Jarrah trees.
When we attend with the heart, we can hear the voices of the trees, writes Rodney Marsh. Here he reflects on what the trees taught him while walking in the Jarrah forest of the Darling Range in Western Australia, and how walking with trees can be a prayer and a blessing.
“... reality is a dynamic, ever-changing, flowing process, not an assemblage of things”[1]
“(now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes opened)”[2]
“see without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking”[3]
Before I began my 200km 12 day walk I had read and been mulling over the words above. I wanted to see, with E.E. Cummings, “the leaping greenly spirits of trees…” and know “everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes”. I wanted to “see without looking”, like the trees.
If only trees could speak and tell us how to simply be. Maybe trees do speak and “gossip like old friends, sharing stories of all they have seen” (Christine Sine), but it is we humans who can neither hear nor understand. Perhaps, like all created things, each Jarrah tree’s very being is a ‘show and tell’ of the God who is, and it is we who are blind and deaf to what they have to teach us.
I thought, perhaps, on my walk, I could learn a few words in old Entish and tap into the secret life of trees. Then I could, perhaps, learn to simply be, and know as a tree knows. But there is a catch-22 here: You can only learn from a tree how to just be, by first just being; then, and only then, will a tree consent to teach you to be.
I imagined that each and every tree I met on the track had a story to tell me. I do not doubt it, for every ‘thing’ in creation has its own lyrical contribution to the flow of the river of life. The story of each tree, like our own story, is still being told. Each ‘thing’s’ story in is an essential part of God’s voluminous, developing universal book of nature. As I walked in the forest I sensed that each tree’s story was concealed and revealed in the scars and wounds of its body, just like we humans. And so when I passed a tree I tried to open my heart to hear its name, its story.
To some, this may be excessive anthropomorphism, but, I reply, that attributing human characteristics to nature is natural since I am part of nature, as are they. Indeed, a stubborn unwillingness to ‘love’ a tree as it is, is choosing an artificial, life-draining separation from nature. Since “reality is a dynamic, ever-changing, flowing process”, an inner emptiness, openness and receptivity is essential to experience the wonder that nature is always offering to me and all creatures. If I objectify nature and separate myself from the tree, I cannot receive this gift of wonder. Not because it is withheld, but because my heart is hard.
When the Ent, Treebeard, from the Lord of the Rings, is asked what his name is, he says he will not say, for “... it would take a long while: my name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of things they belong to…”. Treebeard’s name is his story.
Meister Eckhart taught that “every single creature is full of God and is a book (story) about God”, so every tree’s name/story is a book about God. I, in human terms, am old now (74), but I thought that I too am still growing into my true name known only to God. The trees of the forest teach me that my name too is a story even now being engraved on God’s palms (49:16). Why God’s palms? - because her hands are always open. Now, walking amongst the Jarrah and Marri had also framed a question to me (via Tolkien): “Where, to whom and to what do you belong?”
From my first steps into the Jarrah forest, the trees seemed to welcome me home to the bush of my childhood. They seemed to say “We’re glad to see you”, and I felt glad to see them. This was my ‘heart response’ to walking in the bush and confirms that “... reality is a dynamic, ever-changing, flowing process, not an assemblage of things”. Only the attention of the heart can sense the flow of all creation or can hear the voice of the trees. Facts or photographs are not sufficient to ‘know’ any ‘thing’ in creation, let alone a living tree.
‘Scientific knowledge’ of facts (eg “trees are an assemblage of roots and shoots”) or viewing a nature video are no help to discover the true ‘life of trees’. An entirely different mode of attention to reality is needed - the attention of the heart. Presence is essential - your own and the tree’s - but not sufficient to give heart knowledge. Presence must be accompanied by attention. Then presence with attention will lead to encounter, and our heart will leap with wonder and joy as we catch a vision of “the leaping greenly spirits of trees” or dimly begin to hear each tree’s story.
So when walking with trees I attempted to ensure I was present (not lost in thought) and had open attention. I used the prayer word I use whilst meditating to (mostly) ensure I was present to the bush as well as physically present. Nothing ‘magical’ happened, but I do believe that when I am present and attentive in this way I am praying, and a deep peace settles within me. That deep peace heals and unites and that is the inner gift that walking with the Jarrah trees gave me - the knowledge that “I am” just as they are. We are one. Only through heart knowing could I discover the ‘oneness’ that includes even me.
By walking with trees with presence and attention I learned that ‘knowing’ is not observing the river of life, but diving in and being part of the flow of reality. Learning to enter the ‘silence and stillness’ of Christian meditation (‘resting in the Lord’, or ‘the ‘prayer of the heart’, or ‘pure prayer’, were the Desert Mothers and Fathers descriptions for this form of prayer), helped me welcome the trees of the forest on our walk, just as they welcomed me. I learned that the experience of walking with trees is prayer and bringsthe gifts of union, communion, peace, acceptance, joy and gratitude. These gifts come with the practice of pure prayer and are the gifts of God for the people of God (via the trees).
When I arrived home I led the weekly online meditation meeting and ended it as I usually do, with this blessing:
May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you: wherever he may send you;
may he guide you through the wilderness: protect you through the storm;
may he bring you home rejoicing: at the wonders he has shown you;
may he bring you home rejoicing: once again into our doors.[4]
I realised that I had received this blessing on my walk and arrived “home rejoicing at the wonders” I had been shown. Such is the blessing all receive who learn to walk amongst trees with presence and attention.
Rodney Marsh is a retired Uniting Church Minister living on the South Coast of Western Australia. He spent 20 years in Parish ministry and 20 years working as a teacher and Chaplain in an independent Christian School.
For more information on the practice of meditation in the Christian tradition, based on the teaching of Fr John Main, see how to meditate or this Video, or https://www.thelivingwater.com.au/blog/the-easter-joy-of-being-in-love
References:
[1] Iain McGilchrist The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (Perspectiva Press)
[2] From “i thank You God for most this amazing”, by E.E. Cummings. See: https://artandtheology.org/2016/04/27/i-thank-you-god-for-most-this-amazing-by-e-e-cummings/
[3] Excerpt from For The Time Being by W.H. Auden https://fourteenlines.blog/tag/for-the-time-being-by-w-h-auden/
[4] From: https://commonprayer.net/