Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Trees: Schools of Divinity


My love for trees continues unabated. Every time I walk through the meadow with Buddy and then enter the grove of large Norway pines, I stand for a few minutes and take them in. I breathe their air, feel their weight and the strength of life in their trunks. Yes, I have hugged them, even prayed to them. If there is divinity in this world, it's right there in the bark and the branches.

This morning, I came across this wonderful excerpt from Herman Hesse and wanted to share it with you. It looks like a commitment to read but I don't think you'll be sorry. It reads so beautifully and is well worth the time:


For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the more indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

~ Hermann Hesse, Baeume: Betrachtungen and Gedichte (Trees: Reflections and Poems)




38 comments:

  1. For Germanic peoples trees are sacred. Even now, in these ultra-modern, fast-paced, mercurial and relentlessly profit-driven times there are many who will go into the woods and ‘worship’, single trees and whole forests, if they have been allowed to survive.

    Hesse was no different, he was just better able to express himself than most.

    Thank you for posting his thoughts.

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    1. Thank you, Friko. The Germanic people certainly have the right idea...

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  2. One of my favorite sacred groves is Trees, a music club I frequent in Dallas.

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    1. Music certainly falls into the sacred category,as well...

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  3. This is such a beautiful post, Hesse's words and your own. Reading it I forgot where I am for a bit, and remembered trees I've known. Thank you!

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    1. I'm so glad you enjoyed it, Ashling... looks like you survived the winter, too. :)

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  4. I am blessed to live in a place where I can visit old growth trees. I also see some of their family that was cut down for the lumber, long ago. I love trees and feel their majesty. What a wonderful piece from Hesse.

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    1. Your walks take you among some beautiful trees. Just to breathe their air is such a treat.

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  5. YES!!

    The way trees were slaughtered in Iowa for greed is part of the reason I lost so much respect for "farmers".

    I cringe when I think of the rain forest.

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    1. You and me both. Those rain forests where clear cut has taken place is heartbreaking...

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  6. Lovely piece. Our house is surrounded by trees. I'm glad for that.

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  7. I have always imagined that if I had a super-power, I would want to be able to create trees. On long road trips, I while away the miles creating willow trees by ponds, stands of oak trees alongside freeways and covering hillsides with maple trees. Every block of every street I go down would be lined by high arches of large, healthy elms enfolding neighborhoods in a loving embrace. They recently removed three lovely ash trees down the block due to emerald ash borer. It makes me feel so helpless.

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    1. What a terrific superpower to desire... I love how you spend your time on the road... that's wonderful!

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  8. This post touched my very core, Teresa. Beautiful. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that I am a tree hugger/lover/appreciator/etc., but, I do need to tell you thank you for bringing this to us to read this day. How wonderful it is to think of trees as having "long thoughts".

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    1. I'm so glad you're out there appreciating the beauty around you and sharing it. Yes, I love those long thoughts, also.

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  9. I also have a deep love, indeed a reverence for trees. I grieve for our northwestern forests that are under increasing attack by the greedy exploiters and the politicians they own. In destroying these forests they are destroying the hope of life for our future generations for the great watersheds are dying with the trees.

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    1. Oh, this is a heartbreaking and yet very necessary statement you've shared here. Thank you for reminding us all what's at stake.

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  10. I love getting out into wooded areas, and I also treasure the urban forest. Everywhere I look I can see great successes (on the part of those who planted and those which grow) and sad situations. The giant buckeye in our back yard is really too big for a city lot but it hosts a wonderful variety of birds along with squirrels. It's getting old, and I dread the day when it has to come down.

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    1. I think Mpls./St. Paul and their suburbs have done a great job of keeping green areas, and all those lakes with walking paths... I can well imagine the sorrow at the passing of that tree...

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  11. I am so with you on this Teresa!
    Down in Talihina I'd sit with the pines that near surrounded my house. There is nothing like the trees and the moon for getting next to God.

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    1. Hey, woman! Good to hear from you. Yep. They both give me endless pause for thought and comfort.

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  12. Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts… .

    Wow. Trees are super-wise.

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    1. They sound like they might have Buddhist leanings...

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  13. I have an old friend tree. I call it the Old Druid. It's been hit by lightening and is wounded badly but still lives. I have known this friend for 16 years now. It has seen me happy, sad, lost and joyful. I always receive comfort from this friend...and, yes, I have heard these words...
    "When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts… . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all."
    I have.
    Do you think that trees will be where ever we go next? I couldn't live without them.

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    1. The immeasurable wisdom of trees ... and yes, I have to believe they will...

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  14. Trees are vibrant, even in death they remain vibrant. They are friends of all, and enemies of none. What a divine post we have got here. We owe our existence to trees, and yet many do not really appreciate the beauty of trees. After a gap of a few weeks, I returned to your blog just to be greeted by TREES:). I have always loved trees, and my soul is rooted in them. Thank you very much for sharing this.

    Hope you don’t mind if I share some things I wrote about the trees. I hope you would care to read them at your own convenience. Thank you.

    http://nityajeevi.blogspot.com/2010/08/she-is-not-just-tree.html

    http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/trees-22/

    http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tree-ii/

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    1. Good to see you again. It seems trees breathe for the world... "Trees ... my soul is rooted in them," what a wonderful thing. My own soul seems to be, as well.

      I read your poem on trees on your blog and found it very lovely. However, I had trouble with the poemhunter links. Let me know if there is another option.

      Thank you for your thoughtful comments.

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  15. I never would worship a tree, but I never would doubt the ability of trees to communicate the divine. One of the most emotionally-fraught lines in all of poetry for me is the beginning of Longfellow's "Evangeline" - "This is the forest primieval, the murmuring pine and the hemlock..." The sight of some Texas cypress evoked that line, and started me on my writing career.

    Nothing is more moving to me than the sight of a lone tree on the prairie, or a shady mott on the horizon. It's no wonder that one of the first tasks undertaken by homesteaders was builing a windbreak near to the house. There were practical reasons, but there were other reasons, as well.

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    1. I have always love the opening lines of "Evangeline." :) Trees offer solace and I do have a sense of reverence for them. Their strength and resilience is very inspiring.

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  16. This Hesse writing on trees has passed by me several times in the past, but this time, for some reason, it resonated on a glorious note. Thanks for passing this along, I'd forgotten how well it describes the chapel that some call forest.

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  17. Thank you for posting this wonderful piece by Herman Hesse about trees, there is a great deal of wisdom in it. How much of life can slip past with us wishing to be someone that we are not! I suppose our mobility can almost be regarded as a design fault! It gives us the idea of the "grass being greener" somewhere else; itchy feet! And itchy souls of a different kind! ! What a fine example is the solitary tree that just stands, and is, and is beautiful just being what it is!

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    1. Peter, So nice to hear from you. Hope your back is improving every minute... That lone tree that IS is a very good example for all of us...

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    1. What a sweet and wonderful surprise! So good to see your smiling face... ;)

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  19. Tree worship (dendrolatry) has a pedigree which goes back thousands of years. Stonehenge itself was an oak grove. You do it full justice. :))

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    1. An honorable tradition it is. Thank you so much, Tony. I hope all is well in Glasgow.

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