The Wisdom of Trees

“In A Tree Full of Angels” Macrina Wiederkehr wrote...

I must share with you a story about a particularly barren time in my life when I used a tree for a spiritual director. I learned so much that year because I listened in silence…

Because it was small I couldn’t lean on it but could only sit beside it. That taught me a lot about what the role of spiritual guide should be.

Even though it was small, it had the ability to give me a certain amount of shade. You don’t have to have a lot of leaves to give shade. Because it was silent I listened deeply. You don’t need a lot of words to connect with God.

When it got thirsty I watered it. The miracle of water is a little like the miracle of God’s love. That little sycamore taught me a lot about foot-washing. Watering it was a great joy. A soul-friend relationship never works only one way. There is a mutual giving and receiving.

I learned from my tree that being transplanted is possible. I can always put down roots again, connect with the Great Root, and grow on…

I wouldn’t recommend using a tree for a spiritual guide all the days of one’s life, but that sycamore got me through a long stretch of barrenness. It was only a little tree, and I didn’t know it was holy until I spent time with it. Truly, holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary."

A lovely piece I thught...It got me thinking of the wisdom of trees...

One of the many gifts of ministry is that it compels me to pay attention to the turning wheel of the year. It is a gift for which I am eternally grateful, for it brings so many delights.

Part of my annual cycle are twice yearly visits to Gladstone’s Library in Hawarden, with the ministry group I am a part of. I will be there again this week. During the two days away I often go for a walk with my friend and colleague John Harley. Now the last time we were there we passed another colleague who was out walking alone. We asked how she was and she replied that she was well but had just seen a deeply upsetting sight. It was interesting that both mine and John’s initial thought was that she must have seen a dead sheep. She simply told us to pay attention and we would see what she meant. So we carried on walking and saw no dead sheep. What we did see was an ancient and once great tree that had finally succumbed to the elements and had broken apart and died. It lay there lifeless on the ground. A tree that had no doubt seen so much over the centuries.

Trees are humbling things. Their presence keep our all our too human hubris in check. They outlive most of us, they live for centuries standing still and silent throughout the changing seasons and years. Yes eventually their lifespans do come to an end, they do not live forever like no element of life does. They come from the Great Mystery and return to it too. They experience the changing seasons, but offer no commentary on it.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this but the trees have remained barren a little longer this year, Spring has flowered a little slower. Why this is I do not know, but I have noticed so. Thelma Gott (a member of one of the congregations I serve)made reference to this as I visited her and her husband Malcolm last Monday, May Day. She said to me that the trees appeared barer this year and then all of a sudden they just seemed full of green and life. She said it was as if it had happened overnight, suggesting that this was probably due to the few days of sunshine we had a couple of weeks back.

I agreed with her suggesting that the spring seemed a little later blooming this year. I mentioned that the cherry blossom tree in the garden at the chapel had only just begun to flower and how it had done so several weeks earlier the year before.

Now the reason I know this is thanks to Social Media, specifically Facebook. Each day Facebook reminds me of posts I have made on that day the previous years. Well this Tuesday the day after my conversation with Thelma it reminded me of a “blogspot” I had created and posted that day the year before. In it I talked about my love for Cherry Blossom, beginning with a conversation about the very same tree in the garden at the chapel. This again proved to me that blossom was later blooming this year, as by this time last year it had been in full bloom for a couple of weeks. I smiled to myself as I re-read and posted the piece as I began to write the service that this "blogspot" has come from. Thank you!

Please click here to access Cherry Blossom Blogspot

So yes the spring has been later blooming this year…why I am not entirely sure, but I offer thanks and praise that the cherry blossom has finally arrived.

I have grown to love the way that trees celebrate the changing seasons, in silence and security. Just standing there as symbols of the changing nature of life. Yes they bend and reshape and change in colour. They look different throughout the year and yet stand there safe and secure expressing the eternal nature of life.

The trees have much to teach us. My name sake and American colleague Rev Greta W. Crosby has recognised this. In “Tree and Jubilee” she describes a silent none judgemental presence that the trees offer her, something we humans cannot give no matter how well we may think we are at listening. The trees simply stand there erect and open, never shrinking away or rejecting, offering unconditional love and acceptance. She wrote:

“I have long had a sense of fellowship with trees. Since I was a child, I have sought their company from time to time because I like the way I feel in their presence. I enjoy their beauty, but it is more than that. I used the word “presence” in a very strong sense. I felt their presence as living things. And in that presence, I often feel relaxed and centered, peaceful, restored to inner equilibrium.

