(photo credit:  My/Casey Horner)

On July 17, 2022, Harry Oussoren and Glenys Huws led worship at First United Church, Ottawa.  Here is an abbreviated version of the service.

Intro: 

People of faith have a longing for a utopia – where all is well and all are well. Today we want to reflect on the role trees play in this world – as both survivors of harm, and as signs and bearers of hope-filled life.

Hymn 713: vs. 1 & 4. “I See a New Heaven” in VU (Voices United)

Prayer of Intention and Longing

Life-giving Creator, perhaps if we were more like trees, we could be even more faithful companions of Jesus.

Help us to be more rooted in your love, to lift our arms heavenward in yearning and praise, to provide life-giving oxygen to those who feel faint, to shade the weary and vulnerable and to shelter the sparrows and other little ones.

Open us to the possibilities of growth, beauty and fruitfulness. Strengthen us to lead a greener, sturdier, more self-giving life. Amen     (source: Glenys Huws, in “Where the Spirit Dwell, Lenten Reflections on Home”, Toronto, UC Publ.House, 2007. P.55 revised)

Listening to Wisdom from the Ancestors in the Faith (two voices)

The Bible has lots of time for trees.  A whole variety of trees are mentioned but a few stand out.  In the first Creation story, trees emerge from the Earth bringing beauty as well as food in the form of seed and fruit. The trees are all part of Creation’s complexity, beauty, and earth’s generosity.

Genesis 1: 11-13

Trees become living things and serve to compare human character traits. Two examples:  Palm trees flourish like righteous people. Cedars of Lebanon, chosen to build King David’s house and Solomon’s temple are sturdy and strong –  they even reveal something of the Creator’s reliability.

Psalm 92: 12-15

In a desert setting, seeing trees, tells you there is water – an oasis.  A refuge for the thirsty who know that without water they cannot live.  So, trees are welcome signs of life with roots running deep into the waters of life.

Isaiah 41: 17-20  (alternate Genesis 18:1-3)

Jesus used the image of tree and large plants in his teaching with his friends. He talked about a barren fig tree, but instead of allowing it to be cut down, he asked the gardener to give it some tender loving care to bring on the fruit. And Jesus spoke of the tiny mustard seed growing into a huge busy tree to be a place of refuge for birds.  Jesus startled his friends into saying: hey, this is what God is all about!

Luke 13: 6-9, 18-19

Spirit Conversation 



1.   On trees as example/symbol (Glenys)

As I prepared for this Spirit conversation, I was both amazed and pleased to

discover that, next to humans, trees are the most mentioned living entity in the

Bible.

In fact, it is two trees that bookend the entire Biblical drama – there’s the

Tree of life in the Garden of Eden in Genesis and the Tree of Life on the river

banks in the Book of Revelation. In between, trees of many kinds and species

make hundreds of appearances on the Biblical stage. They play different roles.

In Genesis, trees are commanded to feed and nurture human life through the

fruit they produce and today we know that trees nurture and sustain human

life in many crucial ways beyond providing us with oranges and almonds.

Biblically, trees are often a symbol for eternal life given their power to reseed

themselves and to regenerate through so-called n,urse logs, stumps that feed

new tree growth as they decay. In depictions of Jesus’ family tree, Jesus is

sometimes characterized as the new branch arising from the stump of his

ancestor Jesse.

Many major events in the Biblical story have trees associated with them, like the

leaf of the olive tree that signaled the end to the great flood, the burning bush

of Moses and one might even include the wood that was used to make crosses

for execution in Roman times. The reference in Scripture to these wooden

execution crosses has led to legends and poems about both the dogwood tree

 and the aspen tree, each implicated by different poets and storytellers as the

tree of Jesus crucifixion.

Humans and trees are often paired in Scripture, with the righteous, fruitful,

justice- seeking person being compared to a fruitful thriving tree and, equally

telling, when groupings of trees in the Bible thrive and are fruitful, this is often

a metaphor for the well being of society as a whole. And, as exemplified in

parables told by Jesus, stories about trees are used to teach and inspire. You

could say that, all in all, the tree is the most useful and the most favoured of

divine metaphors.

This favoured status, this respect and reverence for trees, goes beyond the

Biblical and is shared widely in the human community. The presence of trees

has marked significant political and social events, like the mighty white pine, the

great Tree of Peace that presided over the formation of the Haudenosaunee

confederacy.

In faiths like Hinduism, in many indigenous spiritualities, in Celtic

religion, trees – banyan, oak, cedar, ash, and others – are considered sacred

and often signify those thin places where humans might experience the touch of

the divine more directly and deeply.

A Welsh folk song about an ash grove that I learned as a child and still sing to my grandchildren at bedtime, starts with these lines,

“The ash grove how faithful, how plainly tis speaking, the harp

through it playing has language for me. Whenever the light through its

branches is breaking, a host of kind faces is gazing on me”.

I think most of our souls could benefit from having a host of kind faces gazing on us from time to

time.

If there is a message, a take away, as they say, from these Biblical and other

storytellers, poets and authors, I think it is this. Pay attention to trees. Be

mindful of their presence and their wellbeing.

2.   On trees as objects or living entities. (Harry)

Trees, forests, woodlots, clear cuts, logs, sawdust, rain forests burning, old growth, we hear a lot about this subject today. 

And then there’s Johnny Appleseed (sing:  Oh, the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need, the sun, the rain and the apple seed, the Lord is good to me.)

