Our Life as a Tree
Recently I got to stay with some friends at a beautiful ranch house in the Texas Hill Country. It belongs to a church member of a pastor friend of mine, and it was the perfect place for a weekend retreat. The lady who owns it had apologized for the remains of a big live oak that had been toppled in a storm, down the road from the house. She said she was sorry the whole unsightly mess hadn’t been hauled off yet.
Soon after our arrival, I walked to the place where the tree had stood. It was very large and had been split right down the middle, with the two halves splayed out opposite each other, in dramatic fashion. It appeared that the tree had been hollow and was already partly dead. One of the halves lying on the ground had borne leaves, so it had clearly still been alive when it fell. The hollow center, however, must have weakened the tree and made it susceptible to the external forces that caused it to split and fall.
It was a startling sight, and the first thought that came to me was the moment in which we find ourselves as the UMC. Everything is a metaphor in my mind—was this a metaphor for us? I didn’t and don’t want to think so. Rotten, empty in the middle. Split into two halves that turned out to be dead or nearly dead all along. Branches cracked off and lying to the side. Or at best, just an organism that reached the end of its life cycle, as organisms do. Of course something will one day sprout from this center, but how many years would it take for that to become a tree again?
I looked at the pattern in the wood, the rings visible and broken places covered over by the bark. I wondered about all the times the tree had seen before this. What storms had caused other branches to fall? I marveled at the tree’s ability to heal itself and thought about the water and nutrients the great trunk had taken from the ground. I thought about the way the bark protected the living heart of the tree. Looking at the open break, which ring represents the great drought of the 1950s? What other conditions left their mark here? What story and beauty might we see if we cut and polished a slice of this wood?
I pocketed a chunk of wood from the inside of the trunk, one with dark lines and varied colors. Disturbed and dissatisfied by the thought that this tree told the whole story of our church, I went looking for other trees, other metaphors.
Across the stock tank, I saw another tree, a different type, perhaps another oak, based on the shape of the dried leaves at my feet. (Note to self: learn more about which trees are which.) This enormous tree stood looking entirely bare from a distance, with one half of what had been a double trunk clearly broken off. As I drew closer, I realized that the part still standing was full of new buds. I imagined this tree bursting into bloom in a few weeks and remembered the words to “Hymn of Promise”—“In the bulb there is a flower, in the seed an apple tree…” This living thing had at one point lost half of itself, a break still clearly visible. Yet it was old and well-established, healthy and fruitful.
I felt comforted by this tree and its living presence. I also acknowledged that there would likely be no one tree that would be the magical symbol of where we are headed as the UMC. That’s partly because there is much we do not know, much we will have to decide and choose and live into. The metaphors in this case, for me, serve to prompt my imagination and open my heart to what I can’t yet see.
Walking on, I came to some younger live oaks growing in a pattern familiar to those of us who live near these trees. The first one was in effect a double tree.
Just past the twin tree was a more complex group of four. It had apparently lost at least one other along the way.
All inextricably connected.
Again the question: are these metaphors for us? Maybe. Maybe not ones that tell the whole story, missing something important related to diversity and form, a difference in fruit and flower and how each fits into the larger ecosystem. Perhaps these are images that help us know what we do and do not want to work for and live toward.
My retreat weekend took place as we were just beginning to understand the implications of the coronavirus on our common life, which have now lurched dramatically beyond just washing our hands a lot. Since then, the Council of Bishops has wisely recommended that we cancel the General Conference scheduled for May, to protect the health of all our communities. It was at that conference that many of us had hoped we might make decisions that would free our church from a battle that has been destructive and harmful in a whole range of ways. What this cancellation would mean about our future, or even about our very next step, is hard to see from here. For now, however, I am carrying at least a couple of truths that I learned from the trees.
One is that the risk of an empty heart is great.
That’s a topic worth a bunch of writing and reflection, all on its own. But in this setting, we see where the lack of a strong core leads. The first tree’s fate is not its own fault. We, however, do have agency to decide what will fill us. As individuals and as churches, we can fill our time and space with busyness, striving, and worry, going through the motions for our own protection and comfort. (As Isaiah 55:2 asks, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?”) I have known churches like that and people like that. Sometimes I am people like that.
Instead, of course, we can choose a life that fills us with substance that is knitted together, alive and growing, taking in nutrients that move us to fill out the potential God designed into us. Time for worship and study, relationships that are compassionate and just, goals of generosity, hospitality, and joy, reflecting Christ’s body in ours. I’ve known churches like that and people like that, too. The healthy tree offers shade and shelter, fruit and beauty, and maybe most important, it just inhabits its God-given treeness. All until the day, whenever that may be, when it’s time for the tree to return to the earth from which it sprouted. This tree didn’t decide to let its core go hollow; maybe it was just time. But we do get to choose how we will nourish ourselves, and to what end. This for me will be the most important task for our church going forward, during this time of pandemic, and far beyond. If what we call faith in Jesus Christ doesn’t fill our hearts and our lives, doesn’t change what we do and why we do it, doesn’t lead to relentless love that lays down the self on behalf of the other—then we will be as a hollow tree, waiting for a strong wind to blow us over.
Another lesson for me is this: I trust that there is yet a vital future for the church-tree of which we are a part. I trust this not because I believe we will choose well with every step that lies before us. I trust because of the ground that has given us life.
We can count on deep connectedness, thanks to God’s provision and to the seeking impulse God planted in the hearts of our forebears, the interaction of root and soil that we cannot see but upon which all else relies. As I’ve told church folk for a long time, the church doesn’t exist because we built it. It exists because Jesus blew his breath into a bunch of knuckleheads, because God granted us the desire to live for the good, because the Spirit continually nudges and even kicks us toward each other and into a life of sacrificial love. That is why we’re here, and whatever form or number our trunk and branches end up taking, whatever needs to break off or heal up, as long as we stay rooted in God, it will be good, because God is good.
I will confess that today I am fairly reeling from what feels like a torrent of uncertainty, in both our world and our church. I remember from my time in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas how the palm trees bent with the relentless coastal wind, elastic and resilient and tall. As a new storm of disease begins to rage in the life of our country and the world, and as we weigh what’s important in order to make hard decisions in the short and long term, I am content to wait. I’m going to try to plant my feet on the ground that holds my life, and our life, and the life of this tree that is our beloved church—strong, thanks to the love that fills our core, and bending with the storm, until the new day comes.