March 8th, 2024
The Tree of Life
I live in an intentional community with Catholic Sisters and other laywomen that focuses on arts and spirituality called The Fireplace. This past weekend, artist Kiki McGrath, who is a friend of our community, led a contemplative drawing event about the arrival of spring. We slowly walked around our Chicago backyard on a warm and windy Sunday afternoon, noticing the barely-budding grass and emerging purple crocuses (“So far the crocuses have always come up,” says one of my favorite Corita Kent silkscreens). My partner and I spotted a fuzzy bumble bee resting in the folds of a baby plant.
Afterward, Kiki led us through meditative drawing exercises. Dried roots plucked from houseplants or the soil outside were spread out on the large paper across our dining room table. She asked us to draw the roots really specifically and slowly, as accurately as we could, our eyes following each gnarly, knotty strand.
Tracing a thin, veiny root with my pencil felt like a reflection of my heart—chaotic, layered, choked and swollen.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.
—Jeremiah 17:8
In 1854, Hannah Cohoon, a Shaker, painted “Tree of Life.” It depicts “a mighty tree with checkered leaves and fruit round and full, greens and orange and gold, like fecund sunflowers, the leaves and fruits too large for such a slender trunk but somehow perfectly balanced in a holy air,” writes Gail Ramshaw in A Metaphorical God. You can’t see the roots of this tree, but its flowering fruit, held by delicate swirling branches, convey that there’s a breathing life force keeping this tree alive. Its leaves stay green, always shady in the heat; its fruit always lifegiving, dripping, ever plentiful, free for all.
If God is a tree, I imagine the roots: strong and sprawling, ripping through bricks. Bark steady and rough and trustworthy. A place to hide and climb and find shade and feel safe, a place to tend to. This tree that became a cross that became the tree of life. Today, I think about Palestinians, their beloved ancient olive trees, symbols of peace and rootedness in the land, growing amid histories of bloodshed in their soil. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, the Gospel says today. And the second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus, our tree, may we live in and through and by your peace, your loving fruit that sustains us, and may we share this fruit with the world. Amen.
Cassidy R. Klein is a writer and journalist based in Chicago, Ill. Read more of her writing at cassidyrklein.weebly.com