Author: Jane Tawel

Maybe Only God Can Make a Tree, But it is Up To Us To Plant Them

by Jane Tawel

July 5, 2019

I am a pessimist by nature and yet hope springs eternal within my chosen worldview. At the end of this post is an optimistic article on the very real possibility of planting trees in order to save our planet.  It will not involve reducing food-supply acreage nor will in impact urban areas, although I hope people will make changes on both of those fronts.  As a literary call to arms for our planet, I will use an other’s words, rather than my own. From J.R.R. Tolkien:

“The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.” Words from that sage Ent, Treebeard and  J.R.R. Tolkien

I believe that we absolutely must start feeling both much more guilt, personally and collectively, and much more hope. We also must learn whom and what to love.  We must know what love means when it comes to our planet.  When we love our children, we care for them. The earth and all her wonders, are first of all a Creator’s children and by reason as well as command,  the earth and her wonders are human beings’ adopted children. And we have treated those earthly children of Nature, too much like pesky mosquitoes or weeds we don’t find attractive, or, maybe we are treating Nature’s progeny, more like we have the children of those pesky, asylum seekers at our borders. The Earth Herself seems to me to be crying out for asylum. Will we continue to destroy and deny Her her rightful place or will we become once more the caretakers and saviors we humans were created to be on our planet?  I have one suggestion if you only have time to do one more thing on your to-do list today.  Go outside somewhere, and look at something that man did not make or tamper with or create. And just for a moment, let the beauty of a dandelion, or a sparrow, or an apple, or a wriggly worm, or a star, or a crinkled, brown leaf touch you. And whenever possible, find a tree and let its beauty, smite your heart. And feel guilty for a moment at how we have forsaken our planet, and then let hope return.

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor, high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while.  The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him”.  J.R.R. Tolkien

So, let’s all start somewhere today, shall we? Here are some things I try and need to try to do much better at.

Remember, the number one thing we can do is to reduce — reduce our use and need for more, more, more, more.  Don’t buy anything in or of plastic whenever possible. Ask to be sent less paper and when necessary, reuse the backs of paper products for making grocery lists. Use as little water as possible. Eat in and eat everything on the plate. Walk when possible, take more time, slow down, breathe, and look around at the trees.

Then we need to re-use. Use again, and again, again.  Wash out that baggie, and use it again. Better- don’t buy baggies (see above on reducing).  Buy a food compost-er. Shop less, get outside more and …. look at the trees.

And finally, recycle. Give things away to people who need them more. Make sure that cities and towns recycle goods appropriately. Recycle in-house, by using jars for vases, old sheets for rags, holey towels for doggie beds, and any other creative thing that people suggest for recycling ideas.  There are great sources in magazines, books and newspapers. And read them online because of course in that way you will help…….. save a tree.

I get discouraged, until I think of Frodo and my  own favorite LotR character, Sam Gamgee.  I have never seen the movies and hope I never will (my kids think I’m weird) but I have read the trilogy at least six and half times in my lifetime.  I feel like reading it again just talking about it.   But though I am easily disheartened,  I try to reduce my discouragement, reuse the hopes of history, and recycle the wisdom of all great saviors, both fictional and real. And I start again. Because as Tolkien says through the character of the disciple Samwise, “It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish”.

So, while often my head wants to explode and I think, what’s the point?! I humble myself and do my small bit for the environment. On those walks I take when I see all the ugly pieces of trash people throw onto sidewalks and streets to litter my neighborhood, instead of feeling helpless to make a difference, I set myself the goal to pick up as many pieces of other people’s garbage as I can carry and give them decent burials in the closest trashcan. I hope that if someone sees me, they might pick up as many pieces of trash as they can — or maybe just not throw their trash in the first place, onto our beautiful planet. Each time I stoop down into the gutter to pick up someone’s tossed straw or plastic lid, I reward myself with the dreamy notion that I have saved a dolphin today, and that makes me carry on. I try not to grimace, although sometimes I admit I do. I smile and hum that old hymn, “This is My Father’s World”, and I hope to honor The Planetary Parent by caring for Her Creation. Sometimes, I will hum some remembered lines from the childhood of my heart: “Inchworm, Inchworm, measuring the marigolds. You and your arithmetic will probably go far. Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds. Seems to me you’d stop and see how beautiful, they are.” So, I pick up something ugly, and I look around, like the proverbial reformed inchworm I long to be, and I admire how beautiful the world’s metaphoric marigolds really are. This helps me stop the arithmetic in my head of how many pieces of trash I won’t be able to pick up today and throw away. So I measure how much I am doing, and vow to add more. Save the dolphins, save the trees and save the planet, one additional attempt at subtracting trash at a time.