For many of us, life is the meaning of the tree. But for me, perhaps the greatest thing about the tree is its silence. Whatever the tree says to us, whatever it answers to our questing, the tree gives its message without words. And the tree bears with us well. It does not judge. It does not react to our anxieties. It does not run after us. It just stands there with open arms.”

The great religious traditions have recognised the wisdom of trees. In many of them you will find "The Tree of Life". a beautiful and universal symbol, standing for so much. The ancient Chinese, Assyrians, Egyptians, Baylonians and Samarians all had a tree of life symbol. There is Ygdrassil, the Norse Tree of Life, The Etz Ha Hayim of the Kaballistic Jews. The Bahai's speak of it and Christians of all kinds speak of the tree of life, with healing leaves, found in the Book of Revelations. The book of Genesis tells of two trees: a Tree of Knowledge, which is the tree of good and evil, and the Tree of Life, the tree of immortality. I wonder why Adam and Eve chose knowledge over life...I’m not going there today that’s a discussion for another time and place.

The May Pole is symbolic of the barren tree, stripped of life preparing to awaken again and bare fruit once more. On May Day, - which was celebrated last Monday as I was enjoying my conversation with Thelma about the ever changing cycle of life - the May Pole dance is enacted as a symbol of rebirth and everlasting life. The bare tree is re-clothed with decorative bands and flowers, giving us the opportunity to celebrate life’s re-creation. Isn’t this another symbol of the eternal tree of life; it is a symbol of re-birth and renewal; it is a sign post to the path of enlightenment; it is revealing a timeless and eternal wisdom.

Again Thelma and myself talked of the May Day festivals that were once so popular in north of England. She and her husband Malcolm recounted dancing the May Pole up in Colne in the Pennine hills of Lancashire. I recounted the same tradition taking place in Gawthorpe where on May Day they dance the Pole and also they enjoy the coal race where the men of the village race with sacks of coal through the town. Up and down this green and pleasant land all kinds of ancient May Day traditions are re-enacted, traditions that are slowly dying off. They have not yet gone the way of the “Whit Walks" and May Queens that have virtually died off, but they are doing so. I suspect that these are further signs of the secularisation of this land. There is a deep part of me that is saddened by the fact that increasingly we fail to recognise the sacredness of life. I have a feeling that this is none too wise.

There is an eternal wisdom in the trees. The Buddha gained enlightenment beneath the Bodhi Tree. The tree blessed him and as it did it showered him with blossom. Wisdom also comes to mind when I think of the Tree of Life, an eternal wisdom that comes with age. In “Eternal Echoes” John O’Donohue recognises the wisdom of trees. He wrote:

“A tree is a perfect presence. It is somehow able to engage and integrate its own dissolution. The tree is wise in knowing how to foster its own loss. It does not become haunted by the loss nor addicted to it. The tree shelters and minds the loss. Out of this comes the quiet dignity and poise of a tree's presence. Trees stand beautifully on the clay. They stand with dignity. A life that wishes to honour its own possibility has to learn too how to integrate the suffering of dark and bleak times into a dignity of presence. Letting go of old forms of life, a tree practises hospitality towards new forms of life. It balances the perennial energies of winter and spring within its own living bark. The tree is wise in the art of belonging. The tree teaches us how to journey. Too frequently our inner journeys have no depth. We move forward feverishly into new situations and experiences which neither nourish nor challenge us, because we have left our deeper selves behind. It is no wonder that the addiction to superficial novelty leaves us invariably empty and weary. Much of our experience is literally superficial; it slips deftly from surface to surface. It lacks rootage. The tree can reach towards the light, endure wind, rain, and storm, precisely because it is rooted. Each of its branches is ultimately anchored in a reliable depth of clay. The wisdom of the tree balances the path inwards with the pathway outwards.”

...Oh the wisdom of the tree...

