I am beginning to understand why many pagans worshiped trees.
I live in a town of 4700 in rural Illinois, just an hour and a half or so outside of Chicago. Close enough to the city that a visit isn’t a hassle, yet far enough away that, when I do visit, it feels like a different world. In my teenage years and early 20s I dreamt of leaving for the city. The city is beautiful. It is vibrant and alive. It is not so much that I can feel the pulse of Chicago whenever I visit, but rather that I become a part of its pulse, a blood cell circulating through the streets in rhythm with the city. To walk through Chicago is to become a member of a body; to witness the culture first hand as the architecture looms overhead, to hear the sounds of cars and street musicians, to smell the food being cooked in the restaurants as I walk by.
Every time I visit I find myself tucked away in this little corner of the city thinking about the millions of other people there who are currently having their own experiences, contributing to, while simultaneously being impacted by, this giant, living, breathing organism.
When I get home that all goes away. I no longer feel like I am inside of something special. Whenever I go for a walk here in my hometown, I get weird looks from the people driving by. Going for walks through town just isn’t something people do here. The town is slow. The sidewalks don’t ebb and flow with rivers of people. They are a desert where the rain that does fall rarely even touches the ground.
It was in early adulthood that I began interacting more with people outside of the rural area I grew up in. I went to college in a Chicago suburb and interacted with many of the artistic types hailing both from the city and other more rural areas that lay just outside the suburban sprawl. It was through these interactions that it became increasingly clear that, though I longed to be grafted into the city, I did not belong there among them.
Contemplating this naturally raises a few questions: Why is the city so appealing? Why is it difficult to see this appeal in the place that raised me? Why is it that I feel compelled to stay in my hometown despite my love for the city and my frustrations with the place I grew up? And what does this have to do with trees?
It seems that the dissonance between the first three questions is resolved in the image of the tree, in the sacred act of taking root and reaching up.
On Holy Thursday in the Orthodox Church a hymn is sung between the fifth and sixth Gospel, when Christ is being crucified. The priest processes around the church carrying a large cross depicting the crucifixion before affixing it upright on the Solea at the front of the church. As he is processing, he intones, “Today is suspended upon the Tree He who suspended the land upon the waters.”
The story of Mankind begins with a tree, our imperfect nature exemplified by our inability to follow God’s commands regarding the tree. And in many ways that same story ends with our God hanging on a tree. It was written in Deuteronomy 21:23 that regarding a man who is put to death, “his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is accursed by God.” St. Paul makes clear in his letter to the Galatians his understanding of how this law is related to Christ’s crucifixion by stating that “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed be every one who hangs on a tree’— that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” This curse is resolved in God condescending himself into the form of a man and dying a cursed death, by affixing himself to a tree, in order to sanctify human life and death. It started with a tree in cursing and ended with a tree in salvation and sanctification. These are not the only two trees, the Cross and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, that have an integral role in the scriptures, but they might be the two most important, marking a beginning and an end that looks into eternity.
This is what I think about when I look at the tree in my front yard. It lived here before I was born and will likely be there when I die. Its roots are deep and its branches reach high. It has seen families come and go out of this house. But once, it was a sapling. This tree needed to be kept in mind, nurtured while it dug in and grew up. Today it commands its small plot of land here. It is stable and wise.
When I look at this tree, I am taught about what it means to live here in my town. My town does not move quickly, it is slow and requires a sort of patience. Where the city is bustling, offering up different ways to entertain its people, places to go and things to see, my town, like the tree, offers stillness, rootedness. Instead of making its residents a blood cell in the veins of a large and complex organism, my town asks its residents to be trees in a forest. It asks us to take root and grow slowly, to let our sense of place develop over time. I believe that this is why the city, though beautiful and appealing in its own right, never felt like a place where I belonged. I have taken root here. This tree is my cross.
I can’t help but feel like I am where I’m supposed to be, regardless of whether or not it is where I want to be. As Christ says, “He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” It does feel dark to cite this verse regarding my home, the place that raised me and made me who I am, whose soil in which I am firmly rooted. I imagine that this is akin to what Christ’s human nature was experiencing on the cross when he cried out, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsake Me?” Not that I am comparing every waking moment of my life to suffering on the cross. Rather, that my desires for a cultured and bustling city life need to die.
As a high school teacher, I am beginning to learn about the “reaching up” aspect of the sacred life of the tree. I am here in the school with students who are in the exact place I was just ten years ago. It becomes increasingly clear every day that the more I am like the tree, the more I stay still and listen, the more I am able to provide something solid for my students. The better equipped I am to help them when they struggle.
Conversely, there have been many days where I am not like the tree. Days I don’t want to listen to them. After all, I’m the one that has gone to college. They should be listening to me, right? While, yes, my students should be listening to me, I have noticed that the only time this ever actually works is when I am still. When I hear them. When I crucify my own desires, my own feelings in those moments, and I hear what they have to say.
I am learning to provide the shade of wisdom and stability for those who are growing up here as I did. To give them the things I needed but went without. I am not the stout maple I see in my front yard, not even close. But perhaps with enough patience and by reaching toward the Son, someday I will be.