My Trees and I

Table of Contents

Preface
The Beginning of the Forest
The Orange Tree
The Eucalyptus Tree
The Nameless Tree
The Tree that Almost Wasn’t
The River Birches
The Flowering Crab Apple
The Chinese Elm
The Redwood Tree
The Tree that Wasn’t There
The Weeping Willow
The Aspen
The Cross

     The Chapel at Forest Home
     The Cross as Lonely
     The Cross as Mirror Image
     The Cross as Reminder
     The Gross as Gift
     The Cross Within

Epilogue

*   *   *   *   *

Preface

I’m not sure how I came to write these reflections. In the beginning, it was a simple exercise in nostalgia, remembering certain trees that came to represent special things to me, and to start with there were only three. The first was a transplanted tree in my front yard, a lonely fellow I watched over with special care, unsure how he would adjust to his new surroundings. I soon found myself identifying with him. I too was settling in to foreign soil. I had lost my wife some months before and my grief was fresh and strong. As many before me have no doubt discovered, I soon wondered just how well I would thrive in my single estate. My transplanted tree was me.
There had been another tree, an aspen, that took on similar significance for me. It was half dead, but no less gloriously alive in one branch that was decked with autumn gold. Its weatherbeaten roots arched deep into rocky soil reminding me that my life, struck down by my succumbing to alcoholism in mid-life, was permanently altered but yet enthusiastically alive, with roots embracing a rock-like faith that sustained me for many years of sobriety and would continue to do so even now.

Two trees, signposts of significant milestones of my life seemed like an exciting metaphor, and I was soon recalling a third tree, an orange tree that lived in the front yard of the house where I grew up. It bore a message too, and like any decent writer of sermons, I could see my three points plain before me. But before a page was finished other trees began to appear, claiming their status as stations of my journey. This writing exercise was not about a certain number, it was about locating familiar sites for my continued journey, a kind of spiritual GPS.

In some respects this grief exercise has become my equivalent of the 12 Step program in AA. Those steps, which I found myself tracing in the early days of my sobriety, came out of the experience of alcoholics who stumbled upon a spiritual discipline that replaced the insanity of alcoholism with a new kind of living they had never dreamed was possible. Often others discover that, while their particular form of addiction (food, sex, gambling) had nothing to do with alcohol, it was equally debilitating and life enslaving. It comes as no surprise that those steps that served me so well in finding sobriety would prove useful in this new experience of grief.

One of the key steps in AA was what they called a “fearless and searching moral inventory” of themselves. There are many ways to perform this task, and many styles of inventories that emerge, but one key component is sitting down with pencil and paper and committing one’s thoughts to the printed page.

When I began this “essay” on my trees, I was unwittingly inventorying my life, but seeing it through the highly personal lens of grief. I thought I was interested in the metaphor of trees that had caught my imagination and attention throughout my life: and I was. But as I wrote, deeper insight emerged and I came to realize I was really gazing at myself with a new pair of eyes. My trees were signposts leading me to a new and sacred wholeness. There is no end to this forest - nor to the journey.

Because it began with Marilyn, I dedicate it to her.

The Beginnings of the Forest

They still stand, my trees, if not in the ground, in my imagination. And I shall call them mine, although only one is documented as my purchase. From what I have to tell, all are my trees in some very special way - for they are me.

The first is an orange tree, the second a half dead aspen. One lives in a photograph on my dresser, the other has been re-imagined in color on a preaching stole and in prose as the centerpiece of a defunct novel that may or may not be worth looking into again some day. Its reality is less certain, although I prefer thinking it is still there at the head of a red-rocked arroyo at Ghost Ranch, in northern New Mexico, ready to be visited again should I ever choose to do so.

The third is the newcomer, the transplanted tree that is struggling to make a home for itself in my front yard. It is young. It is unused to the bare space that surrounds it and the merciless sun and heat that hammers it in the summertime. It is a flowering crab apple tree, said to produce a glory of white flowers in the spring, but no apples. The birds will seek in vain for nourishment from its (nonexistent) fruit.
These are my trees and each one me. I wonder what they will have to tell?

But first - a fourth tree has appeared on my mental landscape, and ghost-like behind it a fifth emerges from the past. I begin to feel surrounded by trees, their sturdy substance encased in distinctive, pungent aromas that crack open the doors of memory and demand my consideration.

What to do with my growing forest? Perhaps begin by naming them. The fourth is a eucalyptus, and had it been left to itself could no doubt still stand on a suburban street in Southern California, although I believe popular sentiment was against the Australian foreigner that soiled the streets and lawns of our neighborhood with their dusty leaves and bark.

The fifth is perhaps the most pitiful, a runt of a Christmas tree, purchased late on Christmas Eve and destined to be the most cherished of holiday memories in our several homes.

A sixth appeared and faded, shy perhaps, or victim of a wandering mind too caught up in striving for total recall to hold fast to any one memory, but now it returns and is quickly welcomed. It is the first tree I ever nurtured as my own, a cedar, lovingly planted outside my bedroom window and never meant to grow, yet grow it did, much to my father’s dismay.

Trees - my silent friends - sentinels of memories that speak their truths, or do they keep their silence and allow me to invest them with my truths? We’ll see.

The Orange Tree

They aren’t much good as climbing trees. They don’t reach that high, and their branches represent a snarl of twigs that impede your progress upward. In the orchards of the San Fernando Valley where we lived in 1937, they looked like rows of round, green balls spattered in Spring with white blossoms that gave off a honey scent that enchanted all who have ever smelled them. There’s nothing on earth like it. In harvest time, the buds produced sweet fruit that weighed the branches almost to the ground.

We moved into this grove in the fall, after picking time. I was three years old and just beginning to notice there was a world around me. The house, that would be my home for eighteen more years, was just as foreign as the trees that surrounded it. But foreign did not mean dangerous. Only invitation. Exploration. The entrance into - - - Everything.

I think children have a gift: we call it curiosity. That’s hardly a satisfactory word for it. Wonder might better suit the fact. Wonder, an inborn awe, that knows no fear and senses no limits. It is greedy for all things that can be touched, smelled, tasted, or devoured by the ears and eyes. It sets all the senses quivering with anticipation as the mysterious is encountered, engaged, absorbed.

For me, the tree was a part of that beckoning door, that invitation to see and feel and explore. It had no personality, no name, it was not invested with an identity as such. It was simply there and could be depended upon to stay there, always reaching out its limbs for me to climb.

It had one arm in particular that was so much like my father’s arm, it seemed quite logical to climb upon it and seek its strength and comfort as I always found in my father’s arms. It was too low for the adventure of climbing to the sky, and too thin. But it was strong, of that I had no doubt, and being strong, it could be swung upon. It was, perhaps, my first adventure in lifting my feet up off the steady plane of earth. I became a swinging entity, an inhabitant of the realm of air. It was a foretaste of freedom that I could claim on my own.

Such freedom is heady. It is also an illusion. Once we learn we can pick up our feet and free ourselves from the tyranny of the earth beneath us, we dream - like Icarus - of higher flights, wider horizons, freer aspirations. I shouldn’t be surprised if that limb gave me my first taste of original sin. Little wonder Adam and Eve would encounter their temptation under the branches of a tree.

Somewhere along the early days of life, we stumble upon an important truth, the realization that we can find satisfaction on our own. We do not need to wait for others to supply it for us. Those infant years always required a father or a mother to supply our basic needs. When stirring of dissatisfaction made its presence felt within us, we were helpless to deal with it by ourselves. We had no notion of independence, no aspiration to exert our own will, no imagination to prompt us to alter our state of being with our own initiative.

Then that glory day arrives, the day of jubilee, the day when a thought produces an act which alters our relation to family, surroundings, world. I found a limb on which I could - not only grip my pudgy fingers - but support my weight. I pulled up my feet from the ground below, and felt the muscles in my arms come alive. I dangled there, feeling the air beneath my toes. I did not need my father’s arms to swing me round in the air - I could do it myself. I became a sovereign being, a new king in the world.

Seventy years ago!

Parsons and theologians and teachers and parents and all those deemed wiser than a little child all agree that there is danger in the world and that small children must be taught to avoid strange places. In fact, strange is no longer strong enough a word, we must call them dangerous, and by naming them as such, we discourage the willful child, we curb his roaming, we protect him from the dark unknown.

Such cautions are important. I once was scolded for my childlike acceptance of an invitation to go with a stranger to her home to help her grind meat in a grinder that was too hard for her to turn with her arthritic hands. There was a promise of a penny for my efforts, a promise that - to my disgust - was never kept. But no harm came of it other than the dismay of my family when I explained why I was late coming home. I learned discretion that day, but I was already infected with the headier wine of self-will that prompted me to take my feet to unexplored places, unguided and unsupervised.

What does it mean to be human if we do not test our strength and follow our own curiosity? “Eat this fruit and you will be like God”, that was the promise made to Eve. How foolish to think we can be fully human without exercising our own minds, make our own choices, explore our world to its fullest without any hindrance. The poet sang the glory of his omnipotence “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my destiny.” And brave Linus concurs with his assertion that he can “stand on his own” - and stopping to count them, continues “two feet!”

I love that old orange tree. Its fruit was good, it’s shade a shield against the summer’s heat. It was my first voyage of discovery, my terra incognita, my beginnings of a declaration of independence. I became a sovereign me, and while circumstances surrounding me bore plentiful reminders that my kingdom was a small one, nothing could take away the exhilaration of swinging on that branch.

But life will not flow backward, and as the days and weeks and months flowed by, my branch began to lose height. I found I had to make an effort to hold my feet up or they scrapped the earth as I swung beneath my friendly bough. Soon, even that was insufficient to clear the ground. I bent my knees and still I bumped my kneecaps. My limb had slipped in height, and while it still bore green leaves, it was not much more than a twig. Eventually, there simply wasn’t enough space between it and the ground for me to enjoy my swings in space. I gave it up.

Seventy years later, I wonder what branch have I outgrown today? And what new daring act of self-determination draws me to greater heights? Browning reminded us that “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what’s a heaven for?” I still reach; my dreams have not ended; I am fresh grown as a conscious being equipped to think and feel and do and be, and I have left many branches behind, too small for my possibilities.

Adam and Eve went ahead, and where they strove I too must strive. And as they bruised their hearts in their blind endeavors, so I have bruised mine. But I would not go back, I would not surrender that journeying. If I am far from home, I believe it’s not for my willful straying that I am not at rest, I’m still exploring the spaciousness of a home far wider and more grand than I ever knew.

I may have fallen, but oh what a glorious journey began that day.

The Eucalyptus

- and the first real daring thing I ever did, swinging on a rope.

There once was a tree, a eucalyptus tree, that was the playground of my friends and me when we were children. It rose high into the sky and its limbs were dependably strong. We scrambled like monkeys up its admittedly dusty and some times slippery bark, excited to think how high we could pull ourselves away from the ground. There wasn't much to see once we climbed it, only more trees, but who cared. We were detached from the ordinariness of the ground and that was all that mattered.

It had one other advantage easy to describe but of a significance harder to convey if you've moved much beyond the age of eight or ten: it had a rope, a thick rope that dangled to about six feet off the ground that was the entryway to magic. Margaret's father had placed it there and she loved to climb up into the tree and then, grasping the rope, swing out into space in an exhilarating swoop we all envied. We envied it because we were afraid to try it ourselves.

You see, when you climbed up the tree and perched on the limb from which she launched herself, the distance to the ground was awesome. Such a long way to go, and only a rope on which to depend for safety. Boy after boy attempted the feat, and each one turned back, overcome by fear and shame. For Margaret could take the rope and show us there was nothing to fear. We could not

Of course we still had to try, but my friends, they all failed. I say "they" for when it was my turn to try (and here I risk sounding like a braggart which I guess I am!) I was determined not to turn back. It looked easy enough. If Margaret could do it, I could do it. So, though I had never had much of a reputation for daring in that crowd - I was certainly looked down on as an abysmal athlete, - still I scrambled up to the required branch, grasped the rope and determined to dive into fame.

Then I made the mistake of looking down. It looked quite different from up there. It surely wasn't as tall as the Empire State building, but for that moment, it looked like it. I immediately understood the fear of my friends, and the wisdom of their surrendering the rope in defeat. But I also understood that this was some kind of defining moment. It was swing or die an ignominious death of shame. I gripped the rope, shut my eyes and threw myself out into space.

Death did not occur. Instead I swooped, Tarzan like, into a heady arc of sheer joy. Back and forth I swung to the amazement of my friends and Margaret's delighted cheers. It was one of the grandest moments of my life.

Theologians have coined the phrase “leap of faith” and throughout my life I’ve been forced to make many of them. It is that existential moment when one literally steps out into space knowing full well there is no safety net beneath. There is hubris in it, audacity, and glory. There is a momentary forgetting of self in the very act of asserting one’s self definitively. Icarus must be the patron saint of such souls, and of course, he paid the price by plunging to his death after flying too close to the sun. Yet surely he died smiling.

If my orange tree introduced me to the heady realization I could separate myself from the earth, could be a free agent, could make choices and initiate my own dreams, that eucalyptus tree taught me there are risks worth taking. Even more important, it taught me that risks untaken can be the denial of life itself. How can one fly if one has never left the ground?

Freedom and independence are all vital to the human journey. There is little meaning to the notion of being a human if one never leaves the safe, the familiar, the known. There is joy in our humanity, but it comes with a price.

