The Giving Tree in Lent

To call it a “limb removal” would be an understatement.  This was radical surgery, and it stopped me in my tracks at the start of my usually somewhat preoccupied early morning walk.

For as long as I can remember, the ash has risen like a gentle guide by the side of a path frequented by walkers, runners, skaters, and nannies airing out babies in all seasons.  Not far away is a bench that I’ve sought many times over the years, calmed by the song of the ash tree’s pale leaves overhead.   It figures in my voluminous collection of photos, because just beyond both of these lies the rocky outcrop my son claimed as his first Everest on the summer days of childhood.

It was hard to recognize.

Its main trunk was gone, severed.   In its place flared a raw, fresh-cut stump.  Just behind this, a swathe of scar tissue flamed up along another amputee – a secondary bough that also ended in a stub, this one an earlier and a kinder cut, as the surviving limb rose to four feet.  From this one, there extended the only living thing on the tree, a nearly horizontal limb that stretched like an awkward boy trying to mimic a swan.  But even this poor appendage ended in a guillotine cut, out of which spare twig growth wandered towards whatever sunlight might condescend to graze it.

It was hard to admire.  Like anything that life has battered beyond recognition, it was a thing just to take in.  To behold.  It had become, in a way, less a tree than a story, and I found myself wishing that in addition to the little metal tag that identified its species, the park keepers in their wisdom would erect a narrative of its journey across its many seasons.   With its scars and exposed flesh and missing parts, it was a tree of far greater complexity than any of those around it.  And it kept going.

For the other thing that was abundantly clear was this: whatever disease or rot or age threatened it, this was a specimen of great worth, a living treasure to keep alive as long as possible.

I suppose the season of mid-Lent is as good a time as any to bump into such a tree.  Here, in one old woodland specimen in a vast city park, stood the perfect symbol of the many loved ones who bear the scars of disease, age, trauma.  Whose roots are strong, and whose hearts continue to send out vital currents of secret life.  The perfect image, in fact, of the Crucifixion.  Not what we wish, but what we accept, and then some.

The first time I read Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree I thought it far too sad a tale to read again – much less to a child.  I could only see the unacceptable and terrible diminishment of a thing of beauty and devotion  —  as the speaking, loving tree in the story was — whittled down, used, taken for granted, until finally it was reduced to a stump on which the beloved boy, grown to an old man, could rest his tired legs and cane.  I could see only loss – of life, beauty, of greening hope, and possibility.  And so I put the book, a gift to my son, on a shelf far out of reach and turned away.    Believing that it was possible to turn away, that I had the power to so choose.

The many winters since, while that book has sat up on its shelf, have taught me otherwise.   I have learned that, yes, one can refuse.  Depending to some extent on one’s resources, life circumstances, health, and other contingencies, one can refuse to get involved, to not heed the needs of others, to avoid the hurts of emotional entanglements.  But eventually friends fade.  No children come to visit. The avoidance of loss is its own long, sad tale of decline.  And a not uncommon one at that.

The tree knows that only when we begin to accept the demands of giving ourselves away does the soul start to grow.  Sleepless nights with sick or worried children, responding to the needs of others instead of our own comfort, the endless small and large sacrifices by which we make of our friendships and works and child-rearing sacred offerings to life.

We give, and in giving, we give up.  We give up, and we grow in ways far less visible than the branching out of another gloriously-ornamented limb.  Our roots go deeper and our hearts grow stronger.

And then, the most amazing shift occurs.  Not only do we accept, but we choose to give.  Our heart is made whole as we give it away, all of it, until nothing is left but the everything that is love.

I admire the ash, actually.  It makes a fine perch now for an old, or a little child.  A place to rest and to ponder miracles.