peace (tree story #156-157)

“I will make a covenant of peace with my people and drive away the dangerous animals from the land. Then they will be able to camp safely in the wildest places and sleep in the woods without fear. I will bless my people and their homes around my holy hill. And in the proper season I will send the showers they need. There will be showers of blessing. The orchards and fields of my people will yield bumper crops, and everyone will live in safety. When I have broken their chains of slavery and rescued them from those who enslaved them, then they will know that I am the Lord. They will no longer be prey for other nations, and wild animals will no longer devour them. They will live in safety, and no one will frighten them.

“And I will make their land famous for its crops, so my people will never again suffer from famines or the insults of foreign nations. In this way, they will know that I, the Lord their God, am with them. And they will know that they, the people of Israel, are my people, says the Sovereign Lord. You are my flock, the sheep of my pasture. You are my people, and I am your God. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken!”

Ezekiel 34: 25-31

prosperity (tree story #161-162)

My ears are filled with the sounds of promise:
"Good people will prosper like palm trees,
Grow tall like Lebanon cedars;
transplanted to God's courtyard,
They'll grow tall in the presence of God,
lithe and green, virile still in old age."

Such witnesses to upright God!
My Mountain, my huge, holy Mountain!

Psalm 92: 11-15

remembering (tree story #140)

A break in the recent storms has given me a great desire to get out. I’ve come to this park, next to where they’re building the new high school and find the high school grounds are taking more of the park than I expected. It’s a small blow to my heart. The “tree along the fence” is gone, as is the old fence; it makes me a little sad but bittersweet that I caught it on film while I could.

The ground is wet but not too soggy, covered in short green grass sprouts and fallen oak leaves. I wander around the park and find a well worn foot path dead-ends at a chain link construction fence. New taller fences, looking appropriate for sports courts, are just beyond.

Many of my favorite trees are still here though - I’m also looking to see how they all weathered the recent sixty-five-mile-per-hour winds, so I’m enjoying my old friends for as long as I can. A small flock of doves roosts in the top of the “woodpecker oak” and a few magpies at the top of another. I photograph one of the old heritage oaks that I had called “oak near Palmerson Drive” and one of the “s curve oaks,” reminding me of my kids playing here when they were little. Lots of tiny little finches flit around branches, twittering and calling out to each other, much like the little children in my memory.

Judith Monroe, Wanderings journal

longing for the wind's embrace (tree story #139)

Proud and strong they stand
with roots spreading across the land
reaching for the sky they are
to be viewed like beacons from afar
yearning for the sun’s caress
to shine upon their wooden dress
longing for the wind’s embrace
to bring out their ancient grace
proud and strong they stand
but will they survive the greed of man?

Magnus Holmgren

wild & cultivated (tree story #138)

When she was little she used to draw trees. It was natural. The earth was a healing ground for finding her core of peace and inside this core the voice of God. Through the years her tree drawings would come and go, become modern and jagged branches or watercolored maps of the woods. It was natural. The imagery of the tree always drew her inward again and then outward to feel the simple joy of nature and the gifts of life so evident in the colors and textures of the many trees found in the forest, local parks, and the hills of California.

Trees, wild or cultivated, ancient or sweet seedlings in a row, spoke to her and, when she couldn’t laugh at home, the trees would help her find that personal sense of freedom again. Life is packed with challenges and pain along with indescribable joy and walking a path lined with trees or touching fingertips to bark or gazing at the amazing patterns in leaves was a way to find that joy again when it was lost in the hardships. Trees hold fast, stand tall, and offer protection from the burn of a hammering sun. Trees reach up and out while staying rooted like sentinels. They remind her of the strength to be found deep inside even when weakness wants to rule. They remind her of the need for balance in being strong but also receptive, keeping arms wide to the higher power like the tree welcomes the sky in order to survive.

When she grew old she would draw trees now and then between carrying a camera out for a daily walk of capturing images of another tree or field or wild flower dancing in the wind. She grew old with trees as her friend and forever thinks of trees as inspiration and a gift from God that keeps her sane when the world seems not. Trees forever reach until the end and so she goes on, reaching, lifting face and heart to heaven in surety that she is rooted deeply as a loved child loving the magic of God’s creation … even when the clouds darken and rain comes she can sense the Son rising in her heart to nurture her with everlasting life.

Susan Raines

with eager hope (tree story #108)

Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)

Romans 8:18-25

still singing (tree story #97)

10 a.m. sunny, warm & clear. Songbirds singing, kids playing, voices echo in the quiet hills. No sign of life on the vines yet, grass & other little plants green up the ground. I wander around a bit and see about a half dozen mule deer carefully work their way along the west edge of the vineyards in the bordering oak woods where the light will be better later...

6 p.m. Light clouds coming in - little less intense light than last evening - cooling just a little, songbirds are still singing. Clouds shift, the earth moves around the sun, the light shifts and changes. Vineyard to the southwest, framed by trees and a stone wall.

Judith Monroe, Wanderings journal

ghost (tree story #92)

It was just as she said it would be: the reddish light glancing off the hill, filtering through the summer’s yellowing grass. I was close to where the blue oak should be. “Stop,” I said, for no other reason than to hear a sound other than the scrub jay’s shrill retorts, the barb-wire twanging from a breeze somewhere along the fence’s many-miled length. I knelt to sit momma’s ashes down in the grass. Instead of the soft thud, porcelain against earth, there was a resounding thunk. I swept away pebbled dirt and wisps of straw-grass, to find - momma’s tree, leveled by something stronger than the 50 years that had passed since she was last here. A deep cleft scarred the trunk where lightning had broken it like a promise. I pulled the faded picture from my back pocket; the tree momma spent much of her childhood around now only existed on its yellowing surface. In the evening light, the blue oak seemed to shimmer and ghost across the film: gone was the knot where it had grown around the barb wire fence, metal sticking out its trunk like a rotted tooth; gone were the limbs stretching like compass points over the horizon to anywhere except here; gone was momma’s name carved with a chunk of broken glass; gone was momma’s wish to climb it one last time. The meadow swayed arid and dusty in the heat as I picked up the jar, the orange of the sunset arcing across the porcelain. I started to pull the top off the vase, then put it back on, tucked the vase under my arm and walked back across the field to my car. Momma had come too far to find out she could never go home.

Indigo Moor

meditations (tree story #78)

Faithful tree! Freeing us from your forbidden ancestor’s curse,
The birthplace of empty promises and lies.
Pestilence and toil, war and hatred, pride and fear and despair
-The tyranny of sin and death-
All find their ultimate end when the gardener
Nails payment to your branches.

Tree of beauty! Not resin but blood flowing down those branches,
Blood to wash the world from stain,
Blood to reconcile wayward sons and daughters to the Father,
Blood to make one people.

Sweet tree! None in fruit thy peer may be.
Your long-awaited Divine fruit giving nourishment,
Only antidote to the toxic ancient fruit,
Fruit to produce fruit.
The purchased feast under your boughs,
The beloved discovers that she has become someone else
As the crimson juice trickles down her chin.

Tree of victory! Among your branches the partridge rules over the serpent,
And the aged remember the first dawn and recognize the day:
The second creation, pardoned and beyond tarnish or corruption.

Glorious tree! Leaves unfurling after the frost
Drink the Light and prove that Winter’s spell has broken.
Lush foliage erupting over the hills testifies to this newness of life,
Quivering silver medallions hanging from tender stems whisper of riches beyond measure.
Great tree, point heavenward lest I forget the ever-circling Sovereignty.


Karen Garven