At a recent “Colours of Grief: Our Shared Experience of Love and Loss”, a group we host at Dunham Road, that offers space in which we share and hold each other in our experiences of grief, a man in attendance shared some wisdom from a nature program he had watched online. He spoke about how a certain type of tree survived hurricanes; how the trees in question while appearing to be standing alone were actually connected and supporting one another. It would seem that their roots not only spread far and wide into the earth, but actually connected together and held the trees firm while the branches and trunks were buffeted and all around was devastated. He shared this beautiful wisdom as we spoke about the need to connect and hold one another in our struggles and suffering that no one is an island. That we need one another, that we are held together by a web of mutuality. As you can imagine the conversation sparked my homiletic consciousness.
A couple of days later I tried to contact the man to ask if he could remember where he had seen the program, unfortunately he could not. I was going to give up but the thought would not let me go. It got me thinking about community and roots and how strong and interconnected roots not only protect the individual but allow them to grow and thrive. It also got me thinking about trees. I have been noticing the trees ever since, paying deep attention.
As I look at the trees I feel humbled. 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. Their presence keep our all our too human hubris in check.
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 as the seasons progress 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 recognises this. 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. In “Tree and Jubilee” 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.”
I was thinking about these qualities as Sue and I walked around the grounds of Chatsworth House last Monday. Sue, like Greta, often embraces trees and she did several times that day. I did not, I simply observed them reverently, occasionally finding myself bowing toward them and as I did my mind wandered to concept of “The Tree of Life”
The “Tree of Life” is a beautiful and universal symbol that can be found in many of the world’s religious traditions. 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 “The Tree of Knowledge over “The Tree of Life”. The tree of life is a symbol of re-birth and renewal; it is a sign post to the path of enlightenment; it reveals a timeless and eternal wisdom. The Buddha gained enlightenment beneath the Bodhi Tree. The tree blessed him as it did so showering him with blossom. Wisdom also comes to mind when I think of the “Tree of Life”, an eternal wisdom that comes with age. A deeper wisdom than knowledge alone.
There is a wisdom in the trees, they have so much to teach us. The story I had heard in the grief group kept on nagging at me. I wanted to discover more. Sue did some research for me and found some fascinating articles online, but not exactly what I heard about and was seeking. One was a piece on “The Hidden Life of Trees: What they feel and how they communicate – Discoveries from a secret world” by Peter Wohlleben. He is a German forrester who has revolutionized his field. Through years of dedicated work he has highlighted an unprecedented level of cooperation among trees in a forest, noting that “mother” trees suckle the young saplings, feeding them enough sugars produced by their own photosynthesis to keep them from dying. The trees are connected by their roots, which grow together like a network. Their root tips have highly sensitive brain-like structures that can distinguish whether the root that it encounters in the soil is its own root, the root of another species, or the roots of its own species. He also explains how trees communicate through electrical signals that can be measured through the bark and roots. They send chemical signals through the air when they are attacked by insects. Nearby trees receive these messages and have time to prepare their defenses. Something that has been named as the Wood Wide Web.
Another article described the giant redwood trees of California, the largest trees in the world that have survived for thousands of years throughout turbulent times. It seems that these trees are unique amongst tall trees as their roots are not deep, they grow outwards instead and when they come in contact with roots of other Redwoods they wrap around each other multiple times and form a strong connection. Each tree shares a bond with another tree through its roots, until eventually, every single tree is interconnected. The roots hold on to one another through the harshest of weather, and keep the family of trees standing tall and strong, together. The roots of older and wiser trees hold on to the roots of trees just beginning to grow. They are held and protected by and underground system of interconnection, their strength is shared and they grow together.
I thought that this article must have been describing the trees I had heard about, but it was not. I kept on searching and then I found the film, from a channel entitled “Think Like a Tree”. It was a story about Hurricane Katrina and the 700 trees on Oak Street in New Orleans. The houses were completely destroyed their but only 4 out of 700 oaks had the same fate, the rest survived intact. There was a good reason for this, one being their spiral trunks and branches which allowed them to flex in the wind. Also their leaves curled into a Fibonacci sequence which allowed the wind to flow through with minimal friction. All of these characteristics helped but the real secret lay in their roots, which like the redwoods were intertwined with its neighbour. So when the hurricanes hit a tree it wasn’t hitting one tree, it was hitting a whole community of trees. It was thus the intertwining of the roots of the trees that allowed them to survive the elements.
Click here to watch the video from "Think Like a Tree
As I reflected on these fascinating ways that trees seemingly survive and thrive in challenging conditions through a kind of mutuality, I thought how much we humans could learn. We are not merely individual life forms we belong to web of mutuality, all life is connected and interconnected. To truly thrive we need to take care of our roots and our connections to one another. I wonder if as a society this is something that we lose sight of. What we do to the least of us we do to all of us.
This brings to mind that wonderful hymn “Spirit of Life” by Carolyn McDade particularly the line “Roots hold me close, wings set me free”. The roots come before the wings, we need to be held close, in mutual love, in order to truly thrive and therefore to fly free, to be all that we can possibly be. To focus only on the wings does not create the community and stability that we all need. When I think of those roots that hold the essence of those trees and enables them to thrive it reminds me of communal love. It seems to me that this love is that unseen force that connects all life and that enables us to form deep and meaningful relationships with ourselves, with each other and with all life. I name this God, others may use different words.
It is love that allows us to connect with all that exists, all that has been in the time before now and all that will be in the future. It is love that enables those roots to stretch out and connect to each other, to communicate and feed one another in a web of mutuality, just like the forest trees and the oaks of New Orleans. It is love that hold us close and it is love that allows us to stretch out the wings that will set us free and allow us to glide in the wind. To know love is to know that you belong and it is this that is perhaps the ultimate freedom.
It is the roots of belonging that give us the freedom to stretch out the wings and fly in the wind, free...This is love...We all belong somewhere, no one exists completely in a vacuum.
This to me is the essence of a free religious community. such as the Unitarian tradition that am a part of. A place where you feel that you can belong. A space where visitors and those already present can feel loving roots that hold them close so that they can spread their wings and begin to fly free. A community where the spiritual traveller can rest a while and find sustenance for their journey. A place with deep roots that can hold us during the vicissitudes of life, but not constrain us, so that we can fly free.
A place where you may find a sense of belonging; a space where you may find the love that connects and accepts you and allow you to live and thrive and encourage one another to fly free.
“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!
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.