I sometimes wonder if I’d ever have fallen in love and married had I not first swung on that rope. Though I cannot point to the precise day on a calendar, I can pinpoint the exact moment of decision when I consciously chose to dare to believe there was a rope before me worth grasping when I dared to fall in love. What the consequences would be - for good or ill -I could not know. That it was a risk, and that it was a long way to the ground; that I understood very well.

However, that, too, is an arguable assertion. At that moment in time, it was theoretical, hypothetical, a notion in my mind not a known fact in my experience. I still gazed upon an abyss as immeasurable as a Grand Canyon and who could guarantee I would survive should I take the plunge? There was analogy that could point the way. I had the example of others upon which to reflect. But that was far from a satisfactory guide. Love is not easy to experience second-hand.

As time passed and I grew more familiar with the feel of that swing upon my new rope - the one I dared to name “falling in love”, it no longer seemed so great a risk. Though I would discover many surprises on the whirligig of love, it was not the only risky venture I would attempt. Life would present me with more challenges, and there would be other trees to climb, abysses to plumb. Perhaps the deepest one of all is the one when I finally realized there was a deeper canyon still to be explored, and it was inside myself. Oddly enough, the journey outward led me back to a reality immeasurable. The risk increased, the lure infinitely sweeter. Taller trees beckon me, and more hoary ropes wait for my uncertain grasp. But I can still remember that first tree, that first challenge, that first exhilaration in mid air. I can still choose life.

The Nameless Tree

Education is a tricky business. A bit like inoculations. You may remember the pin prick but it’s harder to tell if it “took”.

It would have been fourth grade, after we were transferred to the new school. The lesson of the hour was a visit to a local tree nursery. I never was much on agronomy. Being an impatient little fellow, it seemed anything that didn’t pop out of the ground, fully leafed and bearing fruit, in the first twenty minutes was simply not worth spending time on.

On the other hand, each student was given a baby tree to take home, and that had a strong appeal to me. I would have my own tree. It would grow straight and tall and I could claim it as my first experience in creating a living thing.

We were given instructions on how to plant the seedling. How much water it should receive, how to look out for it. All good advice I absorbed as best I could. But if the truth were known, I had no real comprehension about the miracle of growth. All I understood was that a tall tree had to start out small, and that seemed logical to me for wasn’t it pretty obvious that that’s what human beings did too? Why wouldn’t a tree have to do the same thing?

Apparently I was already learning the uses of anthropomorphic thinking. Perhaps we all start out that way. Learning is grounded in experience. Thus when I first heard the Lord’s Prayer, I was gratified to learn that God’s name was Ed. (Hello, Ed!) I liked that. I could grasp a divine Ed. However, a being that had to be addressed with the Elizabethan pronoun “Thy” was beyond me. We start with what we already can comprehend and build from there. What we scarcely realize is that what we already know may not be particularly true, or true only in a very personal sense of the word.

At any rate, “my” tree no doubt was a particular type of tree, but I don’t remember what it was. Names like “cedar” or “spruce” or “cypress” didn’t connect with my experience. “Tree” for me needed to be simplified into recognizable models. “Orange” I understood, and “Eucalyptus” was clear. I’d seen, and climbed, them both. Beyond that, trees had only a decorative existence meant to be looked at and admired. What other use they might be put to or by what name they should be called I didn’t speculate on.

My tree was small, it lived in a coffee can, and its chances of ever surviving to adulthood were practically non-existent. We had had a puppy once, but it got run over, and a tiny kitten somehow disappeared before I could ever get attached to it. Small, living things, in other words, simply didn’t thrive in our house. I had no real expectations of my extremely tiny tree doing any better. But it did!

It’s odd but I can’t remember the decision about putting the tree in the ground outside my bedroom window. I can only speculate. Did I do it alone, or was adult supervision involved? My best guess would be that my father was involved in the project. That makes the decision even stranger. One normally wouldn’t plant a tree just a foot away from the wall of one’s house. But that’s where it was put.

There’s a good chance Dad had the same low expectation I did about the tree ever taking root and growing there. Here was one of those father-son moments when we got to do something together and then forget all about it. No need to wonder what a tree growing by the wall might one day do to the dwelling - it was not expected to live long enough to be either bane or boon.

But my little tree seems to have been quite happy with its new home. It survived. It was content with the shade, and got enough water from the lawn sprinkler that it did not go thirsty, or get water logged. It didn’t even seem to mind that its owner - for I still claimed it as mine alone - had pretty well forgotten all about it. It was left in peace.

Time passed, years passed, and a very healthy, very sturdy, very tall tree made its way upward, and I rejoiced at what I had accomplished. How quickly the negligent agronomist takes credit for what he did not really do. Dead trees get blamed for their lack of stamina, live ones are always the product of our TLC.

However, as proud as I was of my tree, my father took a different view of the matter. The little six inch twig I had buried in the earth had now become a ten foot tree that was rubbing against the eaves of the roof and by all appearances it was going to keep on rubbing and growing as sturdily as Jack’s beanstalk. The house was beginning to look more endangered than the tree.

“It’s got to come down” Dad said. And in anguish I cried out “No!” It was my tree. How dare he threaten my property. “But it’s going to ruin the roof, son!” That gave me pause. I loved my tree. I was its proud parent. But I also depended upon the safety and security of that roof under which I slept. Could my tree really harm us? As much as I wanted to deny the possibility, I could see that, not only it could, it was already doing it. In fact, the house was in the tree’s way and the tree was not going to stop growing. How unfair of me to have given the tree such an unsuitable location. Dad chopped it down.

Whether or not Dad could have moved the tree I have no idea. I only know that the tree was doomed, and all that was left of it was a portion of bark I reverently preserved in my bedroom - a keepsake I would treasure all my life. That was a sacred promise and I kept it for several months before I noticed that bark, removed from its parent tree, gets very dry and brittle. Inexorably it was disintegrating. Sadly, I bade it farewell, and all that remained of my tree was the rubbed shingles on the edge of the roof, a forlorn reminder of what had once grown and flourished there.

I wonder why memory of that lost tree returns now? What lesson did it teach me? I suppose I could have learned something about the mystery of life and the vitality of growth in a seedling - a parable of my own beginnings. I can’t recall it ever having that kind of significance to me. No, if it meant anything, it had more of the madness of a Dr. Frankenstein, enamored with his power. “Look at my tree. Look what I grew.” And the insult my father perpetrated on it was not against a living thing but against my omnipotence and my sense of property.

I think this is a common failing in we human beings. We are quick to claim ownership over life when it never belonged to us in the first place. We are but custodians, and not very good ones apparently, if we are to believe what the environmentalists tell us

Ownership of a tree is an illusion. The very title “My Trees” is at best a misunderstanding. At worse, it betrays a greedy spirit that can sicken the human soul. You can’t own a rainbow, any more than you can own the vibrating sounds of a string quartet, or the fresh, bracing smell of a sea breeze. I tried to own my tree, even in its death, and could not do it.

Now I think of the greatest treasures life offers, like friendship and love, and humbly confess such gifts can never be owned. They must be gifts, or they aren’t true friendship and love. Once understand this and a further truth emerges: life itself is a gift. Every heartbeat, every breath, comes unearned, and just because they do come, we dare not take them for granted, for they may be taken away in the blink of an eye.

My tree lived near me. I gloried in its sturdy growth. And I grieved it’s demise. But it still lives in memory. I never needed to own it. What other gifts live near me, around me, in me that I don’t own? That’s an important question.

The answer is, I don’t really own anything at all. I wonder what the economists would make of that?

The Tree that Almost Wasn’t

Forlorn Christmas trees are so rife in our culture, I’m almost ashamed to add my own to the collection. However, in this place, and among these particular memories, my pathetic tree really must be honored. It stands out as an iconic moment in the early days of my marriage, and was so beloved by my wife that it has to be immortalized - if that is what these memories finally come to mean.

We were living the good life in Southern California. As things turned out, it was our only year of residency there, although LA was my natal home and my parents and sister still resided within easy driving distance of us. It was a year of transition. Still newly weds, in many ways, we were beginning to suspect that the road to the rainbow’s end was rockier than we had been led to believe and its twists and turns more uncertain than we’d planned on.

Our charismatic president had just been shot and the depression into which our nation plunged affected us as well. I was “employed” if you could call it that, studying at a seminary in hopes I would show them I was worthy of being enrolled in their doctoral program. That in itself was enough to make us edgy. The uncertainty of our future, the interminable wait for a final decision to be handed down, and the pressure of keeping up with our bills on one salary - my wife’s - all dampened what little Christmas spirit we might ordinarily have enjoyed.

We had an invitation to my sister’s for Christmas Day, and my parents would be joining us. My brother and his wife were also in Southern California that Christmas and would be able to complete the family circle for a little while - the only Christmas I can remember when we did have such a gathering. So in the face of all these conflicting emotions and the realization that we’d really have Christmas away from our apartment, we agreed the sensible thing to do was forego putting up a tree of our own. Indeed, we would have no Christmas trimmings in the apartment at all.

It’s a familiar story. Many others have told it. But ours differed in that we had no quarrel with God, no determination to despise the baby Jesus. We simply chose to be sensible about our financial limitations and do our celebrating in other peoples’ homes.

Marilyn was working the evening shift at the hospital Christmas Eve, and we had agreed I would pick her up at 11:30 and take her to a Midnight Service at a nearby Church, a Christmas observance that was almost sacred to Marilyn. That would be the sum and substance of our Christmas that year.

However, as satisfied I was with this stream-lined Christmas, I couldn’t quite make peace with the drab ordinariness of our apartment. If she depended on religious services as the touchstone of her Christmas memories, I depended on the tree and the trimmings and the mounds of packages surrounding it. There could be no Christmas without them - or only a pale substitute for one. We did have a few packages in the closet to be taken to the family gathering on Christmas Day, but that didn’t seem enough. In our austerity we hadn’t even wrapped them, and it just didn’t seem the same. Not nearly.

So after she went to work I decided to cease my brooding and see what I could do about finding an affordable tree. I didn’t mind its being small, and probably looking scrawny. I would decorate it as if it was the finest of trees. I found one at a local lot. There wasn’t much to it, but the price was reasonable. The salesman was probably relieved to get any money out of it at all.

I took it home to our upstairs apartment, careful to avoid knocking off any more pine needles. It was already shedding, poor thing. Luckily our stairs were outdoors, and the evening breezes swept them away so Marilyn would not notice them when we came home. That was important because this had to be a total surprise.

What a flurry of activity commenced. Up went the tree. On went the trimmings - lights and all. Wrapped went the packages, and because the mountain of gifts looked more like a molehill, I wrapped up toothbrushes, bars of soap, boxes of Kleenex, maybe even a scouring pad or two - I forget now just what. The point was to make them all as festive and colorful as possible. And for the final touch, the lights were plugged into a wall socket controlled by the switch at the front door. All other lights were detached - only the tree lights came on when I flipped the switch.

When I finished I had just enough time to shower and dress and pick her up for church. She had taken her church clothes to the hospital and we drove directly to the church for a beautiful candlelight service complete with a sing-along rendition of Handel’s Hallelujah chorus. The sparkle in her eyes, and mine too for that matter, was quite genuine and warmed our hearts.

We were quiet on our way to the apartment, I in anticipation of what she would think when she saw our tree, she reminiscing no doubt of other, more affluent Christmases. Perhaps she even recalled our most memorable Christmas, four years earlier when we were getting ready for our wedding on the day after Christmas. What a contrast. We were so young, and had no idea that in those four years we would make three cross country moves; that I would serve my first church in Wyoming, then we would live in Houston while I pursued further training and she would have the most prestigious job she ever had working alongside the world-famous heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey at Methodist Hospital. Now we were in California and had no idea what our future would hold. Yet Christmas still anchored us in a faith that had not deserted us once.

When we climbed the stairs to our front door, I politely let her go ahead so hers would be the finger that turned on the light once we had opened the door. The effect was just what I had hoped for. Her gasp of surprise and her muffled choking back of tears said all we needed to say.

Many years later, when asked to relate a story of the most memorable Christmas she’d ever had, Marilyn made no mention of that Wedding Christmas. Instead, she immediately said “I know which one. It was that Christmas tree in our apartment in Southern California. That was the best. The very, very best.”

I guess any number of morals could be drawn from this tale; how the most expensive gift is not always the most memorable; how small is relative; how faith comes in unexpected packages. What seems important to me now is simpler and maybe more profound. Don’t despise the gift of love.

As much pleasure as I derived in the thought of my Christmas surprise and in the devising of more and more gaudy packages to delight her eyes, paramount to me was the pleasure we would feel standing side by side in that little apartment soaking in the light and color of Christmas.

One can’t really give pleasure without receiving it. It reflects back. The sparkle in the loved one’s eye darts directly into your heart and the flame it ignites there flashes back. We lit up the world with those sparks.

Through the years we lit up many a moment with that kind of supererogatory giving. In 1979 an inflamed intestine sent me into a medical crisis that could have meant the end of my life. I remember little of it. I was too medicated to really care where I was or what they were doing to me. What I do remember is the vigil Marilyn kept at my bedside. It was a straight backed chair, no question of comfort for there was no room for that, where she perched silently, attentive to me. Just knowing she was there was all I needed. It was a gift of love more precious than rubies.

