SEPTEMBER 28 2019
THE TREMENDOUS IMPORTANCE OF “THE TREE”.
I am a very blessed man. I am very blessed with our children who often come and help, even though they live far away. I am thankful that our tax dollars are liberally spent on frequent home-care for my wife who suffers from dementia. To cope with the stress I experience, I make sure that I eat well, sleep well, and exercise well, outdoors when possible, and indoors thanks to a treadmill, a stationary bike and a rowing machine, all set up in my library.
I am a very blessed man: I live among trees. When I feel down- and being my wife’s principal care-giver this occasionally happens – I walk in the forests surrounding our property west, north and east. Yes, I do Forest Bathing. Our arborist grandson has cut paths there so that the forest-bathing is easy.
Forest Bathing? Ever heard of it?
Our oldest son gave us the book with that title: “The Japanese Art and Science of SHINRIN-YOKU: FOREST BATHING. How trees can help you find Health and Happiness.” It is written by Dr. Qing Li, chairman of the Japanese Society for Forest Medicine.
The book is beautifully illustrated and meticulously researched. Here are the opening words, “We all know how good being in nature can make us feel. We have known it for millennia. The sounds of the forests, the scent of the trees, the sunlight playing through the leaves, the fresh, clean air- these things give us a sense of comfort. They ease our stress and worry, help us relax and think more clearly. Being in nature can restore our mood, give us back our energy and vitality, refresh and rejuvenate us.”
I am very blessed. A 25 minutes stroll through our forest brings me to an immense Beaver Dam, where a carpenter friend found a large dead pine tree, and from its trunk sculptured a series of benches, facing a small beaver-built lake, where we often sit, and where our church has gathered on a few occasions.
Back to the book.
Dr. Li writes, “The good news is that my studies, and those of my fellow researchers, have proved that forest bathing:
. Lowers the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline.
. Suppresses the sympathetic or ‘fight or flight’ system.
. Enhances the parasympathetic of ‘rest and recover’ system.
. Lowers blood pressures and increases heart-rate variability.
The book gives tips “How to be still and listen to the sounds of nature, which is difficult to do when we are used to noise.
Start by slowing down
Focus on your breath
Listen in all directions.
Close your eyes to help you hear more intensely.
FOREST UNDER THREAT EVERYWHERE.
I don’t have to tell you that our planet is suffering, suffering beyond its capacity to endure. We seem to be blind to its pain, even though even Romans 8 – dating from the year 70 A.D. or so – already sounded the alarm bells: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until the present time. Not only that, but we ourselves who have the first-fruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved; but hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he can already see? But if we hope for what we do not yet see, we wait for it patiently.”
Such a beautiful text: a beacon of hope in our disheartening times. I especially treasure that phrase, “The redemption of our bodies”. That means a lot to me. It means that our bodies, our heart and lungs, our brains and limbs, will be re-created into perfection, not only physically but spiritually as well, totally in tune with the natural–unspoiled-surroundings!
And part of this renewal involves trees. When Abraham settled in what is now Palestine and Israel, he chose a forest location: the oak woods of Mamre. Genesis 18: 1 tells us that “The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day”: a most fitting place to meet the Creator.
But today that’s not the case. Summer 2019 – More than 38,000 fires raged across the Amazon. Fires that were man-made. Over the past 50 years almost 17% of the world’s largest rainforest has been cleared. And globally deforestation has almost doubled in just five years.
Since the start of human civilization it’s estimated that the number of trees around the world has fallen by almost half. Clearing forests increases carbon-dioxide levels but planting them could store away some of the carbon already in the atmosphere.
There are people who try to reverse the trend. In the very first year we settled in Tweed, in 1975, I planted 4500 trees, all pine. I also planted soft maple, but they did not thrive, except two to the west of our dwelling, where they provide super-shade in the summer time.
About pine trees the Forest Bathing book tells me that “evergreens like pine, spruce, cedars and conifers are the largest producers of phytoncides.” Phytoncides protect trees from bacteria, insects and fungi and aid trees in communicating with its neighbors. The pine needles are good sources of vitamins A and C: pine needles can have as much as five times the amount of vitamin C as a lemon and eight times as much as an orange. There are other benefits as well.
Planting trees.
Almost 20 years ago Isabella Tree—yes that is her real name – handed 1,400 hectares of Sussex farmland back to nature, by doing, well nothing. She thinks this is the best way to use the land to help tackle climate change.
