There is Hope for a Tree

Yesterday the Green Team from my church met in the big back yard of the director of our local ecology center to do some prep work on trees to be planted later. We did something similar last year. Both years, the ecology center’s goal has been to plant ten to eleven thousand trees in central Illinois, wherever needed. Trees native and appropriate to the area. Last year we were planting tree starts in small pots for temporary placement before transport to their new homes. This year we were tying color-coded plastic ribbons around tiny starts just above the root so they can be planted straight into the ground and identified and tended. I got to handle black walnut and hickory trees, and wonder at their smallness and resilience.

So this morning it was lovely to read, “There is hope for a tree” in the selection from Job. I suspect it may lead to a poem later! But for now I am just glad to make the little connection and enjoy the coincidence. I also remember important tree moments in our family history, including the loss of some big old trees from lightning and in windstorms, and the loss of branches but the survival of the tree itself! Once my dad planted a tree for his father, and it withered and died—rather symbolic of his father and that relationship. The botany confirmed the problem: he had planted a buckeye on ground too close to a black walnut that was toxic where the walnuts fell. Or something like that. When he tried again elsewhere, the tree lived. But it might not have been a buckeye (Ohio buckeye) this time, so maybe the story is entangled in misinformation and memory’s unreliability. And/or my dad’s desire for metaphor to serve as truth!

We are mortal. My kids arrive on a plane tonight. They may be feeling the urgency to visit their grandparents while they can. It looks like the weather will cooperate by being warmer and not stormy! The timing is not really family- nor Easter-related—instead, an event my daughter was asked back for by her alma mater—but it works out nicely, and the family part is what decided my son to join in on the trip from Oregon. They’ll see my parents in their new home at the retirement community. They’ll visit the old homestead, intact but with less furniture, before it’s sold, if that’s what happens next….

Everything changes. Change is happening now. Everything dies, but there is hope for a tree. There is hope for all of us, in connection, in consolation, and in comfort. Tomorrow, Easter, my church will announce a new pastoral candidate! I might not be there, due to the family visit, timing, but I am delighted, as I think I can guess who the secret candidate will turn out to be, based on her visits as our guest pastor during this search period. We all love her, she’s right for our progressive church! The time feels hopeful indeed.

And I am full of thanks and praise for this Lenten time, gathering as Murrelets in our safe nest of writing together. It has been a joy and an inspiration to read everyone’s work. I admire your resilience after suffering, your compassion, your wisdom, your hope. You all inspire me, this typing mortal!

— Kathleen