I have shamed my family by conserving water through the “if it’s yellow, let it mellow” routine, and I turn the faucet off between face splashes, dishes, and leg shaves. I use a container in the sink and shower when possible to catch water to use in the garden. I am working on my addiction to buying things and of course, I am lucky enough to live in California where most stores don’t use one-use plastic bags any more.  There are environmentally friendly bags, albeit still plastic, for when I walk my dogs, so buying and using them is at least a step in the right direction. I haven’t figured out how to scoop poop with paper bags, so….. again, my motto is at least do everything I can today. Feel guilty when I fail. Feel happy when I succeed. And tomorrow do more.

All of my tithes and offerings now go to planet changers and people changers. There are many good people and groups and organizations throughout the world to choose from and to give even a couple of bucks to in order to support the cause of helping our planet live a bit longer than the projected 5-10 years we may have to turn it all around and to help re-achieve sustainable economics for people around the globe. I remind myself, that I have been admonished to bring the kingdom of God to earth, as it is everywhere in the heavens or in the unknown parts out there somewhere in God’s un-fallen, un-sinful, unpolluted cosmos.

I cheer my little, wee unimportant self on with the stories of Meg Murray and Calvin O’Keefe; of Frodo and Sam and Treebeard and (you won’t find in the movies these characters, also among my favorites!!) of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry. I remember the stories of Abel and Boaz and Abraham; and of Gandalf and the Lorax and Jesus;  and, oh, yes!– of all the real and imaginary small people who believed that the world did not belong to them but that they belonged to the world.  I privately ask myself and I soul-search among the Universe and the gods and The God; and the great Wizards and the long-memoried Ents; and the family that I love and the friends that I love,– I ask myself, in light of all of these –“what will my story be”? I ponder in my prayers to that Friend of Sinners, just as that wee hobbit Sam wondered to his own friend and Master: “What a tale we have been in, Mr. Frodo, haven’t we?”, Sam said. “I wish I could hear it told.  Do you think they’ll say: Now comes the story of Nine-fingered Frodo and the ring of Doom? And then everyone will hush, like we did, when in Rivendell they told us the tale of Beren One-hand and the Great Jewel. I wish I could hear it! And I wonder how it will go on after our part.”  Oh yes, it is humbling and necessary to reflect on how The Story will go on after my part, if I do my part.

Oh, look around today. Look at the kaleidoscopic colors and shapes of trees and the lovely hues of water. Look at faces of beloved ones, not just your people, but including the faces of trees and squirrels and marigolds. And ask yourself, “I wonder, how it all will go on after my part”?

One of my favorite authors and TED Talk presenters is Kathryn Schultz.  In her book, Being Wrong, Adventures in the Margin of Error, she writes about both the foolishness and the miracle of being human. I think what she says is of scriptural proportion when it comes to wondering about and wandering along on our planet as human beings:

“To err is to wander and wandering is the way we discover the world and lost in thought it is also the way we discover ourselves. Being right might be gratifying but in the end it is static a mere statement. Being wrong is hard and humbling and sometimes even dangerous but in the end it is a journey and a story. Who really wants to stay at home and be right when you can don your armor spring up on your steed and go forth to explore the world. ”  “The miracle of your mind isn’t that you can see the world as it is. It’s that you can see the world as it isn’t.”
― Kathryn Schulz

I feel it is past time for us to stop being static when it comes to caring for our world. We must don our armor, as Schultz preaches, and go forth as humble heroes. We must not only tilt at windmills, we must make and use more of them to meet our need for energy. We must not only seek the holy grail, we must reuse the one we already own. We must not only change the course of our planet’s history, we must recycle the wisdom of saviors, and sages, and fiction-writers, and TED talkers, and trees. I sort of hope that someday, my tombstone might read: “Here lies Jane. She really tried”.

I am embarrassed and ashamed at how little I do and feel silly posting this with so many who are really living radically or responsibly. Please read about and find out about the real world-changers who are living lives well-lived before they return to the earth and before our planet is irrevocably changed for the worse forever. At the same time as I state how often I am wrong and how often I get bogged down by the world and the way it is,  I encourage any one reading this to just try. Just as I am trying to do, make a start. And try as Ms. Schultz says, to “see the world as it isn’t” and add, “yet”. The world isn’t perfect yet, but it can be. It once was. We just need to start doing our part and changing the story’s falling action and rewrite our fears and hopes about the story’s end.  As Sam Gamgee did. As our favorite fictional nanny might say to us children of the earth, “well begun is half done”. Just do it, and one small act will, when laced with and lashed to hope, lead to another small act, and all of us small people on our small globe really can make a difference, in our own hearts and lives, in our own communities, and I pray, on our own small planet.