And there’s never been more global ambition to plant trees. In 2014, 51 countries pledged to plant over 3.5m square kilometers of forest by 2030 – an area slightly larger than India. The 2030 target looks likely to be met. But there’s a catch…
Monoculture tree plantations like eucalyptus grow quickly but the trees are harvested every ten or so years releasing much of the carbon stored in the tree back into the atmosphere – which means that, according to some studies they’ll store only around one-fortieth of the carbon natural forests do over the long term.
In fact, those pledges to plant millions of trees actually promise to store 26bn tons less carbon than they could. Sometimes the motives for planting forests are less green than they might appear. By 2020 Ireland ought to have cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 20% below 2005 levels. But at current rates it will have reduced them by only 5%. Planting forests might help Ireland avoid massive penalties for missing EU targets because the potential carbon these forests could store in the future can be counted as a carbon credit today. In the 1920s Ireland had the lowest forest cover in Europe at around 1%. That’s now risen to 11% and the government has set a target to cover 18% of the land with forest by 2046.
And now local community groups are protesting against these monoculture tree plantations. They say they’re doing more harm than good.
Tree-planting programs invariably have an impact on the people living nearby. In east Africa one project is demonstrating what can be achieved when there’s genuine buy-in from the local communities. Green Ethiopia is a mixed-tree planting charity.
The land is communally owned and co-operatives of local women receive benefits for planting trees which are protected from being harvested. Here conserving is just as important as planting. Green Ethiopia assesses whether the condition of the land is good enough to regenerate by itself. When it is—on about a third of the area the charity runs they leave it alone. Just like Isabella Tree, back in England.
THE TREE OF LIFE.
The Bible starts and ends with trees, singling out one specific tree that is a symbol of all others: The Tree of Life.
To me this suggests that this is not one singular tree, but stands for trees as a species: in a sense all trees are The TREE of LIFE. In Genesis 2: 9 it says that, “LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground–trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. Quite mysterious: does it mean that trees hold the key to life and death, to knowledge and ignorance?
The very last chapter of the Bible ends with reference to trees. The TREE of LIFE is mentioned again which has a poetic line that brings tears to my eyes, (Rev. 22:1), “The leaves of the Tree are for the healing of the nations.” Oh, blessed tree!
However, the most significant TREE stands on Golgotha’s hill, at the very center of history. There Jesus died to restore all of creation, including us humans. That tree, representing all trees, was the first to receive Christ’s blood, and was first to be impregnated with Christ’s flesh, signifying the importance of TREES.
Trees make life livable. They are the ones that regulate the BIOTIC PUMP that causes the interaction between land and sea, the key to death and fertility. Without the FORESTS –North and South – we cannot function. Without these massive arboreous bodies covering the earth, we are doomed. Without them all of nature revolts and goes to extremes, too much heat here, too much rain there: the balance is gone.
A clear choice.
We live in end-times, which means that the world’s evil will become manifest to all, and we see it daily in crooked business and crooked politics, but also our good deeds will rise up, placing all people for a clear choice. That choice involves eternity. We, under the influence of Greek dualistic thinking, have separated nature from grace, God from creation. One of my favorite books is Tom Hayden’s THE LOST GOSPEL OF THE EARTH. There Tom Hayden – a former California legislator – passionately argues that we must reclaim our spiritual bond with the earth, a regular theme of my musings. He writes, “We divide grace and spirit from nature at our own peril. When we worship a God above, the earth withers from neglect below. We develop a society where everything from human habits to politics and economics exploits the environment with callous indifference. Unless the nature of State is harmonized with the state of Nature our greed and ignorance will eventually take us beyond the capacity of the very ecosystems that support human existence.”
The Good News is that it is possible to find GOD again: we cannot find ourselves and cannot become what we are unless we find God. Bonhoeffer repeatedly has stated: God, we ourselves and the earth belong together.
The Belgic Confession has beautifully formulated this:
Article 2: The Means by Which We Know God
We know God by two means:
First, by the creation, preservation, and government
of the universe,
since that universe is before our eyes
like a beautiful book
in which all creatures,
great and small,
are as letters
to make us ponder
the invisible things of God:
God’s eternal power and divinity,
as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20.
All these things are enough to convict humans
and to leave them without excuse.
Second, God
makes himself known to us more clearly
by his holy and divine Word,
as much as we need in this life,
for God’s glory
and for our salvation.
That’s the truth the world is rediscovering, and that’s the truth the church has abandoned, and so has sealed her own doom.
The clear choice is that God, we ourselves and the earth belong together: our salvation and the salvation of the earth go hand in hand: we can’t have one without the other. Trees are at the very center of life, of which Christ dying on the TREE and his subsequent resurrection are for our salvation, ensuring VITA ETERNA, Life forever.