All these years later I remember another hospital room, only she lies helpless, victim to some alien disorder nothing will reverse. It was my turn to sit in another straight-backed chair, holding her hand, helpless to hold her back from – what? We were beyond talking, noticing, reassuring. All we had now was that scrawny, despised, worthless tree, heaped to the ceiling with gaudy packages of memories, some mean, some priceless, all irreplaceable because they were the 45 years we had given each other. And as the end came, she was holding the only hand she’d ever really wanted, mine.

Life offers us many gifts. Lucky indeed, blessed indeed, is the one with eyes that can see the gift and cherish it as we did that Christmas Eve.

The River Birches

Another row of trees have suddenly risen before me. They are river birches that lined the fence in our back yard in Norman, Oklahoma. I can see the trees outside my study window, buffeted by raw winds and surrendering their brown and weathered leaves, and am struck by their nakedness, their loneliness, and their patience as they wait for next spring's resurrection. How easy it is to romanticize a tree.

My trees had had a hard year. In early summer the web worms attacked them, a bit earlier than in past years. Some said it was due to the heavy rains that finally came after virtually six months of drought. Whatever the reason, more rains, unseasonably so, seemed to wash the offenders away; but late summer produced a far bigger crop of these offending predators. Some trees were completely denuded by the worms’ insatiable appetite. Green leaves gave way to more webs, and in some cases all that was left were twigs and gauze-like decorations like something out of a dank, dusty Dracula's den movie set. Some people warned the trees would die; others shrugged and said, "They always come back; don't sweat it." It got so bad, the worms had to abandon the trees and seek other vegetation, which brought them swarming over our houses, and inching their way through the cracks in the windowsills, as if there they could find a whole new world of greenery in our living rooms and dens.

Then the air turned cold, the webs dried, the worms vanished, and the trees waited for the next miracle. It was not long in coming. Trees the worms had no taste for burst into colors I had never seen before, there in our neighborhood. Again folks said, "It was all that rain," and we enjoyed the largesse of those unusual drenchings, so long awaited and so unexpected in their quantity. Leaves of flame and gold competed with russets and crimson the color of blood, along with rich umbers and browns. Never have the permutations of autumn's paint pallette been used so generously as that year.

But in the midst of the color stood my trees, the river birch and the redbud, favored delicacies of the voracious worm, shivering in their shreds of dirty web. I enjoyed the circus pageantry of my neighbors' trees, yet grieved for the color that could have been ours, if only ...

It occurs to me that bare trees are important too. While the brave decorated fir I’d placed in our apartment living room represented the triumph of love and Christmas joy over material poverty, my river birch served a purpose too. For there would be a bare tree at the end of Jesus' story, a tree denuded by the greed and anger and viciousness of human hearts that cried out "Barabbas" rather than embrace the Son of God. The habits of selfishness, that long to keep all we can get rather than give out of the flood of blessings we've received, were too appealing; or perhaps the fear of not having enough made us cling to that which can only be ours when it is held with an open hand. We kept our prize and displayed it on a naked tree. We were the victorious worms.

Perhaps my naked trees were needed on that blustery day. My neighbors' trees were almost nude as well from the wind's rude whippings. It's the sunless season, the dying season, the season of chill, the season that teaches us again how cold life can feel when we've let the worms have their day that teach us to value the springtime of Easter. My trees displayed their helplessness -- and their strength. Their bare branches spoke eloquently of a faith and an endurance the human imagination too easily forgets. It would be a bare tree that made hope possible, a shivering tree that would host the dying God, thereby shattering once and for all the omnipotence of our web-tangled wills. That tree would be the triumphant one; the one that broke open the rocks and tore the curtain from the secret place in the Holy of Holies. There is no resurrection without a crucifixion that precedes it.

So I remember the lesson of those naked river birches. One must not fear the cobwebs; the predators will die. They'll come again, but so will the green leaves. There is life unending in such trees, and there is life unending in us. Blessed by freshets and blighted by worms, wreathed in splendors and stripped by the changing and unchanging seasons -- our trees will reach out their leafless arms to one another and remind us there is a benediction in every moment, a sacred gift with each breath we breathe. May our trees stand tall, the rains refresh, the winds enliven, and the seasons transform us ever more gloriously into the children of God we were created to be.

The Flowering Crab Apple

It’s a funny tree. It’s the transplanted one. The one I’ve placed in the entryway of my home to one day shade my kitchen window. I’ve thought of providing shade for that window practically since the day we moved here. The window faces due west and in the summer we are given far more sunlight than we need or want. A bit of shade, a tree-leafed shade, would - I assume - give pleasant relief to us, far more relief than new blinds or a pull-down awning could ever provide.

Six years I fussed about that shadeless spot, six years cursed the relentless heat that hammered my window, and finally I had enough. With the help of a friend, we found a suitable tree and put it in place where, one day, it would give me that relief I so dearly craved.

It’s out there now, its bare twigs adorned with snow. It stands bravely tall amid piles of snow that have accumulated since before Christmas, and we’re just weeks away from Spring. I watch it carefully, fuss over it, even pet its stems and branches as if it were a sickly child needing reassurance from a worried parent. I have known friends who swear by the practice.

“Talk to it,” they tell me, “every day.”

“Keep it company. They need that, you know. They get lonely.”

“Do you sing to it? They like that. And with that beautiful voice of yours.”

And I did sing to it – a little. I don’t know how beautiful it was. I was pretty self-conscious about the whole thing. It would have been embarrassing if my next door neighbor had caught me in such a recital. After all, who could say for sure whether the tree even heard me, or cared a fig for my rendition of “Summertime”.

Still I petted it, whispered words of encouragement to it, bragged on its appearance, and worried whether I had provided it enough water – or too much. If only the tree could tell me when it was thirsty and when it had had enough.

It is not my first transplanted tree. We once planted pine trees in our front yard back in Oklahoma. Three trees; for I was advised that pine trees do not grow well alone. They must have companionship. Three make a good grouping.

They did well. That is, two did well. The third languished. No one seemed to know why. Couldn’t take the rigors of transplanting I suppose. We dug it up and got another to put in its place. The new tree thrived, and when we left Oklahoma for good, we left a forest of three sturdy pine trees behind. I loved them.

I petted them too, and spoke to them. I hovered over them with water ready at the least sign of parched condition. Unlike that tree beside my bedroom window when I was a child, these trees were my charge and I would not shirk my responsibility to them. But the truth of the matter is, I am not a gardener. I don’t have a green thumb. The instinct is missing to make me a natural grower. And all the smiling encouragement I see on TV ads for miracle gro, or weed-be-gone or whatever fertilizer or chemical that is guaranteed to make one’s plants and trees deliriously happy, I seem to be missing that one indispensable ingredient – an intuitive feel for growing things.

So now I worry over my crab apple tree, for I do so want it to thrive. It is not just a tree, it is a statement of commitment to being grounded here. This is its home, and mine. And I want us both to know, to the core of our beings, that we are here to stay.

Since Marilyn died, I have felt much like a transplanted tree. Though I am in the same house, and looking out the same window and breathing much the same air we breathed together, I have discovered a new awareness in my being – that we are all transplanted beings. That life moves us, even if we seem to be in the same place. It is not the same. And though I have done well in keeping much of it as she kept it, little by little the grip of her hand slips away. I have moved a piece of furniture. I’ve rearranged a closet. I have removed old curtains and drapes and put up new window covering. With each alteration it is as if I have disengaged her fingers from something that was hers and made that something mine.

The truth is, this house was more her choice than mine. Not that I objected to that choice. I am quite satisfied with it, and eternally grateful that for her last years, she could live in a place she had chosen. That was seldom the case in our marriage. So many times, our homes were dictated by my profession and she saw them first when the moving van brought us there.

Here we settled in a place she loved and it has been unsettling making this place mine. I wonder if my settling in isn’t something of a mirror of my new tree out front. At the very least, it has been a shock to the system. I’m sure my tree could tell me much about that.

However, this shock is not just about a house, it’s about a life, and that is much more difficult to describe. In the beginning it was no more - and no less - than the shock of realizing I had ceased to be a “we” and become a “me”. The habits of a lifetime had been shaped by that sense of partnership. Where we go, what we do, what we eat, what amuses us, how we will spend. It’s been a “we” life for 45 years.

In some ways, it still is. I have been shaped and altered by that journey we traversed together. Tastes, habits, sensibilities have all been affected by that common walk. The cereal boxes belong in this cupboard. You don’t use the dish towel to clean your glasses. The downstairs room would be more convenient for an office, but that room belongs to her; it was bad enough daring to sleep on her side of the mattress, even though it is much easier to tumble into, and a shorter trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

But that is superficial. The mark of her life on mine goes much deeper. I learned to be a man by living with her. I discovered the intricacies and complexities of human relations by walking at her side. The agonizing lesson of reciprocity, of consideration, of empathic attention, of discerning and sharing authenticity all were learned with her. Those skills are still with me, and in them, she lives too.

Now that “we” has been catapulted into a new dimension, a life on my own, the we has become a me and the suddenness of that transplantation has left me strangely bewildered. I have choices now the “we-ness” did not permit. I have new possibilities I don’t know what to do with. Life alone? Or life shared? Life in the familiar? Or life in the unknown? Am I in a harbor or a foreign port of call? And what resources reside in me that can aid me in that discernment?

My new tree has yet to bloom in its new ground. It’s spring is just around the corner. If it is a mirror of me, it will bloom, but not without struggle, and probably not in predictable ways. Meanwhile, I, who never had much skill in gardening, must nurture it – and me – as carefully as I can. God grant the roots go deep enough to endure.

The Chinese Elm

The orange tree in our backyard was looking sick. What disease had attacked it I have no idea, but one day my brother, home from his travels, decided it was time to take it out and plant a new tree - a Chinese elm - in its place..

I remember little about the new tree except that it was very skinny and looked scarcely able to stand in the vacant space once occupied by a large orange tree. But it did. Until a heavy wind and rain storm, that is. Come morning we discovered our new tree lying flat on the ground, surely not the posture a healthy tree should have. Closer inspection proved the tree trunk had not broken, it merely lay, limber and flat upon the ground. But what should be done now? That question was answered by a neighbor who provided the young sapling a sturdy brace and the tree stood tall again.

It stayed standing, and it grew. It grew and grew and grew. And in the picture I have of my childhood home, the outlines of the Chinese elm are clearly visible towering above the roof.

I’m not sure why that tree comes back to me now, but it does seem to belong in my forest. It is a reminder that there is virtue in flexibility, resilience in the human heart that may need to be tested to make its presence known, and more stature in us than we may ever dream of.

It’s been pointed out to me more than once that I underestimate myself. Early on I learned to be modest in my claims lest I be chided for being egotistical or teased for accomplishments that were not valued quite like I expected them to be. At least that was the way I took it. Easier by far to lie down and let someone else prop me up than to take the risk of being blown over by the winds of fate. It generally came as a surprise when I did stand up.

At a somewhat more complex level, I had also associated lying down as a way of opting out of unpleasant or disagreeable situations. It rarely worked. I remember trying to get out of eating some food on my plate I was convinced I would not like. My parents taught us to respect meals, no matter what the food tasted like, and insisted our plates be empty before we left the table.

Faced with what I considered a disgusting thing like a pimento cheese sandwich, I would begin to droop, my face would display signs of fatigue and I would murmur pitifully, “I’m too tired to eat.” My young sapling tree would stretch limply on the ground. This never worked.

A more disturbing lesson came when I was in grammar school and had broken some rule I was expressly forbidden to break. It seemed harmless enough, but I knew how to pay attention when summoned by an authority figure, and if that figure sounded angry - who of us can stand up to anger without some quivering of the soul? - the fear of punishment was multiplied tenfold.

This was not a time for being tired. More drastic measures were called for. When in panic, run. And I ran. The teacher, not willing to run after me herself, sent two boys to catch me. What they were supposed to do when they caught me, I have no idea. This was not a moment of clear thinking, it was sheer terror and my feet operated separately from my brain. Ducking around a building was my only hope, but a feeble one, for the boys easily followed me. I was running out of breath, and ahead stood another teacher watching this race with curiosity, no doubt wondering if she needed to step in and halt this maneuver of mine. Doom ahead of me and destruction behind, what escape did I have? I saw a plot of soft grass and threw myself down on it, curled up in a fetal position and tried to die. It seemed to me that death was better than punishment. You could stop running and no one could hurt you.

That incident remains crystal clear in my memory for it would haunt me years later when, fully grown and now several years sober, I would have a persistent dream I found puzzling. In it I would be in a hospital bed and I would be dying. My wife would be at my side and I would be trying to console her, telling her to have courage. It was going to be up to her to carry on, raise the children, but I knew she could do it. Then, closing my eyes I would peacefully slip away. And I would wake up refreshed and totally relaxed.

This dream never bothered me until one night, as I lay there feeling that comfortable peace I suddenly thought, “Dying? Dying? I don’t want to die! Why be so happy about this?” I sat bolt upright on the side of the bed, the adrenalin racing through my veins. I quivered and shook with so much energy, that I had to get out of the bed, out of the room, out of the house. I stood in the back yard, stark naked, hungry to feel alive. I wanted to feel the grass under my feet, the air against my skin, my heart pounding inside my chest. I thought of the crisis I’d passed through with my drinking, thought of the new life that sobriety had inspired in me, thought of the new person I was becoming and what possibilities awaited me somewhere in the unexplored future. And I looked up into the starry sky and practically shouted, “God, I’m alive. I’m alive. I like being alive. I don’t want to die, I want to live, and I don’t want to dream that dream ever again.”

