Gordie 22 eight months after she dropped the D

[Gerda]

DnJ and Andrew -- I agree of course with DnJ but I love your ash tree story and it reminds me a lot of the ash tree in George Macdonald's incredible book, Phantastes, which anyone reading these words should go and get right now and read it cover to cover. He was CS Lewis' model in a way, and that book will give you a lot to think about in terms of your own journey and the MLCer.

But anyway -- Andrew's story could be interpreted in several ways, and I am going to go with DnJ's. The tree grows achingly slowly. We humans can't even tell it's growing day by day. Andrew gave his tree continued life not by cutting off a limb but by binding two limbs together. As I read it, I thought of how Gordie and his W needed a kindly tree-carer to come and rebind them -- they were already part of the same tree, but the tree was ill, and many thought a limb should be cut off. Instead, a tree-carer came and did something unusual to bind the limbs together again, to see if they could indeed grow together, to see if the bolt inside would cause them to bear fruit or become a hidden wound.

In Gordie's case, the tree-carer is God, so I have confidence that if he doesn't try to rush things but lets the caring be done by the only one who can mend it, the tree will be healed.