We do not know what our own particular “ring” to carry might be. We never truly and unselfishly and without a great degree of fear, failure, and pessimism, want to take up our own cross to bear. Much as The Christ did not want to take up his cross but did anyway, we must just say, “No matter what I don’t know, no matter what people may think, no matter how afraid I am, no matter how I may fail–well, I’ll do it anyway”. And as Frodo found, in the end, it is the people who say, “I will take the ring, even though I do not know the way” who live best for The One who is The Way.

I am learning much from native and indigenous teachings on how to live in harmony with nature. I have also found the collection of poetry and reflections entitled The Psalms to be good food for the soul in terms of living universally with other beings and the matters of the universe.  I am encouraged by novels like “The Lord of the Rings”, “A Wrinkle in Time”, and “Howard’s End” along with the poets and visual artists who nudge us with reminders of earth’s beauty, in words and paints. Musicians like Ludovico Einaudi and Mozart and Dolores O’Riordan make my heart throb with both pain and with hope for humankind. There are many good books on spiritual paths to living in harmony with the Creator and Creation. Find one at your library that suits you. We have been tasked as human beings to care for the Creator’s creations and the created world we live in. In this, we do what we were designed to do in the beginning. In this, we are the imago dei and only in this, do we practice love to all. All.

The old chestnut by Joyce Kilmer, much memorized by school children in the later century, is considered sappy (are you following my intentional puns so far?) and has justly been rooted out from the vast forest of poems that are considered classics. But as a lover of poetry and a writer of, (and I apologize) at best, C- poetry, myself, I think it is unjust to lop off Kilmer’s creative intent and toss it into the woodpile with his sapling-sized rhymes.  I mean, c’mon, the guy had to contend with being called “Joyce”.

My secret dream is that someday,  when I am old and ready to pass on to the great unknown, my family can bury my body as food for the worms, wrapped in an ecologically-chemically free shroud near a body of water, next to a tree. If there are any weeping willows left on the planet, that would be a fitting place for this old romantic. I will be happy to give the last thing I own, my body, to feed a tree because so many trees have fed me, body and soul.  My family thinks I am morbid to think about being eaten by worms and tree roots, but when I think about it, I feel hopeful. Hopeful that when I die there might still be bodies of water and trees that still exist to feed the bodies and souls of my children and my children’s children. I hope to leave fewer carbon footprints behind but perhaps I shall manage to leave behind the footprint of one small skeletal love as a gift to my planet. I hope the world will receive the hopes of this insignificant person’s offerings, and that even in death, my love for this old world will be met by the hope of a new heaven and new earth. As the Great Man said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.”(Jesus as related in John 12: 24-25)

The seeds of our destruction are horrifically being sown everywhere, but if a tiny acorn can grow into a mighty oak, then I too, may hope to sow, where I do not reap, and to plant seeds of hope that may one day blossom into a restored and renewed world, for my children and my children’s children. I wear on a chain around my neck a small container of mustard seeds. My daughter, Justine gave it to me as a gift when she was very young to remind me that all I am required to have is a mustard-seed sized faith. Here’s a picture of a mustard tree and encouragement to believe what all our minuscule mustard seeds and a bit of faith in the goodness of our planet might achieve:

In 1981, a program was started to help lost children survive in the wilderness. It was called “Hug-a-tree”.  In 2019, it is the trees that are lost and losing and that we must help to survive.  Become a tree-hugger today.  Perhaps, as the poet wrote only God can make a tree, but right now, right this minute, it is up to us to care for them. As Frost wrote, someday, I shall have less to say, so today I shall make the reckless choice and speak out. The Way of Truth and Light and Love is always the path least taken, but more of us need to start taking it if we want to save the world. Yes, let us take the path less taken, without trod-ding on more rain forests, or depleting more glaciers, or extinguishing more critters; let us take the path less taken of humility and hope and love for our planet; and in that way, we shall make all the difference.

Below is a link for the article from The Guardian on planting trees to save our planet. You will find many other good articles and resources in their section entitled “Environment”.