I never did.

As I contemplate that Chinese elm lying on the ground, too weak to stand on its own, I think of the times I felt too weak to stand on my own. But I also think of the times I thought I was too weak, thought lying down would have been an infinite relief, thought that death might be preferable to facing the winds of chance that were hammering me, and I am grateful that someone was there to hold me accountable, prop me up, wait beside me until I could find the strength that was nascent inside me to do my own standing. The brace our neighbor placed beside that tree was temporary. The tree did not need it very long. But it definitely depended upon it in the beginning.

I’ve had many braces. There’s quite a host of good neighbors who have held my hand, waited beside me, encouraged me while I regrouped and found the resources inside myself they knew were there. Probably the steadiest, most constant and valuable of all those friends was my wife. Her presence, her loyalty, her confidence in me and her love, which saw in me what I had lost sight of for a time, helped me continue to stand.

And the rest of the lesson strikes home - braces are temporary in the spiritual life. The wind will not destroy the soul. There is strength in that tree trunk and there is stability in those roots. I may be “tired”, I may have moments of longing for the troubles to end, I may think death would be preferable. But that’s just for a moment. My tree can stand and, what’s more important, it loves being alive.

The Redwood Tree

Up till now these trees have been personal. In one sense or another, I owned them - or thought I did. I called them my trees. The redwood tree is not mine. Not really. How could it be? This monarch of the forest: it is its own master. It would be nonsense to claim it as my own. And yet I am discovering it belongs in this strange forest of mine every bit as much as the others, so I must try to locate it somewhere. That will not be easy.

Redwoods were a mystery first revealed to me by my father. He loved to take our family to new places and show us new sights. Among those places was a spot along the coast of northern California labeled the “Trees of Mystery.” One had to drive through multiple groves of redwoods to find this particular stand of ancient trees, and to my young eyes, the novelty had pretty well worn off before we ever crossed into the park.

Yes, they were large trees. Yes, they were tall trees. Yes, they were very mysterious – well, not mysterious exactly, what was “mysterious” to a nine year old after all? They were silent, and that was kind of eerie, as well as interesting. I remember the smell of the redwoods, a strange, musty kind of aroma that suggested age, endurance, and in a surprising way, contempt for we human beings who came to gawk at them. Such trees really didn’t care if we were there or not. They had been there long before our birth and would be there long after we were forgotten. They stayed untouched by the thoughts and feelings of mere human beings.

I found that a little scary. As small as I was, and as insignificant as I could feel before such largeness and strength, nothing had quite robbed me of my personhood as these trees seemed to do. I tried to master the tree by staring upward to its top, but its very height deprived me of that view. Piercing the branches above me in search of the tip of the tree, my eyes played tricks on me, my sense of balance was thrown off, vertigo set in, and the tree remained aloof, distant, unconquered.

Giving up that search, I turned my attention to marveling at their girth. That was another significant dimension worth marveling at. But there, too, the measurement defied comprehension. A ring of visitors joining hands around the base of a giant sequoia, only emphasized how puny we looked, not how grand the tree stood. We were playing games while the tree was occupying another dimension of reality. It was living in a more majestic sense than I could imagine.

So I concentrated instead on the clowns of the forest; like the tree that had been mutilated to permit space through which an automobile could drive. That was more like it. Here human ingenuity had exerted itself and had cut the tree down to our size. There was also the souvenir gift show that was housed inside a tree, occupying the space left after lightning had seared out the guts of the giant sequoia. Windows and doors had been cut through to its innards and we could claim occupancy in a living organism.

I don’t suppose it occurred to me at the time, but I had instinctively turned to the humanized trees for my admiration, finding them the more worthy of my attention because they had been made human-sized. I could ignore what reached above me in a space too far above my head, and instead admire the work of the carpenter who made these trees serve his purpose.

Odd that those trees should now insist on being remembered, noticed, examined for some other meaning. The trees stand tall, their heads far beyond my comprehension, I do not want to endure their silence. They are freaks. Is that not enough.

Yet they promise meaning, there is reason they have ringed me round with their hushed, expectant murmurs. It is clear I must wrestle with them. Life gives us homework, and whether it interests us or not, whether it seems relevant or not, whether we’re willing to do it or not, it remains. There are no skipped lessons, only neglected ones still waiting to be done.

I first realized this when I was confronted with the reality of my drinking problem and what needed to be done to back out of that antechamber of hell called addiction. New members to AA think all that is asked of them is to refrain from drinking. If only it were that simple. The crux of the Twelve Step program lies in the first three steps where a process of recovery is initiated. It begins with acknowledging powerlessness to break the drink habit, continues with the dawning realization that we don’t have to do this alone - there is a God who can do what we cannot - and finally requires a decision to change directions, to turn will and life over to that Higher Power.

What we quickly discovered, however, was our inability to do this simply by a decision. Nine more steps outlined a spiritual discipline that enabled us to do the work needed to become sober, and this work, in essence entailed picking up the homework of a lifetime and doing what we had avoided doing before. It is a truism among AA people that we stopped growing up emotionally when we took that first drink, and while that may be a bit oversimplified, it comes close enough to the mark to be a useful insight.

What I have again learned is that grief is yet another schoolroom with more lessons to learn, and there is no avoiding them. They will not be ignored. They will exert themselves in manifold ways: sometimes emotionally, sometimes physically, sometimes psychologically, sometimes spiritually. At least, so it has been and continues to be for me.

In the beginning the reality of Marilyn’s death was so stark I became numb in all senses of the word. As the numbness wore off, I discovered my grief was not just for her, I had a lifetime of grief stored up waiting to be experienced. There was my sister, my mother, my father, all swept away: all gone. And as a pastor I had buried many people, many of them friends dearer than life itself and no tears shed. This time there was no ignoring the pain

Even more surprising, although I did not know it at first, was the dawning realization that I, too, had died when Marilyn did. Although I still lived and breathed, I was no longer the man I had been. A shift had occurred deep inside me that permanently altered my perception of myself. The nearest I could come to describing that shift was the somewhat garbled declaration, “I have been a we for 45 years, and now I am a me and I haven’t a clue what that is going to mean.” It was, and is, a crisis of identity, one as jolting and unsettling as the one I had experienced in 1973 when I first got sober.

Thank God I had help. I joined a support group. I followed the instructions laid out for me by others who had explored the unknown territory of grief, and I began to heal. As the pain of the loss eased, I discovered there was a second pain, equally disturbing as my grief I had to undergo. I had to face learning how to live in my new identity.

Travel, said my emotions. And I traveled. Trips to Canada, an automobile journey to North Dakota, trips to California to visit my brother and friends. I traveled from one end of the country to the other. I enjoyed my journeys. I was entertained, distracted, stimulated by the sights I visited, but I always came home curiously untouched inwardly. My lessons remained.

Stay busy, said my mind. And I stayed busy. Church work, volunteer work, new hobbies, singing lessons, performances, home improvements, writing projects. It was not difficult to fill up my days with things to do. Staying busy helped. It contributed to my healing. I was distracted. I did not brood. I lived. Yet I sensed that more was waiting. My lessons were not ended. And I remembered the redwoods.

They did have something to tell me after all. To stand so tall, to endure so much, to live so long unmoved by life around them, that is a majestic calling. As I vowed to experience my grief to its depths, to be fully present to all its vagaries of emotion, to absorb all it offered, not holding back, I had unwittingly chosen to do so from the top of my tree. I would not shirk feeling, but I would do so from the detached heights of my intellect. I would “feel” only in order to understand the how and the why of those feelings.

Others may cut holes in the base of a redwood; lightning may carve out its guts, but at the top it remains unaltered, unmoved, stoic. It cannot be hurt. And I would not be hurt.

We have a society that encourages mourners to try this way of grieving. “How are you?” we are asked, we who have suffered a loss, and we know the looked-for answer: “I’m fine; I’m doing well.” The hidden emotion is safe inside and we are relieved to think no one knows of the ache that comes unbidden, the tear that almost leaks from our eye.

And should a cry at last force its way out of our souls and be heard by another, we are ashamed of our weakness, guilt-ridden at our display of grief, apologetic that we have somehow shown a lack of faith in the goodness of God that we are supposed to believe in and rely upon.

“She’s in a better place you know, that must give you comfort.”

But it doesn’t. And what are we to say when we are unable to show the proper faith, the appropriate gratitude for the goodness of God others are eager to thrust into our conscious minds? Or how do we face our own faithlessness that ought to feel comfort and can’t? What’s wrong with us? Have we lost God as well as our loved one? The centurion’s prayer is our prayer, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” Only, for now, for this tortured moment, we can’t even say that. What then?

Not a problem to the redwood. It shows me how to survive. It teaches me to stand silent and tall, unmoved by any feeling. These would-be friends are but tourists momentarily intrigued by this demonstration of grief, this curio shop carved out of my base, or this tunnel in my gut through which they drive their well-meaning remarks, only to leave me as empty as I was before.

Like the tree I do not have to care. I am immune to it all. My redwood was there before all this began and it will be there long, long after. All I need do is remember to live at the top of that tree and pull my heart up after me. Here, in these embracing limbs, I can see the blue sky and feel the sun, and I will be unmoved.

Only it doesn’t work that way. I cannot console myself by merely understanding. My homework is still here. My redwoods gave me temporary sanctuary but I had to leave its shelter. This may have been my hardest task. I have had to come down out of my redwood tree and feel.

The Tree That Wasn’t There

It is Holy Week and I find myself contemplating not only the Passion of Jesus but bereavements of my own. As I contemplate my collection of trees, another comes to mind, startling more for its absence than its presence. It is the tree that wasn’t there.

It should have been in a cemetery.

I had just completed a service at the grave side when the widow of the man we had buried turned to me in obvious agitation and said, “They’ve put him in the wrong grave.”

“What?” I said.

“Henry. They’ve put him in the wrong grave.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I know. The tree isn’t there. There should be a tree right there. That’s why we bought these cemetery lots in the first place. Henry loved the tree, and so did I. I told them, there’s supposed to be a tree here. I told the funeral people, but they wouldn’t listen to me. This is the wrong grave, I tell you. They’ve made a mistake. I know they have.”

That tree has popped into my thoughts this morning, the tree that wasn’t there. I think of that grieving woman and her missing tree and ponder the ways we sometimes comfort ourselves with some sign or symbol of beauty or strength or permanence, only to discover, to our dismay, it isn’t there; or it isn’t the source of strength we thought it was. She depended on a well-loved tree and I have sought my forest of trees to comfort and solace me in my time of grief. And for once, there is no tree. There’s an empty space on my landscape.

I don’t recall ever hearing the end of the story of the treeless grave. I think it was generally assumed that what tree once had been there had been removed for some reason or other. The question became whether she would keep the original plot that had been purchased twenty or thirty years earlier, or seek a new piece of ground that did have a tree. I’m guessing she left her husband’s body where it was since there could be no attachment to a new and unfamiliar tree.

In my case, the search for trees to fill in the gaps of my landscape today has led me to another lesson, that there will not always be a tree to comfort me. There will always be gaps in my knowing, an empty place that will refuse to be filled.

I’d like to think that I have relied upon a dependable God who is always there, no matter what dark place surrounds me. Yet that is a statement of faith rather than certainty. Sometimes God simply isn’t there.

I’m reminded of a story a priest once told me concerning one of the Saints - Catherine somebody, who was in that kind of dark place and piteously called out to God for help, and there was no answer. When the darkness finally lifted, she heard the voice of God.

“Where have you been?” the exasperated saint complained, “I’ve been praying for help endlessly and you haven’t answered.”

“I’ve been here beside you all along.” God assured her.

“Well, why didn’t you help me?” she said.

“You were doing fine by yourself,” God replied.

With that she snapped back, “Well if that’s the way you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them.”

I love that story. It honors the exasperation of the griever and the steadfastness of God. It also happens to be true to my experience. Sometimes I feel abandoned and cruelly alone.

We all must go to our own dark Gethsemanes. No one is exempt from seasons in the darkness. While I tremble at that reality, I accept it all the same. I don’t find much comfort in the easily mouthed reassurance, so pleasing to some, that God never puts more on us than we can bear. I know it’s scriptural, and I can even hope it’s true. What I’m not willing to believe is that whatever happens to me, God put there. I much prefer the notion that whatever comes, God shares it with me and we suffer together. That is the lesson I draw from that tiny verse in John: “Jesus wept.”

It is Holy Week, and I’m not only contemplating the Passion and trial of Jesus, I’m contemplating the multiple losses in my life: of friends, relatives, wife. I am in grief for a host of loved ones. Of course I look for a familiar tree, a defender, a sign of continuity, stability, reassurance. And at the moment, there is none. I wait in silence and emptiness.

The disciples contemplated an empty hill at Golgotha. There was no reassurance that Jesus would rise again. That was something they would learn to affirm later on. But not on Holy Week. Even Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He was quoting the scriptures, the Psalmist, and in that very act he was affirming an unbreakable bond with God that belied his words. Why cry to a God who was not even there to hear his voice? He cried to God anyway. But still he was also alone in his dying.

