My wife and I recently watched in horror as five able men took down a tree older than all of them put together.
We admired their skill. Especially the brave fellow who hung upside down with his chainsaw dangling from his waist 50 feet up.
But that was a noble tree.
As one ages, one starts to really see and appreciate trees.
The late, great Hal Holbrook (great as a human being as well as an actor) once told me that, at 80, he fell in love – with trees.
I’m not 80, but I’m there. And I think Hal, an expert sailor, was connected to the two great elements: sea and earth.
Pope Francis says that there are three vital issues of our time: Loneliness (spiritual and social), the health and fate of the earth, and stateless people – immigrants and migrants.
Global warming and the pollution of the sea is the basis of possible human extinction. Loneliness and statelessness are the basis of fascism and the willed extinction of human freedom.
These are the transcendent issues we should be talking about in this election.
We aren’t even talking about the plastic in our water.
We are talking about Mr. Trump’s court cases and Mr. Biden’s age.
Maybe we can start with plastic and work our way up to liberty.
But how? How and where do we begin?
We need to build community and create public spaces.
How to do that in a postmodern age of multiple screens, myriad diversions, and endless noise?
Civic groups, book clubs, and voluntary associations are all good starts.
Many churches and service clubs are creating public conversations and forums and can, and I hope will, do more.
Local politics and state politics are overdo for renewal. One person can still make a difference in both. And a true civic spirit and search for obvious common ground and common good on those levels of politics could change national politics, which is utterly trivialized.
The kind of civic renewal I am talking about is not easy. But it has to happen. We aren’t just bowling alone. We are bowling virtually – not even leaving home.
That tree we watched fall, it turns out, was sick. Not our property; not our call in any case. But we felt no less sick watching it fall.
It made me ask myself: How many trees have you saved or planted?
Remember Lady Bird Johnson?: “Plant a tree, a bush or a shrub.” Beautify.
She had the right idea.
And how much civic spirit have you nourished?
Plant a civic group. Start a voluntary association.
Life presents us with this choice: Conserve and build? Or tear down?
Politics presents us with this choice.
I am thinking, now, of two builders; two who served: Sister Jane Mary Sorosiak and Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, two people who spent their lives in vows and service and recently passed on.
Sister Jane Mary, a Franciscan sister, spent much of her life as a teacher. But from a very early age she created murals. And in later life, after retiring from teaching, she created large-scale ceramic murals for churches, schools, and sacred and public spaces of all kinds. Many of her murals adorn the buildings of Lourdes University, where she founded and directed the Alverno studios. That is where she created much of her truly holy work, which celebrates not only faith, but the natural world. (Google her for pictures.) She was truly a daughter of St. Francis – she brought light and beauty with a lite and joyful spirit.
The same could be said of Bishop Gumbleton, who was a very young man when he became a bishop (38). He lived to be 94. He never had a diocese of his own and he was usually on the outs with the Catholic hierarchy and with Catholic reactionaries. As with another Francis, the enmity directed his way was often ill-informed and sometimes dishonest. Like the current pope, Bishop Gumbleton was orthodox theologically. But he was a peace bishop, a bishop for the poor and hurting, a bishop who was open and welcoming. He was not one for french cuffs and widening his phylacteries. He bore slander and isolation with grace and mercy. He always turned conversation to the poor of his hometown (Detroit) and the world.
Our true heroes conserve tradition, as Sister Jane Mary did with her Catholic Christian tradition, but they also build something new.
Gumbleton’s offense was that he wanted to make the Gospel new again by returning it to the people and the streets, from whence it had come.
We used to have two great political parties in America: One that built and one that conserved. We need both.
All great works of nature, or of man, must be saved if we can.
America’s giant intellectual oak is the Constitution. We can’t let disease take it.
Wonderful essay. Yes, old trees can make you ache over their timeless tedtimony to life.
Met Bishop Gumbleton many years ago and instantly connected on his spirit. We need more like him!
A beautiful essay
Martha Raak