Trees can teach us so much of how to live more deeper rooted and open lives. If we follow their example we can become the loving presence we would love to be in the world. We just need to observe their presence and stand as they stand, arms out stretched. I was thinking this last Tuesday morning as I stood in the garden at Dunham Road, reflecting on the conversation I had shared with Malcom and Thelma and the many others I have with the people I serve. I also reflected on the short time that I will be able to enjoy the cherry blossom, in the certain knowledge that it will flower again next year and will continue to do so when I am long gone. It keeps me humble, it keeps me respectful and it helps me to revere life, to worship the earth, the clay from which all life is formed and to acknowledge the universal spirit that gives birth to it all

We are all formed from the tree of life, the tree of renewal, the tree of re-birth. May we know this wisdom and may we bring it to life through our very being.

Do you believe in angels? Do you believe there is something good in everything you see?

There are messengers of love and hope all around us. The real problem is that we just don't see it and just don't believe it...Do I believe in angels? I see them everywhere...Do I believe that there is something good in everything? I cannot fail to see it, If I would but open my eyes.


I love the following story it says so much about how even people of great faith can fail to see the blessings right in front of their eyes...I see angels everywhere...

A terrible storm came into a town and local officials sent out an emergency warning that the riverbanks would soon overflow and flood the nearby homes. They ordered everyone in the town to evacuate immediately.

A deeply faithful man heard the warning and decided to stay, saying to himself, “I will trust God and if I am in danger, then God will send a divine miracle to save me.”

The neighbours came by his house and said to him, “We’re leaving and there is room for you in our car, please come with us!” But the man declined. “I have faith that God will save me.”

As the man stood on his porch watching the water rise up the steps, a man in a canoe paddled by and called to him, “Hurry and come into my canoe, the waters are rising quickly!” But the man again said, “No thanks, God will save me.”

The floodwaters rose higher pouring water into his living room and the man had to retreat to the second floor. A police motorboat came by and saw him at the window. “We will come up and rescue you!” they shouted. But the man refused, waving them off saying, “Use your time to save someone else! I have faith that God will save me!”

The flood waters rose higher and higher and the man had to climb up to his rooftop.

A helicopter spotted him and dropped a rope ladder. A rescue officer came down the ladder and pleaded with the man, "Grab my hand and I will pull you up!" But the man STILL refused, folding his arms tightly to his body. “No thank you! God will save me!”

Shortly after, the house broke up and the flood waters swept the man away and he drowned.

When in Heaven, the man stood before God and asked, “I put all of my faith in You. Why didn’t You come and save me?”

And God said, “Son, I sent you a warning. I sent you a car. I sent you a canoe. I sent you a motorboat. I sent you a helicopter. What more were you looking for?”

There are angels all around us bearing gifts of love and compassion, they are truly heaven sent. The problem is we just do not see it or we cannot believe it.

Last week I attended an interfaith friendship circle at the home of Michael Jackson, no not the recently deceased prince of pop, but a local solicitor. Michael has been practising Buddhism since the early 1970’s, is married to a Jewish woman and also attends and leads a meditation class at the local Anglican Church. He is a great example of religious pluralism in action.

Michael led a conversation on Buddhism, his personal experiences with it and his understanding of the tradition. It was an enjoyable evening and we shared a lively discussion. I have been listening to a lot of different Buddhist recently and each time I seem to hear a different take on it. This happens in all walks of life and in all faith traditions I suspect, I know it is not unique to Buddhism.

During the conversation Michael talked about the Buddha finding enlightenment under the Bodhi tree and his experience of doubt and confusion as to what he ought to do about it. Michael described how a Brahmin Angel descended from the heavenly realm and spoke to the Buddha and told him that he must go and teach what he had learnt. For some reason it was this part of the discussion that made me sit up and really listen. Mohsin, a Muslim, also took particularly interest. I suspect that this is because Mohammad had experienced a similar encounter. He saw the arch angel Gabriel by the Lote – tree. I had never heard a Buddhist talk about angels before, nor have I heard a Brahmin Angel described before. The Brahmin is the Hindu word for the Divine. I was a little puzzled by all of this, it certainly got me thinking.

I have been thinking about angels ever since, both in the religious traditions and in ordinary everyday life. If angels are messengers from God, then surely we can all meet them in our everyday encounters. I have come to believe that the Divine speaks through everyday life. As one of my favourite hymns goes “God speaks to us in bird and song , in winds that move the clouds along , above the din of toil and wrong, a melody of love.” I think the problem is not so much whether angels exist or not, it’s that we are just not aware of them. We don’t see them and we don’t hear them because they are everywhere. We cannot see the wood for all of the trees.

