It is said that the grass is greener on the other side of the hill. This is not true!
The grass is greener where you water it. Same with relationships, hopes, and dreams.
Dry sticks are symbols of hopes, dreams, or relationships have that have died. Bone dry. I read this to a group of men I meet with regularly. It provided a lively discussion about the dry sticks in our lives.
A student went to visit his old teacher who lived in the desert. His teacher took a piece of dry wood, planted it, and said to him: “Water it every day with a bottle of water until it bears fruit.”
The water, however, was so far away from there that the student had to go out late in the evening and come back the next morning. Three years later, the tree came to life and bore fruit. Then the old teacher took some of the fruit and brought it to the church, and said to the brothers: “Take and eat the fruit of obedience.”
Adapted from Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Father’s Introduced by Henri J.M. Nouwen
