Thursday, January 14, 2021

The Tree Of My Life

As long as I can remember I have been a gardener with only one plant to care for, a tree in the backyard of my soul.  When I was young it was just a sapling and I spent a great deal of time caring for it, feeding it, protecting it.  It grew as I grew.  In my 20’s I spent a good deal of time studying it. I would spend hours looking at the direction of its branches reaching for the sun or observing its bark and how in some places it was thick and in others it was thin.   

In my 30’s I became less interested in it as kids entered my life: soccer games, school functions, promotions at work and dinner parties with friends.  I hardly noticed the tree, but something interesting was happening.

It grew and grew and grew.  It seemed that the busier my life became, the taller and more full that tree grew.  I wasn’t out their fertilizing it as I did as a child.  But it seemed that with each year, each child, each accomplishment it grew more.  I didn’t pay it much attention.  In fact it’s only in retrospect that I realize how much it had grown during that time.  I mean, I knew it was there and I’d give it a glance most days, but I was done studying it.  What’s the sense in understanding the branches and bark of a tree that’s been there for nearly 40 years.

As I plowed into my forties I began to notice some signs of distress.  Some of the needles were turning brown, but only on a few branches.  I pruned them, following the advice of a website I found, the thought being that by pruning the sick branches the tree would free itself to feed its healthy branches.  It seemed to work so I went on largely ignoring it.

One sunny Sunday afternoon in August we had some friends over for dinner.  We sat on our back veranda and were enjoying a glass of wine when my friend asked me about the tree.  “How old is that?” he asked.  I said, “I don’t know, probably pushing 50 years old.  Why do you ask?”

“Well,” he went on to say, "it looks like that tree has some root rot.”  As it turns out this acquaintance turned fairly close friend grew up with an arborist for a father.  “I hate to tell you this, but that tree’s probably going to need to go.” 

I was shocked at how hard it hit me.  That tree was the centerpiece of the beautiful backyard my wife and I had created over years and years of trial and error, planting and replanting, painting and building.  We had hosted dinner parties, fundraisers and birthday parties, all under the dappled sunlight that tree had provided.


“How imminent is this?”  I asked.  “It doesn’t look sick.”

“Well, the tree is still alive, that’s for sure.  But you can tell that there’s a problem with the roots by the sparsity of vegetation at the higher branches and on the lower branches near their tips.  It could be fine for another 30 years or it might blow over in the next big windstorm.” 

I thought, this can’t be true.  So a week or so later I called an arborist to come over.  “Yup,” he said, “that tree’s got root rot.”

“Well, what do I do?” I asked. 

“My advice is take it down.  If it falls on your house, now that you know its sick your homeowners insurance is not going to cover the damage.”

The arborist left and the last I thought of him was sending the check when his invoice arrived.

A few years went by.  I noticed browning parts near the top and thought, “I’ve got take that tree down.”  But I didn’t.  It was going to costs a few thousand dollars to take out, and I had no idea what I would put in it place.  It was largely the one thing that blocked us from seeing straight into our neighbor’s kitchen and them looking right out onto our veranda.  So I ignored it.  Until the night of the storm.

80 mile an hour gusts pushed through the area.  Thousands of trees went down, including ours.  It took out half the house with it.  We moved to an apartment as we sorted out next steps.  With no insurance money to rebuild we were effectively homeless, paying the mortgage on a house we could no longer inhabit.

This, dear friend, is the story of my ego.  How I nurtured it as a child, grew to know it in early adulthood and largely ignored it as I fed it into adulthood.  In my 40’s I began to see signs of rot in it, had friends notice some unhealthy bits and even sought professional advice.  Which I didn’t ignore as much as just found too painful to confront.  The loss of that tree, that ego, would leave me empty and even possibly homeless emotionally.  But not spiritually.

And then the storm came.  It was inevitable.  My choice to remove the tree was wrested from my hands.  Down went my sense of self, fallen to the ground.  So now I face a different choice.

Do I plant a new tree and gradually rebuild the home that the old one had destroyed?  That’s what many friends have advised and a good number of books point to.  “Use these tragedies as the fertilizer for the next chapter.   Lean into the new normal.”

Or do I allow that old tree to be cut apart into firewood.  Allow the Holy Spirit to dry it in a kiln.  And, as Merton says in New Seeds of Contemplation, “(allow) the mystery of Christ in the Gospel (to) concentrate the rays of God’s light and fire to a point that sets fire to the spirit of man…as a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set fire to a dry leaf or a piece of paper.”

And this is where I sit today.  I’ve allowed the old tree to be cut into firewood.  I’ve even allowed the Holy Spirit, I think, to dry it in a kiln.  But am I willing to allow the Living Christ to set a match to it, burning it and the entire house with it.  This is the choice Merton outlines: that we set aside our ego and all of the trappings that support it and allow God’s light to be magnified and set fire to it.

I am ready to be saved, Earl Palmer used to quip, but not yet.  And that’s where I am.  I am ready for the fire.  But not yet.

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