John Chapman (Appleseed) was an American 19^th Century eccentric who walked about in frontier states peacefully putting apple seeds into the ground. A fruitful habit!!

Do you know about Hikmet Kaya, a retired forest engineer in Turkey? As a young man, he came to a barren scrubland area in his country. Something made him believe it could be better.  So he started reforesting the wilderness.  Now after 41 years of planting, it’s a hilly forested country, green with healthy tree life.

We Christians have a history of looking at plants and trees and forgetting that they have a life of their own – Earth’s Creator brought it all to life. Do we see Earth simply as inanimate objects - things, as if Earth were a only storehouse full of goodies, just waiting for us to fell, plunder, pillage, extract, process, consume, and throw away without consequences? 

When we “harvest a forest” by the violence of clear cutting, do we remember that countless creatures invisibly small and dramatically large make their home here?  Do we remember that it takes a generation to grow a forest?  Are we conscious that natural forests are seldom just one genus of trees? They are wonderfully diverse but connected mysteries of growing life.   Not just “things” but miracles of life. 

Imagine yourself standing like Lilliputians before a massive old-growth red-cedar in BC’s Lynn Valley. The tree is well over 1000 years old.  It has a base of almost 6 metres across!  Imagine just trying to count all the growth rings! Remember how this tree to started as a tiny seedling!  How do we respond to this venerable towering giant?

Do we stand before it with “awe and wonder, marveling at Creation’s majesty and mystery?”  Or do we ask ourselves:  hmmmm, I wonder how many cubic metres of lumber can be extracted out of this monster? How much money can we sell it for? One log of about 45 cubic metres, would be worth about $30,000, timber-wise? How many logs could we cut from the giant?

When we regard a forest full of trees as just another crop to be “harvested” for cash, then we break the relationship we have with Creation’s forests of trees. Trees are not just “things,” they are the habitat of other creatures, trees are living entities that deserve our respect, our frugal and care-filled stewardship, our gratitude.  They are our relations in Creation. 

(show acorn)

The tiny acorn is a sacred object – it carries within it a memory of billions of years of wisdom, development, and growth encapsulated as a seed to give birth to a living tree.  The tree born is a miracle of creation.   It has so much more value and meaning than to reduce it to a potential plank, some wood pellets, sheets of paper, a box of  Kleenex or a bag-full of money ? Any tree and especially old-growth elders call us all to recognize the Creator’s amazing gift and steadfast care for all Creation – including the human family.

3.   Further reflection on friends, companions, community and conclusion (Glenys)

There is so much that can be said about trees. I would like to wind down this

joint reflection by encouraging us as people of faith to look on trees as friend,

healer, teacher. Some of you may already be doing that. As friend, trees

definitely have our back.

Even as wildfires threaten across the globe, we know

that trees are not the enemy. Trees, rather, provide the essentials of life to

humans and to many of our relations, even as they beautify our world and

provide us with an endless variety of wood products.

Then there’s forest

bathing, a practice that originated in Japan, whereby people are encouraged to

spend time in a natural setting and to experience that setting using all their

senses. Spending this kind of time with trees has been shown to reduce stress,

lower blood pressure, boost our immune systems and even help us sleep better.

In his book The Universe is A Green Dragon, cosmologist Brian Swimme has a much

more poetic even mystical description of what happens when you spend time

with trees.   

When you walk into a forest, learn to tremble with the magnitude of what you

are about and you will never walk out the same person…you will be new, you

will bear the (healing) presence of the forest with you. Forests are alive with

music on all sorts of hidden levels and when you hear this music, you will know

that the forest has permeated every cell of your body.

There continue to be societies and cultural groups, like the Kuyukon people of

Athabasca who have close relationships with trees, experiencing them as

animated and even communicating with them in some fashion. Whatever we

might make of the idea of human to tree conversation, through the work of

ecologists and foresters like Suzanne Simard and Peter Wohlleben, we are

learning more and more about tree to tree conversation, the amazing ways that

trees communicate and cooperate with each other and with their environs.

Simard’s and Wohlleben’s research and observations have shown that there is a

vast subterranean fungal internet in the woods, a communication arrangement

among trees that contributes to the wellbeing of individual trees while enabling

then to help the trees around them. There is also some evidence that trees can

remember and can learn. I can’t claim to even begin to understand the biology

and chemistry involved, but I find the phenomenon utterly awe-inspiring and

instructive. Even perhaps a bit eerie. There is so much more going on in the

woods than the teddy bears having a picnic. As Brian Swimme writes, “tremble

with the magnitude of it all”.

To harken back to the prayer of intention from earlier in the service, perhaps we

might be more faithful friends of Jesus if we worked on strengthening our

friendship with trees, perhaps becoming more like them in the process – sturdy,

nurturing, fruitful, self-giving. May it be so.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sing : as preparation for prayer: #81 vs:1 (More Voices)  "Love us into Fullness"

We Give Thanks and Offer Our Prayers for Others…

The United Church Creed  - VU p. 918

Closing Hymn VU 884  “We shall go out….")

Benediction

Leave this place to be blessed by the trees growing in the courtyards, in the parks, along the streets.

Go and be a blessing to all our relations – family, neighbours, friends, strangers – fauna and flora:  trees and plants.

May all Creation thrive and cry:  Glory to the Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer of all!  Go in peace.

Sung Amen