As I was getting in my steps on our nice, big, flat deck today (also saying many Hail Marys for Ukraine), I looked up at one of our swamp Maples by the edge of our brush field. It had lost one of its big branches in an ice storm several years back, but we had left it in the field as we know it is good for both birds and animals, a “fell” we call them.

 Then I saw new buds on the branches of the tree. Red. Not full to bursting yet, but getting plumper. What a sign of spring! How hopeful this was. 

My heart lifted a little, recovering slightly from being crushed by the Ukranian invasion and what it portended for our new world order and fears of Putin (clearly unhinged now).

 I thought of Susan Simard, the amazing Canadian forest ecobiologist who has done so much deep research into the interconnectedness of tree roots below the soil line. How the tree roots signal each other when danger, like fire, is near; how they share carbon and nutrients to help trees grow; how fungi play such a vital role in this constant signaling out of sight and mind; and how you can have a Mother Tree which cares for younger ones nearby. Sounds like people, doesn’t it?

 Then I had a revelatory moment: “Annie, your roots go deep just like these tree roots, although you cannot see them and may not know them. They connect you to the wider world. You are part of the sky, the earth, the trees, the water, birds, insects, bats, and more. You are not standing alone in this world.” Of course, as with all of my God messages, this was much shorter and was just a kind of knowing about how I was part of the veins of the world.

  If you want to read more about how we are all joined to one another, read “The Entangled Life,” by Merlin Sheldrake, all about fungi, how they power our world, how without them we would collapse.

 I think of the shape of tree branches, the roots beneath reaching out, branching into wide spaces to take in nutrients. I think of the blood vessels in my eyes (unfortunately seen on a computer when my left eye went south with wet macular degeneration) and that they completely replicate the branching roots and tendrils of a tree.

 Look at scientific studies of our blood vessels, how they are the same. I have to conclude that God is in love with branching shapes, wherever she finds them.

 So, when you are tempted to despair about our shaky world order (and Thomas Merton has some striking things to say about despair), think about the how rooted you are within and without, that we are all inextricably linked in grace, purpose, and nature. 

Annie Turner is an author who lives in Williamsburg and worships at Haydenville Congregational Church. Her blog “Faith is My Operating System” can be found at https://faithismyos.blogspot.com