Several years ago, the apricot tree in our front yard yielded so much fruit that we couldn’t use or give it all away. It was a favorite of the Department of Agriculture, who annually set small traps in its limbs to monitor for the presence of Mediterranean fruit flies.
Then, without warning, branches started to wither. Within two years, there was no more fruit and there were no more leaves. Two hundred dollars removed the dead tree from our yard, but not from our affections.
One felled tree tells a history in the rings. In them, one can see the emerging story of a life, first as a young sapling, then as an adolescent and finally as a tree with a mature trunk, limbs and leaves providing refuge from the sun and generous fruit.
Our vocations are like trees. As we grow in expertise, they provide maturing experiences and increasing financial rewards. Eventually, they bloom and yield fruit in our lives.
Maybe that’s the way things used to be.
Increasingly, vocations and the workplace have become far less secure. Like trees being felled, many friends have had their employment cut from under them, and we wonder if we can hear the same chainsaws approaching us. If we’re fortunate, the saws come close and pass by. They’re after a different tree, for now at least.
Mushrooms proliferate in the decaying tree stump, feasting on the nutrients that were once a tree.
Those who have suffered the loss of a vocation wistfully examine the remains, hoping to find a green shoot that will offer a new future and source of provision. In place of the tree, however, there are only mushrooms.
But mushrooms are fragile things that come and go quickly, leaving behind no limbs, no leaves, no shade, and no fruit.
That’s the trouble with mushrooms.