Finding the Mother Tree

  I've learned a lot about trees in the past 18 months.  I read Richard Powers' The Overstory back in 2020, which was a captivating combination of fiction and fact, learning about the ways trees communicate and how interconnected the forest is.  I have a tendency to think of the forest as a collection of individual trees, but Powers opened my eyes to see that it is a far more intricate thing.

  I recently finished Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard.  Simard starts the book with timber-industry clear cuts, a somber scene as one pictures a clear cut devoid of what had only recently been a vibrant forest, alive with noise and movement.  Simard introduces the reader to the concept of how fungus works to weave together the roots of trees.  Trees in the forest don't survive on their own, and even different species are working together to share the carbon necessary for growth.  While trees and plants are certainly competing for light and resources, they're also working together.  A tree doesn't survive on its own.  

  By the end of the book, Simard has introduced the concept of a mother tree.  A mother tree is an old, established tree that is pushing resources to saplings around the mother tree.  Their roots are interconnected, and it seems that the mother tree can differentiate between trees that are her own offspring and those that are not.  The mother tree shares her resources, and in her dying, she pushes carbon down into the roots of those trees with which she is interconnected, supporting life even in her dying.  

  One doesn't have to look very hard to see the connections with the church.  This story is one we've been singing for centuries, perhaps because it is the truest story that has been told, one that echoes through every corner of space and time, through the pages of history, and even in the natural world.  We are not on our own.  We exist to support the life and growth of one another.  We are called to live sacrificially, to share selflessly, because we have grown through the sacrifices of others.  

  Even in death, we find life.  The death of Christ is what pushes life to us.  

  So may the beauty of a tree and the beauty of the forest be to us an astounding reminder of what God has done for us and the challenge of discipleship that Christ has set before us!

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An update on the quest for 15,000 pages:  In finishing this book, I'm at 12 books & 4,488 pages for the year.