Angels are of course central to the Christmas story. At this time of year we are surrounded by them. Just go to virtually any primary school up and down the land and you will see little boys and girls dressed as Angels, somewhere in the background. No they don’t get the central lead roles, but they are there quietly and serenely watching over the main players.

The Hebrew and Greek words for angel (malak and aggelos) simply means “messenger”. In the Christmas story it is the Arch Angel Gabriel who delivers the news that Elizabeth will give birth to John the Baptist and that Mary will soon be carrying Jesus. These are both described as miracles as Elizabeth cannot have children and Mary is a virgin. Gabriel appears again to the Shepherds and it is said during the Easter story too. Within the Judea-Christian tradition angels are seen as the deliverers of the “good news”. The Jewish scriptures are littered with individuals encountering angels. In some of these accounts it is suggested that not only are these angels delivering a message from the Divine but may well be God itself. They are sometimes referred to as “the angel of the Lord” and not just simply an angel (by the way another memeber of the Altrincham Interfaith Group is called Ann Angel and yes she is).

Angels are found in other traditions too. In Islam they are depicted as messengers of Allah. Belief in angels is one of the six articles of the Islamic faith. The Baha’i faith depicts angels as beings who have been released from the bondages of self and become endowed with the attributes of the spiritual and are therefore revealers of God’s Love and Grace. In Zoroastrianism angels are not messengers of the divine but are instead associated with different aspects of the divine creation, in this sense they are similar to the Hindu Deva’s. Zoroastrians also believe that each person has their own guardian angel.  Angels or their equivalent are found in many other traditions too, both ancient and modern.

It is untrue to see belief in angels as some relic from the past that has been dismissed in the modern age. I have met many people who talk of their belief in angels and who claim to have encountered them in their lives. When they do talk of angels I suspect that they are not talking about some winged genderless character such as is depicted in art of even in films like “Dogma”, although I know that some are.

In 2009 a survey by the economist revealed that 55% of Americans believed in angels. The same survey revealed that only 39% believed in evolution; 36% believed in anthropogenic global warming; 34% believed in ghosts; and 34% believed in UFO’s. A similar survey in Britain revealed that 34% of the population expressed a definite belief in angels, as messengers of God. Similar results can be found in surveys conducted around the world. Many people believe in angels. some people who do believe in angels express a disbelief in God. Many of those who say that they believe go further, claiming that they have actually encountered angels in their lives.

What can be made of all of this? Well I personally have too much respect for humanity to merely dismiss these claims. I hope I never mock people for what their honest reflection on their own life experiences have taught them. Personally I am not aware of encountering angels in the way that some people describe them, either today or in ancient times. Therefore I find it difficult to believe in angels in a literal sense. That said when they are described as a presence that either watches over us or as a messenger from God, then I can say that I am constantly experiencing them. I certainly hear messages of peace and goodwill increasingly in my life, even during the hardest of times. These guardians and or messengers do not have to have wings or halos. Nor do they have to live in some celestial realm. They are here amongst us, right here right now.

I have come to know the lure of Divine love, I have experience of the Divine constantly offering itself to me and believe this is happening to all life. I believe that God or at least God’s love is constantly speaking in and through life waiting for a response. If I pay attention to what is around me, I know that I am surrounded by angels. I see them in ordinary everyday life; people carrying messages of love to one another, people who are sent to rescue one another. I have witnessed it in the world I inhabit and I see it in my daily interactions. That said I also see darkness too. I see people turning away from love and hurting one another. Maybe we do this because we cannot or will not listen to the messages of love trying to burst into our lives.

I have also heard about these angels in the conversations I have with ordinary everyday people. I am not just talking about acts of kindness here, but also moments when something has spoken directly to people and they felt guided and led at important moments in their lives and as a result have responded appropriately. I offer a prayer of thanks for every single one of those messages of love that people have shared with me. Thank you.

I believe that there is that of God in each and every one of us, we are all made from the same stuff and we all return to it in the end. God to me speaks through life. Therefore all of life is potentially a messenger of the Divine. We just need to be open to the love within life and respond to it in order to experience and express it and pass it on to others. We certainly need it.

We encounter angels in our lives each and every day. They are here among us; they are in our homes and in our communities.

We are all sent by God. We are all God sent. We are all messengers of that Divine love.

The language of the heart is universal. It can break through any barrier. The key is to listen for it and learn to express it and to let love have its way.