Refiner’s Fire: The Language of Trees

For me the tree is a sermon in space, illuminating the dreams of God.

I remember, as a boy, in childish orgies of violence, slashing the bark of trees with knives and hacking their pink and white flesh until it ran with pungent juice. Now I am older, and I am an artist, painting the pattern of light on their undulating limbs. Working with brush and canvas, reflecting back on years of trees, I can feel the gentle rush of seasons through their spiraling limbs. Most artists are reluctant to talk about their work, preferring to let it speak for itself; but I am eager to say what I feel about a subject that, in painting, has said much to me.

The tree is a joy to behold: through its very structure we see how it came to be, where it came from, and where it is going. The beauty of the visual structure is enhanced by the meaning its form holds for us. We can see its progression through the trials of existence; a visual trace of its journey through time is embodied in its final structure.

Whether active in spring’s expectation, immersed in summer’s industry, waning in fall’s reversal, or dormant in wintry rest, the tree speaks in visual ways. Its visual language can be strident in the upward thrust of young saplings, beseeching in spindly verticals reaching for sunlight, tormented in limbs whose growth was thwarted, poised in the comely confidence of maturity, regal in the broadening width of age, or indomitable in the solid patriarch. And we can see ourselves reflected in this language, in body, balance, and being.

Some people even talk to trees. In The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Ernest J. Gaines quotes the aging Miss Jane, a former slave:

“There’s an old oak tree up the quarters where Aunt Lou Bolin and them used to stay. That tree has been here, I’m sure, since this place been here, and it has seen much much, and it knows much much. And I’m not ashamed to say I have talked to it, and I’m not crazy either.… When you talk to an oak tree that’s been here all these years, and knows more than you’ll ever know, it’s not craziness; it’s just the nobility you respect” (Bantam Books, 1972, p. 147).

Our deep affinity for trees also springs from our tactile sense. Our instinct is to reach out to feel a tree, to grasp a limb, feel its girth, gauge its strength, to grip and even climb. As youngsters, we did it naturally; as adults, we can dream of it. And in our dreaming, we can sense the enclosing darkness of another time, and feel the reassurance of the refuge of protective branches above the ground.

We can sense also the nightmare times of threatening storms with overwhelming rolls of thunder and flashes of lightning. We can remember the fires in that early dawn of time, smoldering in the oaks, set by lightning bolts from the heavens, and we stole that warming fire for our own use as a gift from the gods.

We have been ancestrally linked with trees since our earliest memory. In Genesis we find: “And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (2:9).

The elements of air, fire, and water are closely attached to the tree and times of miracle. We can understand the awe that Moses felt when gripped by the Presence in the burning bush, and marvel that the bush was not consumed by the fire. It is easy to see how through the centuries the tree itself could be seen as a holy object and woven into the fabric of mythology and belief.

In an inspiring article for Audubon magazine (January, 1969) entitled “The Message of the Tree,” Andreas Feininger, who spent ten years traveling all over the world to photograph trees, tells of the interrelation between trees and belief. In the next few paragraphs I will try to recount some of what he wrote.

The oak was a sacred symbol in Teutonic mythology. It was the tree of Donar, Thunar, or Thor, the thunder god, who struck the hammer that rolled out the rumbling thunder and sparked the agitated lightning. The oak, statistically the tree most often struck by lightning, was also the symbol of Zeus and Jupiter, the Greek and Roman thunder gods. In Caesar’s times, Europe from the Rhine eastward was still covered by primeval forests where people worshiped their gods in sacred groves. Terrible punishment awaited anyone found even stripping the bark of one of these sacred trees.

These groves, like medieval cathedrals, were places of sanctuary, inviolable sites where the deity revealed itself and, in the form of oracles, made pronouncements about the future. Even in modern times, alone in a wood at night, one envisions personages in the silhouettes of starkly skeletal limbs and muted stumps; it is not hard to understand how forests were once thought to be home to gnomes, nymphs, ogres, witches, ghosts, satyrs, and fauns. Forest sounds in the wind and the pale glow of fluorescent fungi can engender the deepseated dread we call panic (named for the ancient Pan, whose sudden appearance evoked this uncontrollable feeling).

