My Spiritual Journey Around a Tree

My Journey Around a Tree

I live in a place where many people seem to think trees get in their way. My spiritual journey goes around a tree.

Trees send their roots out to create obstacles in sidewalks. When the winds pick up trees drop their branches, and fronds, and disrupt traffic. Where I live people plant citrus trees to be decorative and the fruit can become a nuisance.

I walk as often and as much as I can. Most of my walking is in areas with a high density of people.

Sidewalks attract people on cell phones, bicycles, baby carriages, skateboards, restaurant furniture. In the evenings I walk around the neighborhood sharing sidewalks with runners, people walking their dogs, more bicycles and skateboards.

Visiting New Camaldoli Hermitage reminds me my favorite walking companions are tall evergreen trees. Their straight, towering trunks reach up to the sky like church spires. They are like the pillars of great cathedrals, shading the sun’s light and creating sacred space. My thoughts and reflections have room to become prayers.

There are tall trees in California which are among the oldest, longest living things on the earth. They do not hurry. Through years of struggle and years of plenty, they continue doing what they sprouted to do.

Trees are examples to us.

Many of us think of our spiritual journeys as hikes or pilgrimages. We see ourselves starting at a specific point and working our way toward a destination. Some of us take comfort from a sense of making progress or moving uphill.

I have come to see my own spiritual story as paying attention a single tree. It is not about going from one place to another, not about making progress. We are not collecting spiritual experiences or credentials.

Paying Attention to One Tree

Tall trees are deeply rooted and focused. They have complex systems of roots which hold them to the earth and allow them to stand tall and strong. They grow branches and leaves, but put most of their effort into developing their trunks.

We listen to the wind rustling through the tops of the trees and run our hands over their bark. Some trees fill the air with their own fresh aromas or drop their leaves and nuts and cones. Some of us watch trees transform into explosions of color each autumn. We see them send out their buds and shoots of new growth each spring.

Tall evergreens understand the need for remembering their values, not being distracted from their primary purpose. They pay most of their own attention to pointing toward the sun and growing taller, not covering a wider area. Tall trees know how to be true to themselves.

Trees are living, breathing, growing beings, but not only physical beings. Spiritual life flows through trees just as it flows through us.

The spiritual life in trees will bow or wave to acknowledge the spiritual life in me. The spiritual life in me responds and I bow acknowledging the spiritual life in trees.

It can be easy for us to forget we are surrounded by the spiritual life of trees. We can become oblivious to how much spiritual life there is in the world around us.

Every so often we need to take a walk and pay attention on our spiritual journey around a tree.

Trees can be like people. Their bark may be rough and their branches might hit us in the face. We need to remember and breathe with them, appreciating their spiritual life.

Breathing In the Spiritual Life of a Tree

Tall trees show us things and teach us lessons other people cannot. I have been persuaded by spending time walking with tall trees. Their example, their patience, their wisdom help create sacred space we need for listening.

Like listening to sacred stillness, walking with tall trees helps us hear something more.

There have been times when I was tired, frustrated, unwilling to listen any more, even to myself. Only the healing spiritual life of a tree could bring me back to myself.

Like with people, the spiritual life of trees connects them with us and with each other. There are trees I am drawn to not because of how they look or feel. There is something about them beyond the physical which attracts me and draws me to them.

Some trees are just right for sitting under or even leaning against. Other trees seem to be made for climbing.

There are trees I can stand or sit and watch for hours. They seem to have different emotions in various kinds of weather.

We do not necessarily need to spend time in a forest or the woods. There are times when a single tree can show us what we need to see.

It is true other landscapes have their own spiritual life, including deserts or beaches or mountains. There is something particularly powerful about the spiritual life of trees.

Spending Time With One Tree

It is more than the way they breathe oxygen into the atmosphere and keep us alive. There is more than the way they look and how they decorate our lives.

The spiritual life of trees goes deeper than that.

The moments I have spent communing with tall trees stay with me and bring me back. I remember walking in the University of Wisconsin Arboretum years ago. There are the times I have visited Shenandoah and Sequoia and Yosemite and Muir Woods.

The spiritual life of trees feeds and nurtures spiritual life in us.

Trees give us opportunities to take a breath, calm down, and remember. They remind us spiritual life helps us stay rooted while we stretch and reach out.

The spiritual life of trees inspires us to continue.

We will each have an opportunity to take a spiritual journey around one tree today. Each tree is its own journey.

How will we open ourselves to the spiritual life of trees this week?

When can we experience the spiritual journey of paying attention to one tree today?

[Image by Michael Schweppe]

Greg Richardson is a spiritual director in Southern California. He is a recovering assistant district attorney and associate university professor, and is a lay Oblate with New Camaldoli Hermitage near Big Sur, California. Greg’s website is http://StrategicMonk.com and his email address is StrategicMonk@gmail.com.