Last month my son, Luke, and I travelled to Oregon to visit his godmother, Karen. Karen is a priest, and is a treasured seminary classmate of mine; we were formed as Christians and as clergy together. Although we haven’t visited in person often, we have kept in touch regularly over the years through Zoom and by holding each other and our families in prayer. Karen has had a difficult few years. She has been battling breast cancer and all of its associated complications with chemo, radiation, and surgery, while caring for her four young children and honoring her commitments to the church and her marriage. By all accounts, Karen is an amazing woman, mother, wife, priest, and friend, and I wanted Luke to get the chance to know his courageous godmother better.
Luke and I had never been to the Oregon coast, but we’d seen pictures of its stunning signature rock formations and heard tell of the awe-inspiring drive down scenic highway 101. So, Karen reserved a couple of campsites in a lovely state park near the town of Brookings, just a few miles from the California border, and we met her and her family there for four days of hiking, conversation, games, sightseeing, and s’mores. At the risk of stirring some resentment among my fellow Arkansans, I will add that the weather was perfect—60’s and 70’s during the day with clear skies and low humidity to boot, and 40’s and 50’s at night. Perfect sleeping weather. Sorry.
One of the most meaningful moments of this trip for me, and the piece I really want to share with you today, happened during a 3-mile hike we all took along the crystal clear Chetco river and up into an ancient, lush redwood grove. This grove is the northernmost stand of redwoods in the United States, as it turned out, and I had assumed we might see one or two of the giant trees, but what we encountered took my breath away. It helped that we were there during what photographer’s call “golden hour,” when the sun is positioned at just the right angle as to add an almost surreal, magical glow to the landscape. Like massive pillars supporting the sky above, hundreds of western redcedar and coast redwoods stood among us. Our collective “oohs” and “aahs” echoed through this maze of otherworldly giants, and we felt as if we had been transported back into prehistory, into the Land of the Lost.
I took out my phone to use an app to identify the flora, and I learned that these trees came with their own unique ecosystem. The forest floor was blanketed with pacific rhododendron and redwood sorrel—what we might recognize as giant clover—and it was crawling with yellow banana slugs and endangered redwood sideband snails, and the soundscape was dotted with the distinctive squawk of the Stellar’s Jay.
There was one tree, in particular, the largest that we encountered, that drew an unexpected response from me. I felt compelled to put my arms around it. I was only able to span maybe a tenth of the circumference of this giant, but with the help of Karen’s 6-year-old, Henri, we managed to give it a worthy embrace. What an honor to hold on to a living creature that was hundreds, if not thousands of years old! I got the uncanny impression that this tree knew exactly who it was, and that it belonged exactly where it was. Its presence in the forest was purposeful, giving shade to an entire ecosystem of life. There was no boastful pride in its presence, no longing for praise despite its obvious worthiness. It didn’t need to prove anything to anyone. It quite simply glorified God by being the strong, beautiful tree that it was.
There is a chapter from a Thomas Merton book, New Seeds of Contemplation, that I have always been drawn to. The chapter is entitled “Things in Their Identity,” and I want to share a brief quote:
A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying God. … If it tried to be like something else which it was never intended to be, it would … give God less glory. … [A] particular tree will give glory to God by spreading out its roots in the earth and raising its branches into the air and the light in a way that no other tree before or after it ever did or will do.
As many times as I have read Merton’s musings on trees and their godliness, I don’t think I ever felt their truth as deeply as I did while being in the presence of that Oregon redwood. Merton goes on to extend this reasoning to all of God’s creation, humankind in particular. We, also, glorify God by being the images of God that we are. Unlike trees, though, humans have a tendency to forget their divine roots from time to time and pretend to be something or someone they are not. We are so easily lured into believing that we are better than others because of what we have or what we’ve achieved or where we’ve been. We can also think less of ourselves than we ought to, believing that we are not worthy to occupy the space we do in this world. Living this confused, false way of life can lead to all kinds of mess. When we fail to see God in ourselves, we fail to see it in others and in the word around us. This cascading condition is the root of societal inequality, habitual neglect of the natural world, and of war.
In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul has something to say about this. He terms our tendency to live in ways other than God intends as sin. Paul says we can be slaves to it, making decisions about our lives and the lives of others in ways that glorify ourselves other than God. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” says Paul in a painfully honest moment of self-reflection, “because I don’t do what I want to do. Instead, I do the thing that I hate. … The desire to do good is inside of me, but I can’t do it.” What an apt description of human nature. The wages of this way of life, as Paul says, are nothing less than death. The Christian good news, though, is that just as Christ was raised from the dead, we too, with God’s help, can shed our false selves and see the world and our place in it anew. We are to “present [our]selves to God as people who have been brought back to life from the dead, and offer all of the parts of [our] body to God to be used to do right.”
Like a giant redwood tree, as an example of redeemed creation, we are to embrace and celebrate the space we have been given in this world, to take root in it and then reach high into the sky to seek nourishment from the light above. We are to participate in the growth and care of God’s ecosystem, recognizing that our existence is dependent on those for whom we care. And as members of the collective body of Christ, this is how our church is to exist in the world as well. We glorify God by being the community we were made to be: loving, generous, responsive, responsible, steady, and strong. The rest of the world depends on us being who we truly are.
In the days since Luke and I returned from our trip, I’ve given quite a bit of thought to why this tree had such an impact on me. I think a large part of it has to do with my friend, Karen. Given the difficult health circumstances she as been dealt in this life, no one would blame her for succumbing to fear, or for throwing up her hands in defeat. Hardships like cancer can tempt even the most stalwart among us to doubt our place among God’s beloved. But Karen and that coast redwood have something in common. Despite the fires they have experienced in their lives, the unexpected changes in climate, and living in a world always looking for ways to cut others down, they have not forgotten who they truly are or to whom they belong, and they glorify God because of it. Luke and I both gave Karen big hugs when we left Oregon last week. You might say we felt compelled to put our arms around her. Being in the presence of something, or someone, so fully themselves will do that to you.
Proper 9, Year A