The Importance of a Trellis

When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. Deuteronomy 24:21

A few years back, a group of us gathered in the wine country of Northern California to celebrate the thirtieth birthday of a dear friend's youngest daughter. It was a memory-making, enlightening, and grand celebration.

One afternoon, as we were walking through a vineyard and were surrounded by lush, green, healthy vines, I realized my technical knowledge of how grapes are grown was surprisingly and embarrassingly limited. The aha was that only some vines would bear fruit ... others would not; vines growing along banks of the hills along the trail, as gorgeous as they were, would not bear fruit, while those with the support of a trellis have the opportunity to be quite fruitful.

All the vines had the same environment: cool nights, rich soil, proper watering, pruning, and sun — yet without a trellis, no fruit. A trellis is essential to support and guide growth, allow air to circulate, and most importantly to expose the vine to full sunlight ... and yes, this also relates to finances.

Practices such as budgeting, financial planning, saving, patience, dialogue, and wise investing provide the cool nights, rich soil, watering, and pruning, while thoughtful development of core values, awareness of passion, vision, a Rule of Life, and openness to change provide a flexible trellis.

A trellis for a vineyard requires a series of wires, braces, and wooden posts. The structure, although adaptable over time and changing conditions, must have longevity, including the ability to withstand harsh weather, brutal wind, and long periods of heat. The structure needs to be deeply anchored in the ground so as not to topple with every slight shift in the soil.

Components for your financial trellis — the wires, braces, and posts that support your financial picture — are a result of reflection on and discernment of your priorities.

Ask yourself along with significant others in your life, "What is the fruit I wish my handling of finance matters could produce?" "What are the pieces I need to build my trellis to produce this fruit ... what light and air and grace and hope and love can I weave together to bring it forth?" Form this discernment into a group of core values and spiritual practices, then weave them in your Rule of Life to guide you in showing forth God's light and ruach — wind, spirit, and breath. In other words, fruitful fi nancial planning is a matter of both heart and mind, practical and conceptual — both/and not either/or.

Reflection Questions

1 Read Deuteronomy 24:19-22. Much of this fifth book of the Hebrew Scriptures aims to provide the framework for a covenant between Israel and God. It invites God's people to have an awareness of the obligations each individual has toward God and one another. What does this passage mean to you in the context of your life today? __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________

2 What are the components of your financial trellis? __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________

3 What is the anchor that holds your "trellis" in place? __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________

4 What are your core values and how can you apply them to your financial planning? __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________

Jack Pines and Artichokes

Douglas Wood

Parker Palmer, in A Hidden Wholeness, begins his first chapter, "Images of Integrity," with this quote from Douglas Wood, a Minnesotan whose wilderness is different than my wilderness. As Dr. Palmer uses the words "wholeness" and "undivided" to define integrity, I wonder how and where integrity has been manifested in my life. When have I felt wholeness, and did the feeling last? If it did not last, does that make the experience of wholeness for a while any less whole? What were the joys associated with feeling whole and living into, as John Donne states, being "part of the main?"

I also began to explore specific times when, on hindsight, integrity was clearly manifested in the lives of others. How might our financial planning, our saving, investing, and sharing contribute to wholeness?

I recognize that outward and visible signs assist me greatly as I grapple with integrity in my financial life and so I, a person integrally part of coastal California, began to wonder what is an image of integrity for me. What is the image of someone who perseveres and survives the environment — both the internal and external environment — and yet emerges being true to what and who they are? The image that often recurs for me is that of an artichoke.

Agricultural families in my greater geographic area have grown artichokes for centuries. You can see field after field of them along our rolling coastal farmland. In the spring, their beautiful soft purple blooms rise up and catch your eye. However, when harvested, the leaves are tough and cracked, with prickly tips that can draw blood, while the stem is worn, dirty, and beginning to fall apart. The artichoke itself does not evoke the word beauty; it is not perfection. It is, like Douglas Wood's jack pine, what it is: a budding, blooming, then course and barely edible thistle — an image of wholeness, of integrity.

As I use the artichoke, Parker Palmer uses the jack pine image as a way to begin exploring...