Do you think of them as decoration?
Think again.
Here are maples, flashing.
And here are the oaks, holding on all winter
to their dry leaves.
And here are the pines, that will never fail,
until death, the instruction to be green.
And here are the willows, the first
to pronounce a new year.
May I invite you to revise your thoughts about them?
Oh, Lord, how we are all for invention and
advancement!
But I think
it would do us good if we would think about
these brothers and sisters, quietly and deeply.
The trees, the trees, just holding on
to the old, holy ways.
This weekend at the seventeenth anniversary celebration for the Cathedral Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage I led a session on poetry as prayer. As we read a few haiku and reflected on the lessons we saw in the autumn landscape, several people spoke about the insight they gleaned from trees. Evergreens in the midst of a decaying garden are a reminder of the constant nature of divine love. The burnishing of leaves that is brought about by a decrease in sunlight illustrates how dark as well as light is necessary in our lives. And how ironic it is that so many of us rejoice in the changing of green leaves into the brilliant foliage of fall, yet change in our own lives is so often viewed as something to be lamented or feared.
As for my reflections, I thought about how the cherry tree in my neighbor's yard has long been bare, while our dogwoods are a brilliant red and the maples are just beginning to fade to a pale yellow green. All get the same light, the same water, are planted in the same basic soil, yet each embraces autumn in its own time, in its own way. Celtic spirituality points to nature as the first book of divine revelation. I think this is part of the old holy way that Mary Oliver mentions. Trees are more than decorations in our landscape -- they are messengers, preachers, teachers, and perhaps even sacraments, offering us a glimpse of grace if we pay attention.
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