(This is a lament. There are questions and melancholy. If that is not your thing today, I understand. Read this instead!)
I feel invested in these trees. I am surrounded by junipers, elms, and oaks that have been around longer than I. There are baby cherry laurels and a fig tree that rebuked the freezes and was born again. I don’t live in a palatial estate by any means, but when we got this place, I walked around the property and introduced myself as best I could, touched bark and grieved the stumps, and promised I would learn the names of the trees.
I am the new person here—they are rooted. They are the old-timers.
I just started listening to Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer again—such a lush listen that, to me, is part devotional and part science lesson (I really need a physical copy of this book). It’s been exposing in me the blindness I have had in appreciating our interdependence. The book has given me a vocabulary of wonder and gratitude: Thank you for the shade during these merciless summers. The dampening of highway noise. The sound of wind through the leaves. The richer air, dense with oxygen. The creatures that find refuge in you.
I see the trees are bracing now, with scores of 100º days in the summer, and more frequent freezes in the winter. The grass is the color of hay. I’m daily making choices about what to conserve, water or grass. I know that each decision matters; water in the birdbath sustains the wrens, cardinals, chickadees, and the occasional dove. Dead grass affects the rabbits (so I save the ends of asparagus and carrots or Brussels sprout leaves and kale that fell off the counter and put them where rabbits can find them). I also know that even the decisions I don’t know matter, matter. I grew up on the 22nd floor—I’m still learning life at ground level.
In the past year, several trees have died from the extreme and unexpected lingering of below-freezing temperatures. There’s an oak skeleton with pale, bare, fingerlike branches suspended in our front yard we hoped so hard would see life in the spring. It would seem, at least as I thumb through Trees of North America, these trees are not new to rocky soil, not averse to the heat, and are the first citizens of this terrain. But this weather is doing something that challenges even these native plants. Adapt or die.
Today, I feel stuck in a particular challenge—I won’t burden you with the details—but I know enough of you to know you can relate to claustrophobic circumstances, with no door. The air is acrid with worry and self-doubt. There’s pain in staying, and no place to go. What do these trees do, I keep asking myself, when they are freezing or burning up, but can’t leave?
We were reading Psalm 1 last week; we are attempting to initiate a new family habit of reading a psalm before bed. But because we are us, a 2-minute meditation takes on a life of its own. This time, we were using our bodies to interpret standing, walking, sitting, and what it looked like to be planted like a tree by a stream of living water. None of us acted out being “planted” like being “stuck.” Instead, we were some iteration of “strength” and “confidence.” We imagine trees in repose and contentment when they’re near the living water—never having to worry about drought. Always prospering. Yielding fruit in its season.
I adore the psalmist’s metaphor because it’s idyllic. Verdant.
Not to knock the tree planted by a stream, but I am more fascinated by the trees in my backyard, flourishing in limestone—that’s the faith I need to testify to me. How does this juniper prosper when it’s not planted anywhere near a river? How does this fig tree live when it’s been cursed with freezing?
How does this one, trafficked, who has had no visions or covenants, converse with angels? How does this one, fleeing into the desert say, “I see the God who sees me?” Hagar will never cease to amaze me. The one who could not leave.
God’s law is a delight to the psalmist—how does this delight manifest itself in an environment that doesn’t care? What does prosperity look like in a hostile land?
My admiration dwells with those who extract faith from a parched or frozen land. It dwells with the God who gives not only streams, but the ability to bring forth water from rock.
Blessed is the one who cannot choose the path they walk or stand in the way of freedom or sit at the table of power but whose delight is still in the Lord and who meditates on the Son who was rejected, day and night That person is like a tree planted in limestone which holds fast in dry times and whose leaf may die because the land is not yet healed
How do you water your faith in the dry times? Who is in your cloud of witnesses? How do you connect with God in your dormant seasons?
I honestly don’t know…I just do…like the trees. I stand, I shiver, I shed, I wilt. If God isn’t holding me up, I will fall down.
My neighborhood is still recovering from the downburst storm and tornado a few years ago. But I've been shocked at the resilience of trees that were greatly wounded but are back to providing shade again - maybe not as much as they used to, but still defiantly providing repose from the summer sun. I get what you speak of - the ability to say like these trees, "I may be broken, but still I will flourish and bless those around me - maybe all the more beautifully because of what I've been through."
Jesus, help us be those kinds of trees with deep roots and a will to survive despite what the world throws at us.