Giving Trees

 This morning, as I gaze out at the woods bordering my home, I see branches full of fresh new leaves just beginning to open and I meditate for a moment on the beauty and wonder of a tree. Each one is a unique expression of the Creator-maple, elm, oak, flowering pear, crabapple, magnolia.  Each one provides gifts to the earth according to its nature: beautiful blossoms, fruit, nuts, shade, shelter for animals and oxygen.
Trees absorb odors and pollutant gases, filtering particulates out of the air by trapping them on their leaves and bark. In one year an acre of mature trees can provide enough oxygen for 18 people. This Monday in April, sandwiched between Earth Day on the 22nd and Arbor Day on the 30th, I am choosing to honor those trees that have been my friends throughout life.

As a young child, I fell in love with the pear tree that grew in the courtyard garden of our home.  On warm spring nights, after I had been sent to bed, I would watch out my window as its beautiful white blossoms shone in the sunset's glow and seemed to dance in the breeze.

 On the weekends, I had a very dear tree friend at our summer cabin, where my father built me a tree-house that I used to sit in for hours and read, sheltered under its comforting branches.  As I grew older and we moved to a new home that bordered an abandoned golf course, I would often walk there to sit under a willow tree on the edge of a pond and meditate.  The willow seemed to have a very gentle spirit that understood the pains of growing up and offered peaceful, tranquil solace.

There is a children's book called The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein that celebrates the lifelong friendship of a boy and an apple tree. It begins: "Once there was a tree and she loved a little boy...“And every day the boy would come and he would gather her leaves and play king of the forest”....“He would climb up her trunk and swing from her branches and eat apples”...“And the boy loved the tree . . . very much. And the tree was happy.”  As the boy grows older and loses interest in playing, the tree gives him her branches to build a boat and then a house.  Finally, when he is old and there is little left of the tree but a stump, the boy wearily sits down on the trunk and together, they rest peacefully.

On this April morning, I ask whoever reads this post, to reflect on the trees that have touched your life. Go outside into the sunshine, sit under a tree and feel its gentle spirit; thank our Creator for every gift of life, but especially the giving trees.