There is a man sitting on a bough of a tree. The Tree is very, very old, some think perhaps two thousand years. The Tree is the source of the branch, from small bud grown to a mighty bough, battered and blasted by centuries of gales a plenty but sturdy and undefeated.
Larger growing, season by season, fruitful, a bountiful blessing to generations, lives lived in its shade and shelter. Intimate connection with the Tree infusing life-giving nutrient. Deeply valued as a source of blessing, the Bough that was the centre of life.
Yet the Man, slowly saws at the Bough, a deepening groove on that ancient Branch that is his support and blessing.
For time came, a generation (even two) no longer honouring or appreciating the Tree.
”We have no need of such things, that old Tree and the Fruit,
we have other ways to bless ourselves, other values for our lives”.
Suppressed truth and memory of the source of centuries of life and blessing, the Tree and its Bough increasingly ignored, no longer with place in the communal life.
But yes still a few “who have eyes to see”, yes they saw the coming of the ‘Degradation’, a loss of blessing, a shrivelling, a disintegration, a coarsening sourness. Once a fruit-blessed life, an intimacy of connection with the Tree, now a barrenness, a shrillness of disharmonious fracturing.
More, not only was the Tree and its Bough decentred in a sea of ‘other centres’, we see the Man sawing, the groove Tree-side of him slowly deepening, life’s flow diminishing, fading blessing-until-
When the Bough breaks”
His Name – It is ‘Progressive’.
unbounded church 