Build Your Trellis

 

jj's trellis

Peter Scazzero from his book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (EHS) while writing about a ‘Rule of Life’: “Please don’t be intimidated by the word rule. The word comes from the Greek for ‘trellis.’ A trellis is tool that enables a grapevine to get off the ground and grow upward, becoming more fruitful and productive.”

Under the direction of our interim Pastor Mike Harbert, La Crescenta Presbyterian Church trekked through EHS where we learned that a Rule of Life acts as a trellis helping us to be more intentional and live in Christ and to be more fruitful. Our trellis is a structure that takes into consideration our unique set of gifts and spiritual practices and helps us to focus on God in all we do.

There were eight sessions where we first met as a large group divided into table groups for shared prayer, periods of silence, viewing video materials, and continuing through work sessions. Upon completion of the series many table groups opted to continue for two or three weeks for a deeper look into the material. Our table opted to delve into creating our own ‘Rule of Life’ by sharing our experiences and plans for our own Rule.

Craig, a co-leader of our table-group of six men, brought a package of materials he’d gleaned from his personal study and research on the topic, one for each of us. Between what Craig brought us and the information from EHS we had and have plenty of tools and materials to construct and maintain our own trellis.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a visual person relying on circuit diagrams, stick maps of microwave systems, sketches of basketball plays, timelines, and stuff like that. For my work to build a trellis I went to PowerPoint, thus the diagram shown above. Over the last few years I’ve grown into a person who has increasingly relied on writing to grapple with subjects and my thoughts about them, thus this post.

If you look at my sketch you might notice there are stakes and cross members that are blank. Mine is a work in progress and likely will be for the foreseeable future. I’ve set my stakes in the soil where the seeds of my grapevine will be planted, or roses, if you prefer. I’ve enriched the soil with a phrase I cling to, “His grace is enough because His sacrifice is complete.” Without grace I have no hope in having a healthy vine or a sound trellis. I am using the stakes to show the various Spiritual Disciplines upon which I will hang my cross members and I have noted in blue the activities I hope to engage in under those disciplines. The cross members I am putting up are the more detailed activities I plan to pursue and that incorporate the basic elements of a Rule.

Build a trellis for yourself.

As noted above, my trellis is a work in progress. I will add stakes and cross members as needed and may, at times, remove some as the focus of my life changes through the seasons. I will be tending my trellis and the vines that grow on it. I’ll need to shore up the connections between the stakes and cross members and make sure my stakes are well grounded and not coming loose. I will aerate the soil, add nutrients, and weed out the harmful plants that crop up so that the vines produce their best fruits and blooms. Ongoing maintenance of the trellis and its dependent vines is critical for my effectiveness and the peace of knowing I make a difference.

I am the oldest member of our table-group and feeling an increasing urgency to finish well the race in front of me -> to have a trellis full of grapes or lovely blooms of roses. As happens in vineyards, we are not always the people who reap the fruits, press the grapes into juice, or age the wine. We are not the only ones who walk among the trellises and enjoy the roses and still others might pick them to display and share. I am content with that.

This urgency of mine to finish well, assuming I can follow through (this is where grace is required for me), is the impetus to build and maintain a trellis, my Rule of Life, and to tend the vines growing on them.

Mind and maintain your trellis.

I believe we all have a Rule of Life, intentional and well-built or not. If not, then it is likely a heap of stakes and cross members with vines choked out with weeds and laying in rot on the ground.

Therefore, I urge you to take stock, build a trellis, plant some vines, and mind the whole thing. I believe you will be healthier and happier for it.

In His grip,

jerry

Author’s Note: Trellises (or might that be trellisi?) come in various shapes and sizes. The photo below is of Ashley’s Trellis, my daughter. She recently completed it and I have every hope of seeing it festooned with sweet peas, some I believe that are descendants from sweet peas at Bass Lake that my Grandma Matt kept. Her trellis is well designed and built with a vision for beauty and bounty and is a reflection of her own Rule of Life. I love it.

Ashley's Trellis

Where Did That Come From?

 

Where Did That Come From?

God is The Creator and he created man in his own image. Therefore, man is creative. This is the line of thinking that spurred me to become a writer. When I was young, I used to think my creativity was expressed on the basketball court. Perhaps it was true, but to be honest, it was a low target (and likely a copout) so when I couldn’t play, what then? I searched and now I write. Here I go…

While condensing my parent’s lives from a house and woodcrafter’s shop on ten acres with storage in every nook and cranny to a target of a family history and distributed memories, I have over the past 18 months drifted in and out of grief and written of it from time to time. Today I was at the storage facility where we keep boxes of stuff (tools, papers, photos, memories), high-end golf equipment, a piece of furniture, and an old workbench. My target for the day was to dismantle the workbench.

My objective was troubling to me and I went about the work with a haze of melancholy draped over my shoulders. It was easy for me to understand. The bench was older than me. My grandfather built it for his workshop in Gardena. My dad brought it to La Crescenta and put it in his little workshop that he had excavated underneath our deck in the backyard in La Crescenta and he then moved it to Merlin, Oregon and created amazing works of intarsia on it.

I moved it to the storage facility with the thought we would move it to Ashley and Matt’s new place in Santa Barbara once they were organized in their garage and they would create on it. However, the bench needed a lot of work to be stable and it was on its last legs. I discussed this at length with Ashley and we decided to move it to an alternate place which would have been in our backyard as a potting bench. It still needed a lot of work and we don’t pot much so we passed and there was no one in the family who could use it.

When I put screwdriver, claw hammer, and prybar to the bench I was saddened. I could not figure out how to get another generation out of this thing. I removed the three-sixteenth-inch steel top and decided to put it on the worktable I’d built in my own garage. As I stacked the 2x12s and 2x4s on my dolly I sunk a little deeper into glummyland but when I got down to the 1x stuff, a tongue-and-grove backing and some support strips, I remembered the Christmas trees I’d made of the old roofing materials from our front porch project and now I think there will be a Christmas tree or two to pass along. Then I remembered the bird houses and other decorative things I made from the old cedar fencing from our replacement project and I think there will be birds finding new nesting places.

The wood from a two-generation old workbench will find new life with three more generations; mine, my kids, and their kids.

Thinking about how creativity sprung from a feeling of melancholy lead me to wondering what it was that inspired God to create. Was He melancholy and then turned his creativity to making everything we see and feel? Was She lonely? These are not questions I will try to answer – they are way beyond my paygrade. It likely has something to do with the fact that God is love and needs entities to express that love toward.

While pondering this and wondering where sparks of creativity come from and what motivates someone to create, I came across one of my favorite Bible verses:

Psalm 121: 1 – “I lift up my eyes to the hills-- where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

No mater the source or who your muse is, once the spark is set to the idea, put your heart and hands to the task and see what good comes from it.

In His grip,

jerry

 

Author’s note: Melancholy may not be the proper word for me to use in describing my feelings of the day as an online definition reads, “a feeling of pensive sadness, typically with no obvious cause”. I know the cause but I like the term and my friend Webster’s definitions give me some latitude so I’m keeping melancholy. After all, it’s my story.