An Abecedarian of Sacred Trees

Spiritual Growth through Reflections on Woody Plants

Mark G. Boyer

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781532604478, 9781532604492
• eBook ISBN: 9781532604485
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Every person has seen a tree and maybe planted or climbed one! In all world religions, various trees are considered sacred. Trees have the ability to help us reach wholeness if we learn their wisdom and integrate it into our lives. This abecedarian--a book whose contents are in alphabetical order--explores the spiritual growth that is possible by reflecting on the wisdom of woody plants, which help humans experience the divine. In these pages you can explore trees from Acacia to Zaqqum. For each of the forty entries, the author presents a text identifying the tree, a reflective study, a question for journaling or personal meditation, and a concluding prayer. Some trees you may have heard about, and some may be new to you. The spiritual life is enhanced by the trees that surround and share the earth with us while also disclosing the divine to us.

Conclusion and Trees in Film

Text: “Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.” (Rabindranath Tagore)

Reflection: Tagore’s words animate trees, giving them a voice, much like Bradbury gave a voice to the hemlock tree in The Hemlock Tree and Its Legends. Just like the earth never gets tired of growing trees, so heaven never gets tired of listening to their words—and neither should we! Forty trees have been presented in the preceding pages; each of them is a part of the environment; each of them is permeated by Spirit and, thus, reveals the divine to us. That is why they are sacred. They embody spirit, and as part of the universe, they mediate spirit, that is, they mediate the divine. Writing in Laudato Si’, Pope Francis states: “. . . [T]he awareness that each creature reflects something of God and has a message to convey to us, and the security that Christ has taken unto himself this material world and now, risen, is intimately present to each being, surrounding it with his affection and penetrating it with his light” can enrich and “help nurture that sublime fraternity [we have] with all creation. . . .”523

Trees breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, while we do exactly the opposite. This fact alone reminds us of our dependence on trees to purify the air. In other words, trees are in us, and we are in trees. We are in relationship with trees—regardless if we desire it or not—because we share a common animating spirit. They can be counted among the “sparkly bits of the holy everywhere.”524 Francis writes: “The universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely. Hence, there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf. . . . The ideal is . . . to discover God in all things.”525 Griffith quotes Siemen declaring, “Nature can no longer be treated as a thing or property that we humans have a right to dominate and exploit.”526 Again, Francis writes:

If we approach nature and the environment without . . . openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs. By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously. . . . [N]ature [is] a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness. . . . The world is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise.527

Francis’ approach to trees and the rest of creation is, thus, wonder. Employing Trinitarian thinking, he writes:

The Father is the ultimate source of everything, the loving and self-communicating foundation of all that exists. The Son, his reflection, through whom all things were created, united himself to this earth when he was formed in the womb of Mary. The Spirit, infinite bond of love, is intimately present at the very heart of the universe, inspiring and bringing new pathways.528

He adds “that the Trinity has left its mark on all creation.”529 In other places in Laudato Si’ he encourages his readers “to think of the whole as open to God’s transcendence,”530 to use the “environment as a way of expressing . . . identity,”531 to see that “there is a nobility in the duty to care for creation through little daily actions” like “planting trees,”532 and to learn “to see and appreciate beauty.”533 He elaborates on this last point, writing, “If someone has not learned to stop and admire something beautiful, we should not be surprised if he or she treats everything as an object to be used and abused without scruple.”534

In other words, the pope is interested in a sound ecological spirituality in much the same way as this book has been focused on the spirituality of trees. Feldmeier states: “Spirituality . . . describes engagement in things transcendental. Ultimate aims. Ultimate goals. It has to do with one’s connection with and commitment to ways of engaging transcendence.”535 Feldmeier adds, “In a theistic religion . . . this transcendence is God. Christian spirituality is engagement with God as God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ.”536 Francis says that “all sound spirituality entails both welcoming divine love and adoration, confident in the Lord because of his infinite power.”537

Feldmeier states that “everyone has ideas about what [he or she thinks] makes life meaningful or how [he or she pursues] the ultimate, even if [he or she has not] articulated what exactly that means.”538 He explains that spirituality is humbly “seeking to encounter a living, personal God.”539 Francis adds, “A spirituality which forgets God as all-powerful and Creator is not acceptable. That is how we end up worshipping earthly powers, or ourselves usurping the place of God, even to the point of claiming an unlimited right to trample his creation underfoot.”540 A healthy ecological spirituality, according to Francis, is realizing “[n]ature is nothing other than a certain kind of art, namely God’s art, impressed upon things, whereby those things are moved to a determinate end.”541 The art of God that we have examined in this book is t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Abbreviations
• Notes on Sacred Texts
• Introduction
• • Acacia
• • Almond
• • Apple
• • Ash
• • Bramble
• • Broom
• • Burning Bush
• • Cross
• • Cypress
• • Dry (Bad) Tree/Green (Good) Tree
• • Elder
• • Fig
• • Fir
• • Fruit
• • Glastonbury Hawthorn
• • Hemlock
• • Holm
• • Incense (Myrrh, Aloes)
• • Joshua
• • Kadam
• • Laurel
• • Mastic
• • Mulberry
• • Myrtle
• • Nest for Birds
• • Oak
• • Olive
• • Palm
• • Pine
• • Plane
• • Pomegranate
• • Poplar
• • Red Cedar
• • Sycamore
• • Tamarisk
• • Terebinth
• • Vine (Vineyard)
• • Willow
• • Yew
• • Zaqqum
• Conclusion and Trees in Film
• Other Books by Mark G. Boyer
• Bibliography