The Secret Life of Trees
- May 20
- 3 min read
Trees have been a part of our storytelling tradition for centuries. For centuries, they have delighted our imaginations. Take the Tree of Protection in Narnia, Old Man Willow from The Lord of the Rings, the Whomping Willow from the Harry Potter books (which was particularly grumpy, not to mention dangerous), Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree, and let’s not forget Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. There’s just something about trees. They have a story to tell, and we can learn so, so much from their secret lives.
In January 2023, I was blessed by the trip of a lifetime. “Her Journey” was a pilgrimage for women to the Holy Land. It was there that I really started paying attention to trees, or at least in a theological way. On our first day, we went to a lecture at Bethlehem Bible College, and as we were walking on the sidewalk, something tugged on my hair. It was a tree branch attached to the most perfect lemon tree, with bright green leaves, and full of fruit. It was beautiful. A joy to behold. So, I took a picture. Not to be outdone by the lemons, the oranges were thriving in the school’s courtyard. Again, bright green leaves full of fruit. They were ready for their closeups-- all begging to have their pictures taken. So, I obliged.
A couple of days later, on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, I had my first sighting of a pomegranate in the wild. Now, I love pomegranates, so you can imagine how excited I was to see some on a tree instead of in a box at the grocery store. I walked over to them slowly as if they were going to catch me sneaking pictures of them. Their leaves had yellowed, and the branches were mostly bare, but there were still some pomegranates like big red Christmas ornaments hanging from the long, thin branches. Again, more pictures.
In the days that followed, every time I saw a fruit tree, I would nudge my mother as if she’d never seen one before. It was as if we were in the middle of an orchard. Each tree was picture-perfect and full of brightly colored fruit. Lemons, oranges, pomegranates, dates, bananas. The fact that there would even be banana trees in Israel was astonishing to me! But there they were…and in abundance.
I don't know what I expected the day we visited the Garden of Gethsemane, but I didn’t expect the olive trees to be as they were. They were wide with gnarly knots and twists in their trunks. They look dried out and not so alive, but if you looked closely, you’d see them. It looked like someone just tossed a bunch of black olives into the branches, like so much confetti, and they just stuck there among the little grayish-green leaves.
When I got home, I couldn’t stop thinking about the trees, their beauty, and abundance. A quick flip through my photos revealed an unusual number of pictures of trees. They gripped my attention so much that I felt an urgency to put paintbrush to paper to get them out of my brain. What was it about those trees that made them so fruitful? They wouldn’t let go of my imagination, and it wasn’t until I read something about the Holy Land that I discovered why.
That's next. In Part II
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