I think we cry instinctively, drawing on some vestige of a persisting sense of our identity and worth, in the face of the ultimate negation of death itself. Job asserted “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” Blessed are those who retain that vestige of identity, that insistence that we still matter, that we will not be ignored.

Yet we are still alone, and for once there is no tree, no continuing assurance. We walk or kneel alone.

So the tree that wasn’t there must join my forest. Though some deny it ever existed, the distraught widow sought comfort from a missing tree, comfort from a memory of what it once was, what it once meant, what it still meant to her in its symbol of continuity.

So too must I. There will always be an empty place in my forest, occupied by the ghost of a tree, one that seemed to be there. It will be remembered, trusted, loved, even in its absence. I must remember that I may not always see my trees. How incredible to discover there may still be more to learn, even from a tree that is no longer there.

The Weeping Willow

I should know the exact day and hour I saw it, the weeping willow across the street from my house. It was late in the afternoon, of that I am sure. And I think it was in the fall, for the sun was going down in the southern portion of the sky. What was amazing was the glory that shot out of that vision. There must have been a brief afternoon rain shower, and it was as if the tree had been laced with shimmering diamonds that sparkled with the brilliance of a thousand suns.

I stood on my front porch completely entranced by this unexpected vision. There had been the sound of birds. Traffic rumbled by not far from my house. Maybe even an airplane crossed the sky overhead. I cannot remember. All I know is that dazzling moment left me frozen, unable to move. And where sound had surrounded me, I was wrapped in a kind of hyper silence that throbbed and vibrated in what I would otherwise have called a triumphant anthem of angel choirs.

Such a moment is ephemeral. It cannot be explained or described. But it was no less real, and what gripped me would not release me. It was so huge I wondered if I was going to die. Then before I could bear to see it happen, the shimmer faded, the sparkle dulled, the dangling branches lost their definition as the light softened and the vision disappeared. A very ordinary tree stood before me, lifeless, inert, useless, dead.

I awoke from my trance feeling eager to make note of this moment. I must write it down, make sure I could re-experience this great epiphany again next year. This was a precious moment that must be lived again. Why? I did not know. How could one explain the breath-stopping command of a moment of timeless beauty? It came unbidden, it vanished as the world relentlessly moved on. I had had that moment Goethe spoke of in his play Faust, that perfect moment so satisfying, so complete, so whole that Faust could cry out “Let this moment last forever.”

Such moments, because they are so total, so complete, so unutterably lovely, will never be long enough. Over in a thrice, some grieve for them the rest of their lives. What I did not know, and would not come to understand until much, much later, was that there would be other moments, equally intense, equally heart-stopping and I would instinctively attempt to latch onto them any way I could. But I could not.

In this instance, I tried to hold on by pinning down the date and time so that I could be in the right place at the right time a year hence. Of course I wasn’t. I don’t even know where I wrote down the necessary data to make possible a repetition of my vision. And if I had, and if I had kept vigil on my front porch for the precise moment to recur, there was no guarantee I would see again what I had previously seen. Weather, atmospheric conditions, air pollution, my own eyes, all were variables that I could never have controlled. My vision of diamonds would live on only as a memory, and a weak verisimilitude at that.

I have watched others strive to pin down miracles, and fail. As faithful and sincere as they sought to be, as carefully as they attempted to meet all the conditions of a miracle, the epiphany would not occur again. The encounter of two disciples with the risen Christ as they walked the road to Emmaus is a useful metaphor for that truth. When Jesus met them on the road, they did not recognize him. As much as they loved him and mourned his death, they could not foresee such a meeting as this one. And once they did realize with whom they sat at dinner, he disappeared. There was no holding him back.

On the Mount of Transfiguration Peter almost instinctively suggested that three shelters be built so that Jesus, Moses and Elijah would have a place to stay. Jesus rejected the idea completely. Our visions are “sometime things”. They bring their blessing and depart, offering no clear explanation from whence they came or what to expect in the future. How sad to worship such a vision, clinging to a metaphor that is lifeless, from which all sunlight has been drained away.

That weeping willow is a reminder that God has come calling, and more than once. In every instance God came unannounced, unsought, and more often than not, unrecognized. It was afterward we knew the name of our guest. I’ve never been able to revisit that vision any more than I could prolong it past its appointed time. It was up to me to be open to the miracle moment and honor it for what it was and could be.

But how that willow sparkled!

The Aspen

I still see it as clearly as if I’d just left it this morning.

We were walking up a dry, sandy arroyo behind Orphan Mesa at Ghost Ranch. It was September and the sky was that incredible blue I rarely see anywhere but New Mexico. The canyon walls were blazing red, a prominent feature of the ranch, and the air was that perfect temperature that makes one feel 110 percent alive. The stillness of the day was broken only briefly by the cawing of a black bird that floated over head, its wings outspread, resting no doubt on some thermal wave of air that moved it gently past the rocky cliffs.

The arroyo twisted back and forth as if it had difficulty making up its mind just which was the easier slope to follow, and the walls of the canyon took advantage of those turns so that the head of the canyon stayed just beyond our vision. However, at the center of that view hung a burst of gold leaves, obviously the foliage of an aspen tree. As we strolled up the arroyo, the gold winked at us, now visible, now hidden, never completely revealed. The further we walked, the more intrigued I was to see this almost mythical tree, and I was rewarded at last by a vision that stays with me to this day.

The arroyo had come to an end. The canyon originated in a cleft of red rock that had a pile of stones heaped one upon another, with no sign of vegetation anywhere but for a single tree - an aspen. Its trunk was stark white, bone white one might say, for it looked quite dead, as lifeless as an old skull discarded from an O’Keefe painting.

Yet it was not completely dead. One branch lived, and lived gloriously. It threw out a panoply of fluttering gold leaves that took my breath away. I stood transfixed as I drank in every detail of the tree. I admired its tenacious root system that gripped a red boulder and then dug further down into dry, sandy soil. I felt the dry smoothness of the sand-polished trunk. I reached my face up to let the leaves kiss my cheek. It’s still loveliness captured my soul.

But it would not let me possess it. Like some chimaera of Greek legend, I could look and look and soak up its loveliness, but I could not contain it. There was no way I could describe it, not then, not now. It was a vision only the soul could see. And if I wondered at this, or tried to make it my own possession, I learned it would not have it. It stayed beyond my comprehension, letting me know it on its terms and not my own.

Much later I wrote and asked my friend, who had stood there beside me, to paint me a picture of my tree. (She was a well known artist from Germany.) Her answering letter startled me. “I don’t remember any tree,” she said, “I was looking at the red rocks.” I acknowledged the rightness of that admission and asked her to paint me her rocks instead, and I would write her my tree.

I guess neither was to be, for although she did send me paintings of her rocks, they did not resemble, in any way, what I remembered seeing, and every attempt I’ve ever made to write that tree has fallen short of what I recall. Some visions must simply be visions. Their lives are forever immune to our minds’ attempts to capture them and make them our own.

Years later I was telling a small group of friends my epiphany at the base of that aspen tree and still marveling at the grip it had on my imagination. One of my friends said simply, “Of course, that tree is you.”

He went on to point out what I had shared with them about who I was and the shape of my life.

“That dead tree is the old George, the George who was killing himself with alcohol, who somehow clung to a rocky faith long enough to stay alive. And that branch is the beauty of that part of you that refused to die, that still lives, that still can experience glory.”

The aptness of the observation was so striking I later designed a preaching stole that shows the whiteness of the stricken tree, the glory of the golden leaves and the sturdy base of the red rock that anchors it to the earth. I added one element that was not there in that sandy arroyo, a stream of blue water, the living water of Christ that gives life even to dead men.

My aspen has had several incarnations. And like the river birches in my back yard in Oklahoma, it has experienced many deaths and resurrections. I am passing through such a resurrection now. While I don’t yet see the glory, I can see the rock and the fierce grip of the root that refuses to let go.

I remember when I first got sober, back in 1973, there was very little left in the way of hope that I could see. Life as I had learned to love it up to that time had been dependent upon the elixir of liquor, and I honestly did not know if I could go on and be anything resembling what I once was. It did not seem possible, even though friends around me assured me I could.

One image obsessed me, the image of Jacob wrestling with an angel. Jacob was in the throes of guilt and fear. His journey was taking him back to his twin brother Esau and their last meeting had been bad. Could Jacob find forgiveness from his brother?

Ever wily, Jacob sent his wives and children and all his worldly goods ahead to placate the wrath of Esau. Now, stripped of all he possessed, he sought rest at the River Jabbok, only to be accosted by some kind of supernatural being. Jacob wrestled with this being all night long, so long in fact the angel announced he had to leave before sunrise and demanded that Jacob let him go. “I will not let you go until you bless me,” Jacob declared.

That was the verse that gripped me in my wrestling. Jacob insisted on receiving a blessing from his adversity, and so did I. If I must go through this humiliation, this tearing down of my very being in the face of my addiction, I would accept it - but only if a blessing was bestowed upon me. I had no idea what that blessing might be, I didn’t even speculate upon it, I only clung to that promise, and in so doing I found my way through to new sanity in sobriety.

Later I would notice that the blessing Jacob received came in the bestowing of a new name or new identity, and that struck me as very appropriate for what I had gone through. I was a new person after sobriety, so new that in some ways I could not even recognize the person I once had been. However, such newness cannot be bestowed without thought of the old.

Jacob was asked “What is your name?” and in that asking we are reminded that we must have a name to begin with. I cannot have a new name until I know what the old name was. As someone once observed, “Even hereafter starts with here.” If I was to find contented sobriety, I first had to see the deep discontent that was my alcoholism. If I am to find healing for my grief, I must first taste to the dregs the full meaning of what I have lost in Marilyn’s dying.

There is one more observation about Jacob’s struggle that seems significant to me: at the conclusion of the story we are told that the sun rose on him as he limped away from Peniel, the place where he had striven with God. That limp would persist, and so would mine. I would never run as I once had run. There was no going back to the old life.

My tree - what had killed its trunk? Was it the parched earth that could not support the whole tree? Or had it been struck by lightning leaving a scar for all time? Who knows? The white, bare wood alone knows, and persists, a visible sign that its life would never go back to what it once was. When I wear that stole I show my limp to all the world.

I also show that now I walk in the bright light of the sun!

The Cross

The Cross - I

The Chapel at Forest Home

Of all the trees I recall throughout my life, by far the most important is the one I least thought of when I began this journal. It is the cross. Long spoken of as a “tree” in Christian theology, art, hymnology, poetry, still it is not exactly what one first thinks of as a tree in the usual sense of the word. But in my life, it is the defining symbol, the prevailing signpost that defines who I am and what I have become, better than any other tree in my story.

Not that I ever thought much about the coss in my youth. It was simply a symbol that appeared in church before me, and one that I was taught was supposed to remind me of the great price Christ paid for the cleansing of my wicked life. How I learned I was so wicked is unclear. I do remember a Sunday School missionary who visited our neighborhood when I was a small child, showing us a glass of water that was black, and somehow miraculously turned clear when he poured the blood of Jesus in it. How this was accomplished I have no idea. Children don’t need explanations, we appreciate the magic of miracles and being eternally surprised. I came away from the lesson convinced that although I didn’t know how or why it was so, I had a black soul and I would someday need Jesus’s blood to cleanse me. That I was supposed to have this miraculous cleansing right then and there somehow didn’t occur to me. The fact that I didn’t take care of it right then and there meant that I would live my life with an uneasy sense of unfinished business in me somewhere. What that unfinished business was remained unclear. The sense of guilt however was clear as day.

Perhaps, given this childhood memory, it is no surprise that the cross would be the dominant symbol of my life. I would be attracted to this sacrifice, ponder it subconsciously, return to it like a tongue returning to a suspected flaw in a tooth, uncertain what was there but convinced that there was something amiss that needed tending and having no idea how to work that miracle. This, I believe, is one of the sins of theology: it explains just enough that we are misled into thinking that we are supposed to, somehow or other, figure out our salvation. The grace of God is the payoff for right thinking. It’s quite the opposite. Our best efforts at right thinking is the most stubborn of all the obstacles the grace of God encounters. In my case, I really believe the greatest miracle of God’s grace was how it finally overcame my busy rationalizing!

But I’m losing the point of my reflections, so I shall get on with them.

The cross - the greatest of all the trees in my life, there is not just one. There are many. Each one stands out as another milestone, a marker of learning and growth. The first one had scarcely any shape to it at all. I struggle to see it in my memory’s eye and it remains hidden. The best I can show you is a vague impression. It was made of the branches of a tree, very rustic, and not particularly handsome. It was no work of art. What it was was a solace at a moment of great loneliness and personal anguish.

Sadness had been my companion before. I thought I was the only one so afflicted. It would be life times later that I would finally realize that this primal sense of loneliness is the inheritance of all the children of Adam and Eve. In my case it struck me first when I was eight or nine years old. I had been sick and kept home from school for two weeks. When I recovered and went back to my classes, it was as if some important lesson had been taught that would explain the meaning of life and I had missed it. Since I didn’t know what I had missed I didn’t know how to ask anyone what it was they knew that I did not. I lagged behind, and that sense of being behind, of being somehow the class tagalong persisted into adolescence where it grew and dominated my self image.

