Maria and I are both paying more attention to trees, especially as we learn that they share, heal and support one another in ways we never knew or imagined. They are sentient beings; there is no longer much doubt about it.

I used to laugh at Tree Huggers, but the great joy of life is growing and learning and changing. We are the only species on the earth that can do that, and not doing it is a great sin to me.

We become what we laugh at; we reflect what we don’t want to see. Life is wickedly mischievous in that way. Our cruelty and blindness comes back to us, always.

I’m coming to see that everything I used to ridicule and others ridicule is where I need to find where true spirituality lives. It’s the people on the edge of life – the ones who never get to see on TV – that we most need to hear.

The people we heard from the most have nothing to say.

I am ridiculed often, and it nourishes and opens me up. Ridicule is the language of the closed hearts and dry souls.

I suspect that we humans are not really meant to survive on the earth; we don’t deserve the gift of it; we seem to care little for it and know nothing about it.

We’ve been chopping down billions of trees for eons, yet we are just beginning to learn what it is that we are killing so readily and unknowingly.

I walked in the back pasture yesterday and looked out at the trees in the forest in front of me. What is their message, I wondered. I know they are sending me one, but can I hear it?

The scientists have their own ideas about trees, but my ideas are spiritual; I see trees as messages send to remind us that God alone is good, that all things move on and pass away, and that the petty things that preoccupy us are not important.

There is no point in living just for this world; the trees whisper to us that there are things in our universe that are so important we can barely imagine them; perhaps our next world is out there somewhere.

The trees speak to me of my freedom, responsibilities, and the smallness of our transient cares, making us forget what really matters.

The trees are the true temples, our synagogues, and cathedrals and mosques. They don’t need glass and statues and great towers to be beautiful and majestic and to inspire our awe.

There is holiness in discovering the worth of trees, their generosity, their strength, and tolerance. They make us feel small because we are small, and they can reach up and touch the sky and listen to the songs of the angels.

The trees have spoken for centuries; they are the towers of our true churches, their bells ring silently but loudly and beautifully.

They ring for peace and compassion with our Gods and within ourselves.

We share our own silence with the trees, not to disturb their privacy, our own solitude, but so that the silence they dwell in and dwells in them can be seen for what it is.

To share their silence is an act of reverence.

When I need to pray, I pray to the trees to get the message where it needs to go. They humble me because we don’t deserve them.

In a sense, that is their power, they surround us and tower over us, but we never really see them.

Their message to me is to rest in your God and rejoice; this is not the only world.

The message of the trees has always been for everyone, for those who come and for those who do not come, their song is our song, and it is perfect; it calls us to listen and open our hearts for all.