The sun sparkles through their dancing leaves and branches. The sound of their twirling leaves in the crisp breeze fills the air. Bending to natures’ song and witnessing decades or even centuries of history, trees stand strong. Steadfast they remain, providing us every day with a means to live, through their production of oxygen. An ever present nurturing beauty that is somehow often overlooked or forgotten.
However, in some sections of the world as the season of fall approaches it is hard to ignore the trees, as the subtle changes of their leaves unfold. An interspersed speckling of yellow, orange, and red begins that will soon turn in to a gorgeous explosion of colors painting parks, forests, yards, and mountain sides. They not only help us sustain our lives but remind us of the cycle of life. Through the passage of time and the changing of seasons, death and rebirth, sadness and beauty, weakness and strength, these trees change and yet remain.
Trees are integral to life. A point which Maryknoll Affiliate and former director of the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Marie Dennis, so beautifully made in the following passage:
“Pictures of children climbing barren trees in a refugee camp and of hundreds of scrubby trees struggling to provide a modicum of shade for the poor huts that shelter exhausted families were common on the Internet during the Somali famine a few years ago. The pictures were poignant images of the important role that trees in East Africa play: as a community’s meeting place where important decisions are made and where the process of community reconciliation can begin to unfold.
Trees are important throughout the Judeo-Christian tradition. In fact, near the beginning of the Bible is a description of the tree of life in the Garden of Eden, and near the end is a description of the tree of life on either side of the river, with its twelve kinds of fruit in the New Jerusalem.
In Earth Community, Earth Ethics, the theologian Larry Rasmussen writes about how a tree of life carries its community, providing homes and shelter, furniture, tools, boats, food and fuel, energy, and medicine. He reminds us that every single breath that every single human being has ever taken or will ever take depends on trees and on other green plants; all trees are literally trees of life. Trees, he writes, entertain journeys of the spirit. They are the subject of story and poetry and painting and sculpture; they are the site and substance of things religious. Trees join heaven and earth; they help us experience the fact that we are rooted in and are part of nature, even as we are constantly moving toward a horizon that is fullness of life.”
If you are so inclined, September through November is the best time for planting a tree. Planting during these months gives enough time for the trees’ roots to become established before the ground begins to freeze and winter moves in. If not, maybe just take a moment to appreciate the trees. Whether you write poetry about them, climb them, gather under them as a group, hug them, watch them dance in the wind, or simply breathe in a little oxygen, may they bring a fullness to your life.
