The Tree Whisperer
“God saw everything he made, and indeed, it was very good.”
I have a “friend” who talks to trees. Well, not all trees. But at times to the tree overlooking his back fence. He has given that tree a name: Tree. As far as I know Tree has not revealed its arbor gender, or if such exists. No deep conversation. But such as: “Hey, Tree.” “Thanks for the windy wave.” “Glad you have our back.” That 40 foot Crepe Myrtle was just a 30-36 inch whippersnapper, when Dianne…oops I mean my friend’s wife and he pre-fence, planted it, some years back. No surprise. I’m the “friend”.
Moreover of late, on early jaunts, I’ve begun eavesdropping on bird conversations in our cul-de-sac cluster neighborhood. It started one dawny day when I heard this gabby robin on a neighbor’s roof. Unspotted by me, others were in the aviary conversation. It seemed to be a call and response deal… cadence…tonal repetition and variation ...brief pauses. I wondered if the birds do a better job of listening and responding than we humans do…with our usual waiting only to anxiously, reactively jam in our birdbrain comment/opinion.
As usual, a book got me paying better attention to the world around and within. Richard Powers’ THE OVERSTORY is a collection of loosely connected stories about trees, people, and their interbranched lives. I have not read it all to give full justice, but enough to be charmed and intrigued by his tree-view angle on life.
That is, walk outside. Look around. Trees – not everywhere but ‘many-where’, surround us, tower over us, and often outnumber us. They have their communities. Weather their storms. Sometimes fall on us. Yet most times: shade us, hold our ground together, and oxygenate us.
Talking to trees and chirping with birds sound a bit like what Richard Rohr teases as ‘birdbath Franciscanism’… a sappy, sentimentalism. Not my intention.
Out for my aforementioned jaunts, overhearing other creatures’ conversations, aware that I am a relatively small chunk of protoplasm in comparison to the vast array of trees lined up and zigzagging around me is a pretty good jolt of reality. Life is not all about us. We are not always the center of what’s going on. That’s probably even more important for us chunks of humanity who are beneficiaries of white-male privilege.
The so-called doctrine of original sin is not so much based on an endemic meanness within us, as just the daily reality that wherever we are, whatever is going on…to our eyes-bodies-minds…we are the center.
What St. Augustine called “incurvatus in se”…the curvature of the self upon the self. Naturally, self-centered, it takes super-natural grace to get us over ourselves, grace-fully aligned with our world and each other.
The God of Jesus made it/us all. In goings on, large or small, when we act as part not center, we have less chance of bringing damage, better chance of bringing blessing.
Talking with Tree and listening to the birds, I pray, is helping me to experience the grace of a field and focus swap. Bill side; seldom center.
Rohr again… “Your life is not about you. You are about a larger thing called Life. The myriad forms of life in the universe are merely parts of the One Life – that many call God. You and I don’t have to figure it all out, fix everything… All we have to do is participate in this One Life. To find our niche in that Always Larger Life is what we mean by ‘vocation’.”