Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Quaker Pagan Reflections

Home
Pagan
Even the Trees Have Moved

Even the Trees Have Moved

Last updated on: July 13, 2015 at 11:41 am by Cat Chapin-Bishop

Even the Trees Have Moved 2015-07-13T11:41:59-04:00 Cat Chapin-Bishop

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Twenty-five years ago, or the day before yesterday in subjective time, my friends and I spent a day laboring in the summer heat to build a ritual circle in a clearing in the woods.

Forest. Cat Chapin-Bishop, 2012.

We lifted rocks, we gathered refuse and scraps of wood, dug a firepit, and erected a small standing stone. For the next five years, we used it often, gathering with other Pagans there for worship, camping in the deep, green moss nearby, and building trails and small shrines all around it in the woods. It was a quiet place, and I loved it. To this day, if I want to remember the feeling of magic, of hearts joined in Pagan community, all I need to do is find myself the smell of white pines and woodsmoke, and I am home.

But I fell in love, and I moved away, and life marched on, and I didn’t always return. Somehow, I looked up, and decades had past since I had been in those woods.

And then I had the chance to go home again.

For many summers now, the beginning of August has been reserved for me and for my husband to visit the annual sessions of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends–of Quakers. For a week, we would bunk together in an off-season college dorm room, spending our days in worship, in small group workshops and discussions, and in business meetings that last for most of the day–meetings in which six or seven hundred Quakers seek Unity with the Holy Spirit, in an atmosphere that alternates between mind-numbing boredom and the deepest worship experiences I have ever known.

It has been wonderfully sustaining and meaningful. But just because they have a 350 year prior claim to it does not mean I haven’t resented the fact that New England Quakers planted their annual business meeting and gathering right smack dab in the middle of Lughnassadh. And they don’t even celebrate it!

Last year, we broke with tradition, and in spite of the fact that it would keep us from attending Sessions, we accepted an invitation to the Laurelin Community’s annual celebration of Lughnassadh, up in those same woods I used to know, where a much smaller group of people come together every year. And it was lovely.

Except.

They had gone and moved the trees.

Literally, enough time had passed that the trees were in different places than the trees that I’d remembered. I could not even find the old ritual circle at first: there were clearings where there had been trees, and trees where there had been clearings, and nothing, nothing was the same.

Now, white pines are an especially quick-growing species, and not especially long-lived. Plant a dozen white pine saplings when your child is born, and he will find a grove of giants when he is in his prime. Wait another few years, and when that same man is old, the trees will be old along with him, and when he has died, most of the trees will by dying, too. Walk in the shade of white pines, and you will feel that you are walking in eternity, in a land that has been unchanged since the dawn of time.

But wait a few decades, and you will learn how much of an illusion unchanging time really is. White pines are ready to teach you: you can’t go home again.

That’s life.

The only things of permanence we human beings have ever created have been dead. Cathedrals and pyramids, coliseums and roads, things of stone can last a long, long time. But even a redwood tree, even a thousand-year-old yew tree, is dying.

That’s what makes it alive.

My husband and I have a small outdoor altar at our new home. It’s only a small shelf, fitted to the shape of a hemlock tree. We keep icons on it in the summer, and leave small offerings of bread and beer, or berries, flowers, and herbs.

Our hemlock tree is dying, yet another victim of the blight of woolly adelgids that are destroying so many New England hemlocks right now. From where I sit as I write these words, I see many bare branches–perhaps a third of all it has–poking like bones beneath the cloak of green boughs on the rest of the tree.

But hemlocks are tough old trees, and every few years, this tree rallies, puts out another bumper crop of needles, and–if the winter was harsh enough to kill off many of the adelgids–makes up a little lost ground. We’ve hired an arborist, who has done what he could. The tree has good years, and the tree has bad years. But in point of fact, our altar tree is dying. Sooner or later, it will be dead.

We’ve known that all along; it was one of the reasons we chose that tree to hold our altar. Our tree is dying; our tree is full of life. Those two facts are not actually in tension. The dead limbs are home to insects, and the insects feed the birds. A pair of

YggDrasil. FrostZero, 1990.

cardinals especially love our tree, but so do chickadees and robins, finches and juvenile hawks. Toadstools are growing from its dying roots, brambles have taken root in a crook between its trunks, and rabbits shelter in its shadow as they crop grass from our lawn.

Every tree is Yggdrasil, with worlds in its roots and branches, gnawed at and dying, alive and giving life.

How could we expect a thing so sacred ever to stay unchanged?

Previous Post

July 4, 2015

Are We the Land?

Next Post

July 22, 2015 Toward a Daily Spiritual Practice

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Cat's posts Peter's posts Uncategorized

Select a Month March 2017 February 2017 November 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 July 2013 June 2013 March 2013 February 2013 December 2012 November 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 April 2012 February 2012 January 2012 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 July 2000

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz