The Wisdom of Trees

One Thursday a month Kathy would gather with a group of women and talk about literature and the way a novelist was able to capture the profound contradictions of life. She was in a book club. This book club had a twist. Most of the ladies all lived on the same block or very nearby. Such proximity created an opportunity for their spouses to gather on a Thursday once a month and engage in ballyhoo and shenanigans.

I distinctly remember one Thursday night on Bill's driveway where there was a basketball hoop low enough for smaller children, a junior sized basketball partially deflated, and six men divided into teams who played a modified version of three-on-three. Within thirty minutes there was blood shed, a broken ankle, and something approximating fisticuffs, the would-be pugilists were brothers, so it is not as bad as it seems.

              What is engrained in my memory though was the transition, the shift.  One moment we were goofing around, laughing, trying to play one handed as still holding onto an unfinished beverage, I remember that moment and then the next.  It was a jeer, a taunt, a premature claim of victory and suddenly Bill's driveway was the site of a fight to the death.  There was true victory at stake.  Who knows who will wear the crown of our folly?

              Although I tend to lack ambition, I know there is a part of me, once challenged, that cannot resist competition.  It is not so much that I must win, but that I must defeat you.  It's a primal impulse, a surge of chemicals usually kept at normal levels.  But sometimes, on a driveway on a Thursday all levels of propriety are at risk. 

              I don't believe this is my defining characteristic, but it's there. The drive to win, to succeed, compete and prevail, this is a common part of life. Some suggest it is even written in our DNA.  Charles Darwin, when he wrote his seminal work, On the Origin of Species, suggested we can understand the world, the fabric life, our origins with the lens of survival, being better adapted than others.  Prevailing.  Birds adapted over the course of millennia beaks, feathers, migratory instincts that caused them to survive where others did not. 

              Part of the American psyche and culture is an individualism where the strong survive, those who can do for themselves are better than those who need help.  How many of us have tried to fix something and said, "I can do it myself; I don't need help."  How many streams of profanity, deep cuts to hands have challenged this declaration until a plumber is called, a contractor enlisted to finish our do-it-yourself project. 

              There is no shame to admit a professional will do a better job than you.  Yet the instinct, impulse is still there to go it alone, to win.  I once worked on a series of light switches for six months, even developing a chart to track my daily failures before I called the electrician who fixed it in a few minutes. He kindly told me, these sorts of switches are really hard if you don't know what you are doing.

              The drive, need for a victory in competition is to some degree in all of us.  What is more, it is a trust.  We value the winner, the one who defeats their competitor.  We might look with suspicion at the terribly rich, but there is a part of us that gives deference to success.  They must have something, be something, know something we don't. 

              In a free-market capitalist economy, the idea of winners and losers, the need to crush competitor, the drive to succeed no matter the costs has its skeptics.  True.  But for the most part this is our trust.  Hard work, determination, drive, savvy: these are keys to success.  Earned wealth. 

              This is part of what it means to be human.  Even the most mild-tempered person of compassion can be turned into a force of nature in a spirited parchesi game.  The phenomenon of pickle ball is fueled by this truth.  If you don't have to move much but can have the intensity of a great tennis match, look out.  Gets serious. 

              One way of reading our parable of Jesus, the parable of the barren fig tree, is through this vantage, lens of competition and success.  At its most profound level, this parable is meant to question our confidence, our definition of success: how do we succeed; what is success? 

              The owner of the field is savvy.  The fig tree had a chance; it didn't prevail; cut it down, cut our losses.  The gardener is savvy as well.  If a tree needs help, let's offer it care, and then we saved an investment.  Each offers a strategy of success.  Each has value.  The owner seems harsh, but the chances are good you have said, "we can't throw good money after bad."  The gardener seems caring, but there is no guarantee of success. 

              Interesting here: Jesus doesn't pick a winner; there is no conclusion to the parable.  Jesus doesn't say, the owner scolded the gardener saying, I didn't ask a question I gave a direction.  Jesus doesn't say, and after a year the fig tree flourished with attention and care. Without a conclusion you could say, the owner is impulsive and focused only on profits; without a conclusion you could say the gardener has no idea how to run a business.  He's better with soil than he is with dough.

              The key to every parable of Jesus is to find the contradiction, the challenge.  Each parable has a meaning, a message contradicting, challenging something we trust.  We trust to the victor goes the spoils. We trust, nurture can be a path to victory where not all bridges are burnt.  Patience, prudence, wisdom can yield great results.  But patience can become lethargy, prudence can make us risk adverse.  It is a thin line between vision and delusion.

