Dear Edwards Church Community,
Trees
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
– Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)
In the Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Overstory, Richard Power weaves an engrossing epic story of characters from a variety of backgrounds. Each has a distinct connection to the overarching story, unfolding against a background that illustrates how trees feed and are fed by their environment, how plant life and animal life are ultimately different expressions of life itself, and how sad it is that the supposedly self-aware human is the one life form capable of both speeding up or avoiding catastrophe for the planet, but is still ruining the planet for all the life forms, including itself.
One of The Overstory characters, Patricia Westerford, a botanist, is based on the real life scientist Diana Beresford-Kroeger, a celebrated botanist and medical biochemist. Beresford-Kroeger was trained at an early age in an ancient Irish system of rules for resolving disputes and managing natural resources in a farming society.
In an interview last year, Beresford-Kroeger spoke of how that ancient system anticipated the threat of climate change and how she believes (and calculates) that by protecting the remaining old growth forests and planting even more of the right kinds of trees, we can still turn the tide enough to spare future generations much of the damage the planet and all life on it will otherwise face.
The ancient Celtic laws recognized trees as a sacred life form deserving protection from short term exploitation. Forests were seen as more than raw material for products like lumber and paper goods. Forests were, and are, the foundation of other forms of life in the world, to be held and managed in stewardship for generations to come and not just current consumption. People recognized a spiritual need for and connection to a whole, healthy planetary ecosystem, which was seen in the Celtic context as the forest.
In The Overstory, the fictional character Patricia Westerford writes of the shift required in human perspective: “This is not our world with trees in it. It’s a world of trees, where humans have just arrived.”
e.e. cummings did not need to have Joyce Kilmer’s poem or Richard Power’s novel to know the spiritual life in nature. He sensed it himself.
I thank You God for most this amazing day
For the leaping greenly spirits of trees
And a blue true dream of sky
And for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes
I who have died am alive again today
And this is the sun’s birthday
This is the birth day of life and of love and wings
And of the gay great happening illimitably earth
How should tasting, touching, hearing, seeing, breathing any
Lifted from the no of all nothing
Human merely being doubt unimaginable You?
Now the ears of my ears awake
And now the eyes of my eyes are opened
Diana Beresford-Kroeger – she who has one leg planted in an ancient Celtic perspective and the other in modern science – sees a chance for humans to avoid the worst of the climate crisis our industrial activity has set in motion. But it will require a spiritual conversion, a reorientation of values that inspires wholesale change. She told an audience last year: “May you walk with the divine, and may you have life like yeast rising in bread. And may you rise with your life and enjoy it.”
Two weeks after Easter is Earth Day. May God give us the wisdom to recognize where we are and the courage to act accordingly.
In faith, with hope, for love,
Michael
From the Minister of Faith Formation
Dear Beloved of God,
Each Lent, as we get closer to Holy Week, I inevitably turn to two of Mary Oliver’s poems and spend some time reflecting on them in one way or another. I would like to invite you to do the same individually, with someone else, as a family, etc. You might journal or draw some aspect of one or each of the poems. You might also form a French Pantoum (directions for stanzas below) by circling or highlighting six words or phrases that resonate with you. The prompts in italics following the poems are just to get you wondering. If you are interested in a time of sharing thoughts, drawings or the pantoum, please let me know.
The Poet Thinks About the Donkey1
On the outskirts of Jerusalem
the donkey waited.
Not especially brave, or filled with understanding,
he stood and waited.
How horses, turned out into the meadow,
leap with delight!
How doves, released from their cages,
clatter away, splashed with sunlight!
Never had he seen such crowds!
And I wonder if he at all imagined what was to happen.
Still he was what he had always been: small, dark, obedient.
I hope, finally, he felt brave.
I hope, finally, he loved the man who rode so lightly upon him,
as he lifted one dusty hoof and stepped, as he had to, forward.
In the Gospels, we read that as Jesus rode into Jerusalem, people spread cloaks,
branches, leafy branches on the path he rode. What would we spread or wave? What would being a part of the crowd mean/look like?
(Matt. 21:1-9; Mark 11:1-10; Luke 19:28-38; John 12:12-15)
Gethsemane2
The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.
Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.
The cricket has such splendid fringe on its feet,
and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body,
and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.
Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did, maybe
the wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn’t move,
maybe
the lake far away, where once he walked as on a
blue pavement,
lay still and waited, wild awake.
Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not
keep that vigil, how they must have wept,
so utterly human, knowing this too
must be a part of the story.
The synoptic Gospels quote Jesus as telling the disciples to stay awake and pray that they may not come into the time of trial. What does staying awake/waiting and praying with Jesus look like in this day and age? What does that time of trial look like for each of us/for the world?
(Matt. 26:38; Mark 14:38; Luke 22:40)
Directions for a French Pantoum – do not try to put them in the “right order”
Stanza 1
Line 1 (new line) ____________________________________________________
Line 2 (new line) ____________________________________________________
Line 3 (new line) ____________________________________________________
Line 4 (new line) ____________________________________________________
Stanza 2
Line 5 (repeat line 2 in stanza 1) ________________________________________
Line 6 (new line) ____________________________________________________
Line 7 (repeat line 4 in stanza 1) ________________________________________
Line 8 (new line) ____________________________________________________
Stanza 3
Line 9 (repeat line 6 in stanza 2) ________________________________________
Line 10 (repeat line 3 in stanza 1) _______________________________________
Line 11 (repeat line 8 in stanza 2) _______________________________________
Line 12 (repeat line 1 in stanza 1) _______________________________________
Blessings as we continue the journey through Lent to Easter,
Deb
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