Someone once said to me, speaking of his own sense of isolation, “If a flying saucer landed in my back yard and two little green men got out of it and came up to me and took my hand and said, ‘come on, you don’t belong here, we’re taking you home’ I’d be relieved. It would explain everything.” As I listened to this description, I knew exactly what he was talking about. We were alien brothers under the skin.

When I saw that crude cross, I was in a little rustic chapel up in the mountains outside Los Angeles in a church camp called “Forest Home”. I loved that place. I was a teenager when I went there, all pimple-faced and quivering with every kind of shame and self-consciousness a teenager can possibly feel. It’s an awful time. One feels so totally unimportant while at the same time believing that we’re the most important person in the whole world. Every decision has the significance of a major act of Creation. We live with our soul’s finger poised above the red button that could set off an atomic war.

Given this spicy mix of emotions, my discovery of a winding trail up to a secluded chapel, scarcely big enough to hold a half dozen people, was both intriguing and a source of solace. I could be alone and with God at the same time. The stillness was insured by a little sign posted beside the trail approaching the chapel. “No talking beyond this point.” Fine. I did not want to talk. I did not want to hear others talking. I wanted total isolation, and I was blessed. There was no one there. I knelt before a rude little altar upon which sat the cross made of tree branches. In front of the cross lay a Bible, open at the 14th Chapter of the Gospel of John. “Let not your hearts be troubled. Ye believe in God; believe also in me.”

I read the words mechanically at first, but with more attention as I reflected on how they were being spoken by Jesus. “Let not your heart be troubled.” That’s all my heart was right then, troubled. To the best of my knowledge, it was always troubled. I didn’t know any other way for it to be. And yet, I was being counseled not to be troubled. So how was I to make it quit? “Belief” it said. And that was precisely the problem. I did not know how to believe. Apparently everyone around me did believe. At least they said they did. So how come I couldn’t? What was keeping me from it? Wasn’t it just plain stubbornness? No. I was willing enough. God knows I was willing enough. I even made a pretty good imitation of acting as if I believed. I went to church; I went to church camps. I was even flirting with the idea of becoming a minister. I figured that would be a deal clincher! You don’t go into the ministry if you don’t believe in God. Of course there was a small hitch in that plan - you were supposed to be asked. They called it being “called” into the ministry. That was an experience I couldn’t really comprehend. Presumably you heard a voice. Only I never had heard a voice. Moses heard a voice coming out of a burning bush. Samuel heard a voice in his dreams. The disciples heard Jesus say “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” All I’d heard was that I had a black soul.

Well, that was a minor point; so I volunteered, I got a little ahead of myself. Surely God would appreciate a willing helper. And being a minister in training, that would do an end run around some of the more tricky temptations life was preparing for me. I may not have been too clear about what I was giving up on, but if it was as black and bad as I had been told, it was obviously well abandoned. As a Catholic priest, Father Ed Dowling, once put it, “If I ever make it into heaven, it’ll be because I was backing out of hell!”

But still my heart was troubled. It was that “belief” business. How was I to believe what I didn’t understand? Or, what if I was believing something that was wrong? After all, if this was a matter of the eternal salvation of my soul, I had to be sure I was getting it right There was no room here for a mistake. When a woman once told me, speaking of her church and their doctrines, “We don’t think we’re better than anyone else, we just are so afraid we won’t get it right, we have to believe the right way,” she voiced the paradox of belief. To be justified by faith means we assure ourselves of our salvation by the certainty we have the correct doctrine, which immediately takes it out of the realm of faith and places it squarely in the realm of good works. Our very act of rightly believing in God cuts God out of the picture.

But back at Forest home, in that prayer chapel, on my knees, before that open Bible and that rugged cross, I didn’t know any of that. I only knew I was trying desperately hard to “get right with God” and the harder I tried, the more distant I felt from that God I wanted to be near. I don’t remember much more about that moment until I found I had been reading on and had come to Jesus’ praying for his disciples. Apparently he knew they were in for hard times, and he was asking for their protection from the cruelty of the world. Then, almost as if it were an after thought, he says, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word.” The miracle occurred!

It was a modest miracle, not the kind of thing you’d expect to find in the headlines of the morning newspaper, but it was a miracle. It stands out in my mind as the first time I ever felt a direct connection between me and Jesus. Jesus was praying for me. I may have been in a church camp in the mountains of Southern California kneeling before a cross made out of tree branches, but somehow I was also in immediate contact with God at the very center and heart of the universe.

There was no particular content to that realization, no intimate conversation with God, no pouring out of my soul to my Father in heaven. There was no sound of a heavenly voice speaking to me, giving me comfort and reassurance. There certainly was no “calling” to go into the ministry. No, this was something different. I was being prayed for by Jesus. I was. Not just the world - too big a concept to be comforting: I was, me, an isolated, individual, a lonely boy who needed, desperately to be included.

I would like to tell you that reassurance persisted and never left me. It did not. In fact, it would recede in memory to a point of insignificance, leaving behind only that one seed: a memory that I once glimpsed the way in which Jesus looked forward to the whole family of the faithful who would need his prayer and covered them with this general blessing. It no longer struck me as a particular blessing with my name printed on it. If the truth be told, I don’t suppose I wanted to be noticed ALL the time. There are moments and deeds one would prefer no one knew anything about, especially God.

So I settled for a general, all-purpose kind of blanket coverage prayer, one that would be applicable at those moments when I felt the need for it, or wanted such reassurance. The rest of the time, I would prefer to go on my own. Do my own thing. After all, while it’s very nice to be reassured that Jesus was praying for me, answering an aching need to be noticed and valued and paid attention to, it was also dangerous, for it opened the door to accountability. If you didn’t see me, notice me, pay attention to me, then I could pretend that my inadequacies weren’t noticed either. It’s so much easier wearing the Emperor’s new clothes when nobody’s looking!

As for the cross, it would reappear in many other guises, but never seem quite so touching or humble as that one at Forest Home did. How was I to know that it would be the key to all that would follow, even to hanging around my neck?

The Cross - II

The cross as lonely - my first sermon at seminary

This one I can’t show you. Like the tree that wasn’t there, neither was this cross. Miller Chapel at Princeton Seminary did not rely much on symbols. It was faithfully Presbyterian in that regard. Our Communion Table was just that, a table, and reserved solely for the Communion elements. Woe betide anyone who dared suggest a nice bouquet of flowers, or a handsome set of candlesticks with which to dress the table. That space was spoken for and the voice that spoke was our unseen guest.

It strikes me now what a useful symbol that very emptiness was. We worshiped an unseen, invisible God, one who in earliest times had forbidden even the utterance of his name. The Hebrews called him Lord, and left it at that. The use of a name would be presumptuous, for knowing a name implies having some inherent power over the one named. The nameless one is always the more powerful one. No one can call you if you have no name. That’s the secret magic of having a secret.

Our empty chapel invited us to consider, with reverence and awe, the secret majesty of God. The trouble with that invitation is that the human mind is virtually incapable of leaving a vacuum untouched. We will fill it, and if we are forbidden to utter the divine name or make graven images of the unknowable one, then we are left to fill up that void with our own imagination. Invariably the image that emerges is a mixture of wishful thinking and superstitious terror. I filled the empty space of our seminary with the inflated menace of Jonathan Edwards’ angry God.

I love remembering Miller Chapel. It was not named for me, of course, but it would serve nicely as mine in days to come. It was quite beautiful, it was impeccably clean, it served well the human voice: one of my most stirring memories is the way it resonated to our hymn singing. I doubt any graduate of the seminary would argue with me that singing the hymns of the church in Miller chapel was one of the most remarkable events of our lives, one we would long to hear duplicated in our own congregations’ singing, but would never experience like we did there. Hymn-singing in Miller chapel was, and always will be (in my mind) gloriously unique.

It was also where I had to preach my first sermon.

My parents might argue that point. There had been that other “first sermon” preached in my home church when I was newly graduated from High School, a pious and earnest homily on Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.” It was a good, earnest try and well-suited to warm a parent’s heart, but it was never researched or written down as a real sermon is supposed to be.

There was a second sermon preached in Student Church when I was a senior at Occidental College. I was very proud of it, but I couldn’t tell you now what the text was or what my theme. Odd how quickly one can forget one’s triumphs, when so accustomed to criticizing one’s self and finding one’s self wanting. At least that would be my first explanation for such forgetfulness. Forgetting is the first step toward eliminating; for what I cannot remember, to all intents and purposes never happened. My general impression these fifty plus years later, I hadn’t done that poor a job, but it was a strange sermon all the same.

For it was my years at Occidental that saw my faith toppled into confusion. I still intended to go to seminary, I still planned to study for ordination, but I was now doing so as an agnostic. It was the only honorable description I could give myself, since my old notions about God had been shattered. I still saw myself as black with sin, but it was no longer at all clear what had caused this stain. I wanted to understand. And my brain simply wasn’t up to it. Could one really be a sinner and not know what he had done to be judged sinful?

Well, that was a bit disingenuous. Of course I knew what I had done. My closet of undisclosed acts of naughtiness was amply supplied. But like Francis Thompson, I loved my sin and could not bear to give it up. And too, like Hamlet’s King Claudius, I could pray earnestly for forgiveness, but must face the inescapable question, “May one be pardoned and still retain the offense?” It seemed to me that the closer I drew to God, the more I threatened the loss of my pleasures. The more I tried to make myself over into a holy man, the less fit I was for the job. In a word, I was at war with myself, and all because of a God who struck me as capricious and remote, quick to notice ill and never willing to extend grace, no matter how often I was told the contrary.

So now I am standing in the pulpit of Miller Chapel preaching what we then referred to as our Junior Sermon. Our academic career was broken up into a Junior, Middler and Senior year, and we were expected to preach a sermon for each of them. Our text was assigned to us, and I had been given a doozy: “He trusted in God that He would deliver him, let Him deliver him if He delight in him!” (Matthew 27:43) A competent Biblical scholar worth his salt might have been able to trace some Old Testament text that cited this verse and proclaimed how Jesus was fulfilling Old Testament prophecy even in his humiliation. I don’t recall making any such effort. I read the verse and was hit in the face by the stark loneliness of the Son of God. Alien meets alien, one might say, and I could not move beyond this image.

I employed a homiletic principle in this sermon that would become a trademark of virtually every sermon I ever preached, although I did not know it at the time: my sermons somehow or other had to pass through the sieve of my experience or I couldn’t preach them. You see, a landmark moment in my college experience at Occidental was the day it dawned on me that my childhood beliefs had crumbled. I was an agonistic whether I wanted to be or not. My beliefs simply didn’t jibe with my experience. There was a war going on between what I wanted to believe and what was finally beginning to make sense in my intellect. I suppose I thought I would find salvation with my powers of deduction, that I would finally get smart enough that I could “figure it all out” (an intriguing belief considering how it hadn’t been that long ago that I expounded on the exact opposite, using my favorite verse from Proverbs!) but whether I had any real hope of that happening I didn’t know. I just knew that what I used to believe about that blood in the black water turning everything clear just didn’t make sense to me any more.

The whole thing was based on a sacrificial plot. God, for reasons totally inscrutable to me, was willing to kill his own son. The blood of that son would satisfy God. I would be washed and clean. Why? If we killed Jesus, wouldn’t God have even more cause to hate us? But if it wasn’t really our idea to kill Jesus, God only let us do it for his own reasons, then wasn’t it all a set up? Judas, in the rock opera “Jesus Christ: Superstar” sees this and cries out, “I’ve been had! You used me.” Trickery, deception, a mock execution, a divine cosmic transaction. No matter how you explained it, it was a con job. Judas looked pitiful, Jesus a fool and God shame-faced for ever having anything to do with it.

It was a scary realization for I seemed to be defying God Himself with this assertion. I was fresh out of belief in God, but more than a little shocked at my own rebelliousness as well. Could one actually defy God like that? Yet could one not defy God and still keep his own integrity? Whether to seek some amelioration of a potentially angry God, or the far more sensible realization that I just wanted to try honesty for a change, I said a brief but heartfelt prayer, “God, I don’t know anything anymore and I refuse to pretend I do. I’m sorry if that offends you, but I can’t believe you want me to live a lie. So there it is. This much I do know, I want to believe, and I will do my damnedest to make sense out of you, and I won’t stop trying. But I’m through trying to make myself believe the unbelievable. From now on I want the truth. I’m searching for the truth, and as I do, I will ask any question, challenge any belief, doubt any theory until I’ve tested it and proved its worth. If it’s true, it should be able to stand up to any doubts and questions I put to it. If it’s not, it doesn’t deserve my loyalty.” And with that pledge, I set my course for seminary, clear on one point if not on any other.

This “modus operendi” served me well the rest of my college career, well enough that I could even preach that senior sermon in Student Church and not embarrass myself too much. I’d made peace with God by then, and come up with a theoretical explanation of what sin was. God didn’t seem so angry any more, although he tended to be a little too remote to be very significant. I was more of a Deist than I realized. By the time I reached Princeton I had God in place, I just couldn’t fit Jesus into the picture! And here I was, assigned a text about Jesus’ most significant act. If Jesus didn’t fit into my picture, how was I supposed to make sense of his death on a cross?

“Lord, I believe,” said the Centurion, “help my unbelief.”

Part of the sense of being an alien was simple homesickness. I was 3,000 miles away from home and family and beginning to realize I really had left the nest. Any visits there would be just that, visits, I no longer had a real home. Jesus put it plainly, “The fox has its hole and the birds of the air their nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to put his head.” (Matt. 8:20) The human journey has many stopovers, but homes are harder to come by: we leave them all in the end.

