honest about these questions this year so any neighbors can be healed and my own lemon tree, which I could never earn, can bless others.