Pineridge Blog
The Vinedresser’s Notebook, is a great little book by my good friend, Sister Judy Sutera, a longtime member of the Mt St. Scholastica Benedictine Monastery in Atchison, Kansas. Judy is a brilliant scholar, but she claims that her greatest learning has occurred in the monastery vineyard.
With the Coronavirus pandemic the monastery has instituted a strict no visitor policy to protect the vulnerable older sisters in their community. So reading the book again is a way for me to visit from a safe distance. When first entering the monastery years ago Judy, young and easily distracted, was assigned to help an older sister who tended the grape vines in the large monastery garden. It turned out that both the vineyard and the vinedresser were sources of great wisdom—spiritual as well as practical.
Grape vines have become so domesticated that left alone they will produce only foliage and no fruit. The Vinedresser says, “They weren’t meant to fruit on their own. We are responsible to help form and shape their growth.” It is up to the aspiring vinedresser to learn when and how to make judicious and substantial cuts. “Do you want to keep everything, then expect nothing. Cut. And then cut some more,” is the advice of the seasoned Vinedresser. Judy applies this wisdom beyond the vineyard writing, “We will not wake up someday and find everyone around us loveable, but we can prune away our impatience and intolerance, and our bad habits and behaviors, and practice the discipline of love.”
Also, “We are what we think about. If we let go of what is not spiritual we will be slowly but surely transformed. When an elderly sister was asked the secret of her apparent calm and happiness, she replied, ‘It started when I realized I didn’t have to have and opinion about everything.’”
One of the favorite metaphors in the Bible for the people of God is a vine and God is imagined, by Jesus, as a vinedresser who prunes the vine so it will bear fruit. Jesus even says, “I am the vine, and you are the branches.” You might enjoy Judy’s book for a deeper appreciation of grapes, wine and scriptural allusions to the vine. I have returned to it again and again for its vintage wisdom, which ages well.