But there is another dynamic here, the need to connect. I have long considered myself a loner, one who values solitude, needs it in fact. Merely following the crowd never appealed to me. I can still remember my puzzlement at being unable to see the point of watching a football game. There was something happening there that was obviously satisfying to the people around me, but the sense of belonging to a community of fans banded together in support of the team simply wasn’t there for me. In college, when I was looking into the desirability of joining a fraternity, I quickly dropped the idea when I heard that conformity was required. I’d never gone along with the crowd in anything, my sense of my own individuality was too strong. I opted out.

At the same time, I knew I was paying a price for that individualism. There were many times I stood on the outside looking in and longed to be a part of the whole. In later years, when I became an active alcoholic, part of the mystique of drinking was in losing the sense of being left out that I could achieve at a cocktail party. It was exhilarating. It was also frustrating, for the more I drank to belong, the more the alcohol got between me and everybody else. I was haunted by the fear of being left out, left behind, deserted. It was quite irrational. I could join any time I wanted. The problem was finding what I was willing to join. Hamlet may have been stumped by the question “to be or not to be”, my question was “to belong or not to belong.”

When I composed that Junior sermon, I was wrestling with that primal dilemma, and it seemed to me that the taunting mockery of the crowd was most unbearable at that very point. They were their cruelest, not in killing Jesus - death might indeed be preferable in such an intolerable situation - but in rubbing his nose in his enforced isolation. This good man who only came to show us how loved we were, was forced to feel how unloved he was. The cruelty of the cross lay in that realization and I was feeling it, wordlessly, even as I was struggling to put that moment into words.

That sermon is long gone, and so are any memories of what reaction the other students had to it. If I could recapture them, if they’d been willing to speak to me about it, I would not be surprised to find I communicated more than I realized and touched nerves of recognition in more than one listener. My guess is, they would not have admitted it, however. That’s the kind of loneliness one doesn’t talk about in public. I do recall our teacher remarking though, “Well, that was certainly a different way of putting it.”

If the cross at Forest Home suggested the awakening of my sense of selfhood being affirmed indirectly by Jesus, the invisible cross in Miller Chapel drove me into a dynamic encounter with God, this time mediated by a counselor named Ed who was provided by the seminary.

Seeking out a counselor can be frightening. At least it was for me. It was a tacit admission of something amiss in my life, an unforgivable sin too terrible to commit. Only intense pain could have driven me to such a confession, and it took me a year and a half to come to that point, but come I did. The first step was frightening, but it got easier, and it was not long before I was able to bare my soul to him. The crisis came as crises customarily do: unexpectedly. I no longer recall the issue, or the day. I just recall making some despairing remark to which Ed replied, “I know it all feels pretty hopeless to you, but remember God loves you and will help you.” This word of reassurance was too familiar and too outside my experience to be helpful. I was a Deist skeptic by this time, willing to give God credit for starting the whole creation off, but of no more use now, at least certainly not to me personally. Given the remoteness of this immovable God, he might as well not exist at all. I burst out with “I don’t believe in God anymore!”, a rebuke of Ed’s sympathy and God at the same time. “No,” Ed replied, calmly, “I don’t suppose you do. But I do. Maybe you can borrow my faith, until you can find one of your own.”

It was an absurd idea, one that struck me as totally nonsensical at the time, and not worth responding to. But it stuck in my head. Later, as I crossed the campus of the seminary, I found myself uttering a seemingly ridiculous prayer, ridiculous since I had prayed so many other earnest ones before without results. I said something like this, “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you since I’m not sure anymore that you even exist, but Ed says you do and that he believes in you. So I’m praying to Ed’s God and I’m telling you I need help. I’m hurting here and I don’t know how to make it stop. Please, help me.” That was it. No specifics, no directions, just “help”. I thought no more about it for the rest of the day, and when the day ended, I went to bed, and slept.

I woke up the next morning in a different world! Nothing had happened. Nothing had changed but everything was different. The battle with that angry God was over. I was not alone. I was not forgotten. I was not an alien after all. And when I next saw Ed I marveled at the difference. “What happened? How did you do that?” I asked. He smiled and said, “I didn’t do anything. I just sat once in the same chair you’re sitting in and heard someone else allow me to borrow his faith, that’s all.

With that simple explanation, I caught a glimpse of a long line of “Eds” and “Jerry’s” and “Franks” and “John’s” stretching back through countless men and women until it touched a Peter or a James, or a Thomas or John. And there, at the head of that line of witnesses stood Jesus, the man whom I hadn’t been able to fit into the picture of God’s story. Jesus, the one who didn’t just tell us about a loving God, he showed us that love. He was the missing link, the assurance we really were valued and loved.

That vision made possible the rest of my seminary training and now close to fifty years of Christian
ministry. The unseen cross at Miller chapel made possible the embodiment of Love in the on-going activity of the Holy Spirit that, though repeatedly tested, never deserted me my whole long life.

The Cross - III

The Cross as mirror image - we kill what we can’t bear

Goodness is too convicting

When I contemplate the crosses in my life, I am inevitably drawn into theological speculation. For those readers not so tempted, I give you permission to skip this section of my reflections. I only intend to revisit the problem I introduced in the last section - what was/is this cross about? Only in this sense, I hasten to add, this is my summing up and may have little or no relevance to anybody else. Such personal reflection is certainly suspect to many, but not new. I remind you Paul did it as did St. Augustine. and men like Martin Luther and John Wesley have always struck me as being most convincing when they spoke out of their own stories than when they merely spun theological systems. So I shall reflect on mine.

Once having restored Jesus to his place in the Christian religion, after having already objected to the notion of sacrifice as somehow a pay-off for sins committed, I would have to look harder at that cross and see if I could come to terms with it in my own life. I took, as my starting point, a parable Jesus told of the owner of a vineyard who wanted to collect the rent from his laborers. They, not surprisingly, wanted to keep the proceeds for themselves, and humiliated, punished and threw out any who came to collect the rent. The owner, when he saw they would not pay what they owed him, decided to send his son to collect it thinking surely they would honor him. Of course, they did not. Instead, they killed the son hoping thereby to settle once and for all who owned the vineyard and its profits.

I had no difficulty making the connection. The owner of the vineyard was God. The vineyard was this world. The son was Jesus, and we were the laborers who wanted to keep the crops to ourselves. The problem was easily named: selfishness and greed. Now the cross became a mirror of our chief problem: we were intent on being our own masters. We crucified Jesus in an effort to push God out of the universe and claim ownership of it ourselves.

Seen this way, it was not a matter of paying off a debt we couldn’t afford, forcing Jesus to pay it for us. It certainly wasn’t satisfying some blood thirst in the almighty. Instead, it was the natural outcome of a rebellious nature in us. We kill God because we want the job for ourselves.

That definition worked well for me. Had I not already shown how I must be the master of my own mind? As noble and honest as that may have been, it also tipped the lid off my secret. I didn’t just want to have the final say about God and Jesus, my ultimate aim was to run as much of the world as I could. I remember an old friend of the family who once said, quite sincerely, “I’m not hard to get along with as long as people do what I want them to.” I thought that was hysterically funny and quoted it for years before it dawned on me that I could say the same thing myself. Yes, we all are easy to get along with, as long as we get our own way.

CS Lewis wrote an interesting book called “The Great Divorce” in which he speculates, in an imaginary way, on the difference between heaven and hell. He suggests that heaven is the home of total reality while hell is the reverse. (A notion he may have borrowed from G Bernard Shaw, by the way, who describes it much the same way in his little playlet “Don Juan in Hell”.) Far from making hell undesirable, the majority of souls prefer it because hell is where they get to have things the way they want it, rather than having to deal with reality which so often disappoints or frustrates them.

This solves the problem of having things our own way. Each person is his or her own God, designing reality and the universe according to his or her own wishes. In my experience as a counselor, I have seen this happening over and over again. At the heart of many a complaint heard in a counseling session is the unexpressed thought, “I’ll be fine when I get you to be what I need you to be.” We believe our discontents reside in the people around us. The trouble with this, of course, is that other people are just as busily identifying their problems as residing in us, and they will not be content until they succeed in changing us! Sartre, in his play “No Exit” depicted it perfectly. His story is of three characters condemned to spend eternity together in a single room, with no escaping each other. It is a depiction of hell, and his conclusion is simple enough, “Hell is other people.” It is particularly excruciating because there is no getting away from these other people. Even if the door were to fly open and release them, which it eventually does, they dare not leave. Why? Because they each still need to control what the other two think and say and do.

So we all long to be the monarch of our own world, and in order to do that we almost have to destroy any remnants of another God possibly residing in our neighborhood. Sorry Jesus, it’s nothing personal you understand, you just don’t fit into my world very well.

But there is something personal in it, whether we’ll admit it or not. If we could just murder Jesus and be done with him, it might work. The trouble is, when we see Jesus, we also catch a glimpse of what we could have been, what we aspired to be. Theologians speak of us being created in the Image of God, and that Jesus reflected that image in himself. We see in Jesus what we were designed to be, and we must admit that we have never achieved that goodness. Eugene O’Neill, in his lacerating play “Long Days Journey Into Night” has one brother admit to the other how he hates him for his very goodness. He was all the things the debauched brother had never been able to attain. Or at least seemed to have that potential. He would rather destroy his brother than bear the pain of being shown up for what he really is. In other words, reflecting back on Jesus, “I’m sorry, old man, but I’ve got to kill you because you make me look so bad.”

God always had this problem with his flawed children. Isaiah speaks of it when he speaks of seeing God in the temple and crying out instinctively “Woe is me for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips.” Compared to God, we all are unclean. God warned Moses to look the other way when he passed by. Why? Because he was sinful and might not survive such a direct encounter. We see it in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve hide themselves after having eaten the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.

If we long to be Gods in our own right, not only does the Son of God present us with a reminder that the job is already taken, he shows us how far short we fall of that desired goal. Therefore I kill God to become God. I kill God to get rid of the evidence that I’m not God.

So, did I kill Jesus or did God? I did. And why did God permit it? It may have been the only way I could finally see the depth of my own egotistical desire to be my own God. In a word: my own potential was what drove me to my own damnation.

Viewing the cross this way made it possible for me to complete a seminary education and seek ordination. Years of service in the church, combined with continuing studying would enlarge and deepen my appreciation of the cross. I no longer shunned the figure of Jesus. I never really did, it was his cross that had offended me. His figure as a teacher, miracle worker, lover of the poor and the outcast, was always welcome and a challenge for me to pattern my own life upon.

But one thing eluded me: while I had made peace with God and saw him as loving and affirming of his children, I stayed at war with myself. It was odd. It was as if I were saying “I know you love me; I accept that love; I just don’t see how you can do it when I don’t see much that’s lovable in myself. I haven’t done a study of others and their self-image, but it would not surprise me to discover that we all have our own difficulty with self-acceptance. Why else are there so many motivational speakers urging us to make use of positive self-affirmations? Why is self-esteem so crucial? Apparently there are still a sizable number of us who don’t think that well of ourselves.

In my case, this would take me down the path to alcohol addiction, recovery, an intensive working of the Twelve Steps of AA and many years of psychotherapy. I call it “on the job training” for life itself. I could undergo it because I had a theology that made room for me in the between time and kept holding out a promise of a safe lodging for me in the end.

The Cross - IV

The Cross as Reminder

I also wore a cross around my neck.

This was a constant companion. At first it was simply a silver cross with an embossed Celtic design in it that was given to me by an old friend from seminary. I was immediately attracted to it and hung it on a chain around my neck. Some thought that a little excessive. I even wondered about it myself. Wasn’t Sunday morning in church sufficient? Did I really have to wear it every day? Of course I didn’t, but I chose to anyway. People soon got used to it and it even had a practical use. People recognized me as a minister without my having to wear the clerical collar which did not appeal to me

How interesting. I, who had resisted any cross at all in my life, now willingly hung it around my neck, a constant companion everywhere I went. It was a statement of some sort, just what I probably could not have told you. It was not a piece of jewelry, although it came close to being.

Soon people began to give me other crosses which I could wear. It was not long before I had acquired quite a collection. A member of my church brought me a small cross that was always admired and commented on, when I wore it. It is gold in color and has the symbols of the Alpha and the Omega on it, reminders of Jesus Christ. My friend took delight in telling me he’d bought it in Rome and that it had cost 63,000 lira! He claimed it had been blessed by the Pope, a claim I found hard to believe until someone explained to me that if the cross had been purchased in a shop that was within eyeshot of St. Peter’s square, then anything that was within sight of the papal balcony automatically received the papal blessing. The claim, therefore, was legitimate, at least technically so.

Another favorite was a simple silver cross with the figure of St. Francis superimposed upon it, preaching to a bird and a flower. I especially like that one. I bought one with a turquoise embedded in it as a celebration of 25 years without a drink of alcohol, and another silver one, simpler in design but also a signed piece of art, when I attained thirty years of sobriety.

My collection grew and my dependence on the cross grew also. I began to notice how the cross was appearing around other peoples’ necks also. When I first donned that cross somewhere around 1970, I appeared to be the only man wearing one. Of course that may have simply been a matter of the fashion of the time and the place. I was living in the panhandle of West Texas where bandanas and cowboy hats were most often seen.

