There’s an old story about a certain tree that, of all the trees in the orchard, was the most dearly sentimental to the Farmer. And the Farmer pruned it carefully to produce a lot of fruit. The Farmer had special powers to call down rain from the clouds as they drifted by in the skies overhead and to the sun floating above the clouds to shine down its warm rays. And the Farmer fed the soil around this Dear Tree using an ancient recipe of nourishing goodness that seeped down to the root. The root of the Dear Tree fed the branches with its special sap to make their beautiful fruit plentiful.
The beautiful fruit of the Dear Tree branches sparkled for all the world to see and some of the branches became secretly proudly self-aware. The branches of the other trees in the orchard tried but could never produce anything like the fruit that the Dear Tree was laden with. The proud branches of the Dear Tree became so full of themselves they even boasted over the other branches from their own Dear Tree! And the Farmer watched and listened with silent sadness. The conceited branches were using all the Farmer’s generous caring love for hurting the other branches.
The Farmer walked out of the orchard to the wildlands beyond and foraged shoots from trees out there. They were wild and scrappy, but the Farmer looked through the outward appearance. At the trunk of the Dear Tree, the Farmer broke off each proudly