              In our parable today Jesus challenges both.  Without a conclusion, you should question both risk and care, decisiveness and patience. Recently I read a living example of this parable, this challenging view of success.

              The book is titled, Finding the Mother Tree.  The recent work describes how in the early '90s in British Columbia, a young forester recorded results field testing the relationship of trees.  Areas of forests were clear cut, whole swaths of trees felled, leaving only the stumps.  The policy of the time was to then burn the brush and kill the species of trees other than pine or fir.  These cash crop trees grew quickly and could be harvested for gain if there was nothing to impede them.  The official policy was based upon a crop theory.  Think corn.  Till the grown, eliminate any competition and allow the cash crop to grow unimpeded.  What the young forester, Suzanne Simard, found in her research contradicted this theory. 

              She discovered three things that upended the common practice of reforesting based upon competition.  First, she found that firs and pines grew better if they were commingled with birches, alders, and cedars; they grew better with huckleberries and mushrooms.  The other species of trees didn't compete with the fir and the pine, they seemed to help them.

              What she discovered next was a crazy idea.  The trees help each other, and they talk to each other.  If they grow together, they converse and share nutrients and water and carbon as needed.  The alder, fir, pine, cedar, and birch care for each other based on what they ask of each other.  The trees weren't competing for resources and light and water; they were sharing these. 

              Suzanne Simard's research was castigated, ridiculed, hated, demeaned.  She was challenging a basic assumption: victory goes to the one who overcomes competition.  Careers built on the idea of removing competition, removing diversity, reputations based on this assumption didn't take well to a young upstart forester suggesting diversity and cooperation was how a forest grew best.

              Here last discovery was beautiful.  She discovered that in the forest most trees come and go.  They have a life span of fifty years, maybe 100 years.  But then there are mother trees that live for centuries.  The massive mother trees have roots that go very deep and have unique nutrients because of their age.  With these nutrients they nurture the whole forest, bring life to all the trees.  A mother tree, they found, gives deference to her own species, but not exclusion.  They care for all. And the care comes through the roots.  The roots of the trees connect and talk and help and guide.  The roots of the trees are governed by the mother tree binding them all together.

              It took decades of work and rejection before Simard's research began to take hold.  Like our parable, she was challenging a basic confidence, contradicting a basic impulse.  Forestry policies spanning a continent were based upon a very Darwinian principle, species prevail by eliminating competition and variety.  Her work showed the opposite was true of trees. They grew best in cooperation, a life shared, not isolated. 

              It's tempting in this moment to say, the gardener is proved true.  Care and nurture are the right way to live; the greed of the owner is like the bad policy of clear cut and deforestation.  Tempting.  But in this we fall into the trap of the parable.  We are choosing a winner and a loser; we are eliminating possibility rather than finding a diverse conversation. 

              The diverse conversation of the forest, the message of the fir to the cedar, the birch to the alder, the huckleberry to the mushroom, all this is striving to survive to thrive, to grow unto maturity.  The birch helps the pine, but the pine must grow.  And the mother tree is not indifferent, just broad enough to care for all. And yet, she prevails long after others have died.

              In Simard's work, she was trying to save the forest; but somehow her work seems like it might save us. We will always be competitive.  That will not go away.  And we will all have the instinct to love and to care.  That is written into our DNA, I believe care is the image of God in us.  Simard's work was so powerful because it begs for balance.  Not one over the other, not the elimination of the other but a harmony, a shared life with distinction.  Diversity was a power, but so was the unique role of each.

              As I was reading Simard’s work, her life of research in the trees and forests, I couldn’t help but see our community, our congregation.  As she was describing the massive mother tree centuries old, I thought of our church entering our three hundred and eighth year; I could see the generation upon generation of worship and care and nurture. 

              The last few weeks the food pantry has been overwhelmed by generosity.  Food, donations, volunteers all working together, all seeking to nurture those in need.  The donations came from all over, from strangers, from old friends.  As I listened to Simard describe the way trees talk to each other and care for each other I wanted to call her up and say, I think we have a thriving forest right here in New Jersey.

              The thriving forest is found in the spirit of generosity. Trees talking to trees. This is the healthy root system being cultivated here.  The children singing, the youth doing things youth do, the deacons, the elders, the community dinner and community garden, a diversity of effort, all bringing nurture, allowing us to thrive.

              This is the essence of our stewardship, the purpose of pledges.  Thank you if you have pledged.  Your generosity is the root system of our congregation, the life found in giving life away.  What a beautiful mother tree this is; what a beautiful stand of trees is our life together.  Amen.