Groves that are regarded as sacred still exist in some parts of the world. For instance, on the islands of Borneo and Timor, some of the world’s most interesting botanical specimens have been preserved by the sanctuary of holy places. In India, there are remote sacred groves, and also in Luzon, in the Philippines. The Pardembanan Batak, in Sumatra, decreed as sacred the places where the lateral growth of exposed tree roots covered forest streams. In equatorial Africa, numerous sacred groves are reportedly still in use as places of worship. The canopy of foliage and limbs offers a dark, cool sanctuary from the world and a quiet place to talk to God.

From the wood of the crib that cradled the infant Jesus to the wood of the cross, the tree was a part of Christ’s life. In John 15:

“I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned” (vv. 5, 6).

Christ went to the cross, whose timbers were once trees, and died to cleanse us all, to be a doorway, a pathway, a branch to eternal life and forgiveness. The cross as a tree of eternal life completes our understanding of the tree of life in the garden of Eden: the cross fulfills the tree of life.

I have come to know the tree as a teacher, a revealer of lessons in living, simply in its visual rightness. Those who would see trees as so many running feet of lumber, so much pulp, or perhaps a barrier to land “development” have missed what Feininger has described as the real message of the tree.

Bill Bristow is a painter and associate professor of art at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

A Star Is Reborn

The story of B. J. Thomas sounds very much like the Streisand-Kristofferson update of A Star Is Born—except that the ending is happy.

Thomas, like rock singer John Norman Howard in the new film, had sold millions of records—32 million, in fact. He was in financial and emotional trouble. And he had a heavy drug habit—up to $3,000 a week for cocaine. John Norman Howard finally committed suicide. One night Thomas took more than eighty pills. But the singer who had made “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” famous was lucky—he survived.

Thomas’s wife Gloria kept asking him to come home, because she’d found something to help him. A little over a year ago he did. And shortly after that he became a Christian.

Myrrh Records has just released Thomas’s first Christian album, “Home Where I Belong.” That doesn’t mean he’s getting out of the secular music business, though. He continues to perform in Las Vegas, though he has added a song or two from his Myrrh album to the show. And he plans appearances on the major talk shows, something he never did before becoming a Christian. He’s looking for a film script, a cowboy picture, to do. And he’s cutting a secular album with a major company. Thomas says he was never famous, despite his large record sales. (Rock star Alice Cooper has sold only a few million more records than Thomas.) Tell that to the fans who flock to hear him at his concerts.

Thomas hasn’t changed his style in “Home Where I Belong.” It’s still what his wife calls “easy listenin’ music.” Most of the songs were written for the album, one or two of them by Thomas or his wife. The back-up musicians are the same ones he has used throughout his career, and all of them have become Christians since Thomas did.

The strength of this album comes not with the variety of musical styles but with the catchy tunes and light lyrics. Thomas’s is no sledge-hammer approach. And that’s why he can use the songs successfully in a Las Vegas gig. A few of the cuts sound like traditional love songs. For example, from “You Were There to Catch Me”: “Everytime I slipped and fell/your arms were open wide./You never turned your back on me/and never said goodbye.” That could be a comment on Thomas’s wife or on God.

The songs on the first side are stronger than on side two. The orchestration is more interesting and suits the words better. “Down Isn’t So Bad,” which ends the side, is particularly effective with an upbeat tempo and a stick-in-your-mind melody. The title cut has been released as a single, a standard practice among secular record companies but little used among religious producers.

B. J. Thomas fans, welcome his newest album. Let’s hope it isn’t sold only in Christian record and book shops, for many of those who made him a millions-seller never darken the door of that kind of store.

CHERYL FORBES

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