We moved to Oklahoma in 1975 and crosses were not as ubiquitous there either. Of course, neither were 40 year old men wearing their hair down to their shoulders. I was. My mid-life crisis was fairly benign: no drugs, fast women or rock and roll, but I was trying to get a strangle hold on my youth and prevent it from slipping away. My efforts were not successful. The beard I grew, that was supposed to make me look virile, only showed how much gray had already found its way into my hair. I eventually shaved it off and shortened my hair style. But I continued to wear the cross.

Had you asked me why I wore the cross I would have quickly replied that I did not wear it as a piece of jewelry, although I clearly did. Funny how the human mind can hide its own motivations from itself. My collection of crosses and my admiring them in advertisements was a clear indication that I liked the look of them and felt decorated by them. However, wearing a cross as a piece of jewelry seemed offensive to me, I’m not exactly sure why. I suppose I would have found it just as offensive to wear a miniature replica of an electric chair or a gallows around my neck. It just wasn’t appropriate.

Nor did I need to advertize my religious preference with a cross. Interestingly enough, I, who had always insisted on being an individual, a non-conformist, the one who always marched to his own drummer, still was repulsed by the thought of making myself conspicuous in a crowd. My distaste for bumper stickers fits in there somewhere I believe! Yet conspicuous I certainly was with my cross hanging from my neck. Of course, as time passed and more and more people - men included - took up the habit of wearing a cross, I was no longer such an exception. Yet I still could not answer why it continued to be important to me to wear a cross.

I did discover an answer though. I don’t know just when I had this “aha” moment, but one day it dawned on me that much of my dissatisfaction with my life and my world became most acute when I was in my “savior” mode. It was as if the salvation of the whole world depended upon me and me alone. I remember a seminary professor working a nice homily out of a brief verse in Nehemiah, where the prophet, upon being asked to interrupt his labors and meet with foreign dignitaries, replies, “I am doing a great work so that I cannot come down.” (Nehemiah 6:3) It was meant to remind us to be diligent in our studies, remember to do our studies first and not let other distractions get in our way. I’ve never forgotten it. I haven’t always followed it, of course, but I’ve remembered it.

Workaholism is a common problem for the clergy. We eagerly seek out new tasks, quickly volunteering for pieces of work that need a willing hand. We may or may not be suited for it but we are grateful for the chance to be doing it anyway. As I was struggling with one more of those tasks and aware that I wasn’t getting very far with it, I suddenly realized that there are more tasks out there than there are assignments with my name on it. With that realization came the second, more important one, that even if I do have an assignment, the salvation of the world does not depend on how well I carry it off.

I can recall tasks I did abominably, but the work got done in spite of me. I remember other tasks that I thought were mine yet were very definitely someone else’s and my best action was to get out of the way and let them get on with it. I began to notice that I was not always the center of the stage: sometimes my role was strictly a bit part, and sometimes nothing more than an observer. I remember Mrs. Schyler-Jones sitting next to me at a Chamber of Commerce Banquet where I was to give the Blessing for the meal. We were at the head table and I remarked to her, “I hate sitting at the head table.” When she asked why, I replied that I didn’t like people staring at me. “What makes you think they’re staring at you, young man?” she inquired. Good point Maggie Mae. How did I become so important? The truth was, I didn’t. And the cross around my neck served as a healthy reminder that I was not being called upon to save the world: someone else had already done that, thank you very much!

The Cross - V

The cross as the gift with no strings attached

- the one that must be given away

It began as a simple idea. I bought a small, ceramic cross on a slim leather thong to give to the first person who admired it, but it would be given with one condition, it must in turn be given to the next person who admired it. Presumably it would continue its journey, advancing from person to person endlessly. I’d heard of someone doing that and the idea so intrigued me I decided to do the same thing myself.

Finding a suitable cross was easy. I picked it out of a catalogue. It was square in form, muted in color and hung simply on its leather thong. Its possible intended recipient was also in mind. I was going to be spending a week with friends on a retreat in Arizona. I speculated about who would be the first to notice and comment on it. What I did not anticipate was their apparent obliviousness to my new cross! Each morning I placed it around my neck and each night I took it off again, still unspoken for. I began to wonder if anyone would ever comment on it.

The fifth day I was coming out of a souvenir shop in Scotsdale and bumped into a stranger, a lady, who immediately said - after our apologies to each other - “What a beautiful cross!” I was startled. She was a stranger, she was not supposed to get my cross. What should I do? I started to revise my rules, put in an addendum proviso, something to the effect the recipient must be someone I knew, when I stopped and chided myself. “You said it would be the first person who admired it. She’s the first.” And before I could change my mind, I replied, “Oh. Do you really like it?” Thinking perhaps that she would say “Well, not that much.” However, she said, “Oh yes, I do.” So I lifted it from my neck and handed it to her saying, “I bought this to give to the first person who admired it. You’re it. But you cannot keep it. You must give it to the first person who admires it, and with the same instructions.” “Are you serious?” she asked, disbelieving. “”Very serious. That’s what I bought it for.” “Well, thank you,” she said. “But I must tell you I won’t have it very long. I’m on my way to meet my daughter and I’m sure she’ll say something about it.” We shook hands and she went her way, I mine. Only after she left did I think, “Darn, I wish I’d gotten her name and address so I could find out what happened to it.” Then it struck me, that was the lesson in this exercise. It was to be given without conditions, no strings attached, no checking up later to see if my instructions had been followed. God gave the cross to us with the same open hand, no strings attached, no soul-police checking up on us later to see what we’d done with that gift of love.

The lesson was strong enough that I decided to write it down. I submitted it to a church magazine. But there was a wrinkle. When I received a proof of the piece, to my dismay I discovered it had been rewritten with scarcely a sentence left in its original condition. I was offended, angry and in a dilemma. Of course I wanted to be in print , but this was not my piece. It had little resemblance to my story, even though it maintained the general idea of my story. Should I accept this mutilation, or reject it out of hand? After much soul-searching, I decided integrity was worth more than the satisfaction of seeing my name in print. I wrote the editor and requested the return of my piece. Three days later I received a phone call from him asking me to reconsider. I was flattered he’d take the time to call, but I still really hated the rewritten piece. Finally, after asking him to please fix one particularly dreadful sentence, I said he might keep it.

The piece was published (without the correction I had requested!) And again I seethed. I suspect, looking back, that it was already in print when he called and there was nothing he could do about it. It really doesn’t matter now. What matters is that I wrote him a scathing letter denouncing what he’d done and adding, as a final insult, “since I’ve now prostituted myself to you, when can I expect payment for my whoredom?” It was not my finest hour.

I guess I was not the first temperamental author he’d had to deal with and so he did not seem to take offense. He merely sent me a polite letter expressing regret that I had not liked the piece and assuring me that the ‘check was in the mail’. By the time his letter had arrived I’d had a change of heart. I remembered the original lesson of this cross, that it was to be given without strings and so must my article be. I had given him permission to publish it. What he did with it was up to him, not me. So once again I sat down and wrote a letter, this time one of apology for my sullen behavior. He wrote back saying I and my apology were accepted, and, by the way, would I care to write him another piece? I did.

About a year later I received a package in the mail. In it I found an iron cross made out of nails. The sender was a stranger. He had read my article in the magazine and wanted to give me this one. He had a hobby of making such crosses and giving them away. One had even gone to the White House. I had had no idea the ceramic cross I gave away would find its way back to me in this fashion. Nor could I guess that it would return once again.

It was Christmas Eve. My wife and I were watching a Christmas Eve service on the television. It came from Salem, Oregon, and in the midst of the service, the minister preached a short homily. As he talked we suddenly sat up in amazement. He was telling a story of a young man who bought a cross to give to the first person who admired it. We looked at each other and smiled. Twenty-five years later that cross was still making its journey, perhaps around the world, and finding its way back to me.

I sent out that cross in 1974 little thinking I would ever see it again. I haven’t, but it still comes back. I would not be surprised if it were to come again one day.

The Cross - VI

The cross within

My lessons with the cross have not ended. I have worn crosses around my neck for over 35 years. Sometimes they’ve been there simply because I would not have felt entirely dressed without one. Sometimes they were there because I was proud of their beauty. There are times I’ve worn one in particular because of its association with a special place or time. Most recently, since Marilyn died, I’ve chosen one she gave me celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary. I tell myself that I’m “taking her with me” to a particular event. It’s a nice, comforting thought.

And then there have been those moments when I put on a cross to protect myself, rather like the superstitious notion that a cross can protect one from a vampire or a ghost or some other demon from the devil. I don’t believe in such symbols, yet I can act as if I do. The cross as a good luck charm! That certainly mixes metaphors.

But now I’ve come to a new place in my journey: I’ve taken off my crosses and put them away. It was a sudden decision and one I’m not sure I even understand. One morning I was looking over my collection trying to decide which cross spoke the clearest to me, when I found myself thinking, the one that speaks the loudest isn’t in this collection at all. It is the one that has penetrated my heart and is being absorbed into my being.

It was a startling thought. Always before my cross hung round my neck. It was symbol, burden, declaration, bearer of hope, but always exterior.

The cross, I realized, was much more than a physical manifestation, an object I could hold or wear or put away when I no longer wanted it before my eyes. It was a spiritual reality that had life and vitality in itself, and that life was in me rather than outside of me. Now I have crossed the boundary between thought and act, between telling about and exhibiting or showing.

My journey began with a Jesus who was outside me and outside my world. I wrestled with that Jesus, much like Francis Thomson, but never felt a resolution. That did not come until my seminary professor lent me his faith and I encountered the love of God in the body of my professor. But still it resided outside me, a God whom I had to seek in others.

At one of the lowest moment in my life, I found myself despairing of any hope for my future. I had recognized my drinking had gotten out of control and I was staying sober but my sense of guilt and shame was so overwhelming there seemed little point in living at all. Three months of that misery and I sat in an AA meeting one night no longer caring if I stayed sober or not. I simply wanted the hurting to stop. And I wanted the loneliness to end.

I realized I had been so wrapped up in my own misery I had stayed in a back row shut off completely from everyone in the room. I didn’t know a single person there. In an act of desperation I reached out to a total stranger and asked him to sit next to me. And he did. He did not seem to think my request strange at all. After the meeting we went for coffee and a talk and I poured out my heart to him. His acceptance was as healing as my professor’s had been years earlier. As I drove home that night I found myself thinking there was hope after all, and discovered that my new-found hope came out of an act of love from a man I didn’t even know. I came to believe a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.

That realization taught me to seek God in the living flesh of other human beings. My God “borrows” others to provide us the ears we need to hear us, the hearts we need to love us, the arms we need to hold us. That realization stood me in good stead for many, many years.

When Marilyn died, the one I had most often turned to for that reassurance was gone. While I found support from friends, the emptiness of my house always reminded me that I was finally, at the end of my day, alone. There would be no one to sit next to me this time.

So I held on to my cross. The God I was now turning to was not the God of theological speculation. This was a God beyond faith, a God beyond understanding. This was a new kind of trusting, a radical daring to believe even in the face of death itself. Where theology once had been an intellectual enterprise, now I was having to live it. I’d done it before in my journey to sobriety. This seemed even more life-challenging and life-transforming. Little by little I was being forced to walk out into a new sunlight I’d never faced before.

This was no act of sainthood I was undertaking, I was not earning some kind of spiritual Eagle Scout award. There was nothing heroic about it. I scarcely even knew I was doing it. I had simply said “Yes” in the face of the greatest enigma of them all. And in that moment, I sensed that outward displays were now meaningless. The cross had penetrated my inner being and would remain there.

If God is not within, there is no God at all.

Epilogue

I have come to a clearing in my woods. I review my trees and marvel at their number and variety. I am astonished at how they have surrounded me with strength, comfort, reassurance. When I began this journey of reflection, I had no idea I had been so guarded. How quickly we accept the gifts of others and think them of little moment.

“Taken for granted” we call it, as if they were no gift at all. Why comment on the dependability of a breath, the certainty of a heart beat, the reliability of our understanding derived from a glimpse or a sound? We walk in a waking-sleep, oblivious to the gifts poured out upon us every breathing moment of our lives.

I came to this clearing conscious of a seedling tree I hoped would make it through the transition from nursery to its new home in front of my house. That was over a year ago now, and much has happened.

One day I noticed scratch marks on its smooth bark and wondered what could have caused it. I was not alarmed at first, but as days passed, more marks appeared and it soon became apparent that something was repeatedly scratching the bark from my little tree. A neighbor’s cat seemed the most likely cause, and I sought to protect the tree with wrappings and sprays, none of which seemed to discourage the culprit. Finally a friend placed a length of PVC around the trunk and the tree was safe from further attacks.

A year later the tree had grown a foot and a half taller and seemed quite content in its new surrounding. Spring dressed it in a panoply of white blossoms, and fall brought fruit - an unlooked for surprise since it was not supposed to be a fruit-bearing tree.

Funny how things work out. I began these reflections wondering how well I would take root in my new life alone. I had no name for what I was about to do, no expectations for this collection of memories. I certainly did not expect it to bear fruit. Yet what an array of trees it produced, and its fruit beyond naming.

The PVC is gone, (and the cat, too apparently) and there seems to be little worry that my tree - with unexpected fruit! - will make it just fine. It is at home.

So am I.