Three days before Easter 2015, on Holy Thursday, my friend who owns a vineyard, brought three fruiting canes she had pruned from her vineyard. In February and again in March 2015, I spend time in her vineyard learning to prune away most of the existing fruiting canes, leaving only two canes per vine-head for fruit growth this year, along with two renewal spurs for fruitful growth in 2016. The three grapevine cuttings she brought to me were in a glass vase, because they were bursting with new life. What seemed just a month ago to be deadwood, or dormant sticks, are now budding out into verdant life, a beautiful picture of Easter. I put my friend’s Easter Grapevines in their vase on the Holy Communion Table in the Sanctuary, and referred to them on Holy Thursday, again at our Good Friday evening service, and then again at both our Easter morning Resurrection services, as a living sign of the resurrection being sung throughout God’s Creation. This week, I’ll head out to the vineyard to help with the training of the fruiting canes onto the lower trellises, a careful work, as the buds, which are easily damaged, are the carriers of future fruit waiting to be born. Every bud which gets knocked off or damaged is one less cluster of grapes in her vineyard.