Why the Tree?
Nearly every culture around the world has a sacred tree or sacred grove. Christianity is no different in this regard. Its beliefs turns on a tree, too, but with a twist: the cross is a tree of death that becomes a tree of life for all the world. Taking its cue from this mystery, the logo for The Deeper Bible Podcast is a beautiful tree (designed by our very own Lyndsie Smith) because in it we see so much of what we hope to achieve through our project. To our eyes, a tree is many things:
Receptive, not grasping. Trees live on sunshine and water, yet they cannot go out and grasp either of these things. They must wait and receive, even as their branches reach out toward the light and roots meander toward moisture. The fundamentally patient mode of trees speaks to the sort of spirituality we hope to cultivate.
Rooted in silent, unseen places. For trees, as with much else in the world, the critical foundations are in dark and unseen places. What allows for staggering upward growth for all to see is the ceaseless, subterranean struggle of roots. The goal of our project is to nurture unseen roots in the life of the mind and spirit, going ever deeper.
Seasonal. It is not always harvest—not in nature, and not in life. There are winter seasons of dormancy, as strength gathers below ground, and autumn seasons of releasing, as former endeavors come to closure. And then there are spring and summer, those times of exuberant life and beauty. Our project seeks to acknowledge and explore the cyclical seasons of life.
Aesthetic. “I think that I shall never see / a poem lovely as a tree” wrote the poet Joyce Kilmer, and he was right. For sheer aesthetic value, few things in nature can rival a tree. Inspired by this elegance, our project seeks the sorts of emotional and intellectual dispositions that allow us to perceive and rejoice in the beautiful.
Interconnected. Beneath the forest floor the root systems of trees talk to each other and support one another. Scientists call this phenomenon mycorrhizal networks. Tall trees reaching up into the sunlight share photosynthetic sugars with shorter trees in the shade. Warnings about invasive insects trigger a wave of chemical defenses throughout the system. The “forest vs. tree” contrast is a misnomer; it’s all one thing. Just so, our project seeks to share resources and ideas throughout the digital ecosystem of our time.
Endlessly ramifying. Above and below ground, the structure of trees ramifies continually, splitting off into new pathways of branches and roots. (The Spanish rama means “branch,” from the Latin ramus, “branch, twig, shoot.”) Trees are stationary but not static, and the life of the mind has a similar duality. At its best it is rooted deeply in place, yet constantly seeking new angles, nuances, and meanings deeper than a dictionary offers.
Natural. It seems almost too obvious to say, but in a world of synthetic substitutes for the natural world, trees are reminder to shut the laptop, turn off the devices, and get outside. Although we are using technological tools for our project—the best tools we can find— we also want to resist the technocratic seductions of a life that is entirely “on screen.”
Exploratory. Have you ever seen a tree growing on the side of a cliff at an impossible angle, and wondered: How does it even live there? So have we. Trees flourish in the most unlikely places! Just so, our project seeks to be exploratory, engaging ideas and texts and themes that are fresh and untested. If all of life relates to God, then none of life is off-limits.
Future-Oriented. A farmer who plants an orchard today will not see fruit for many years. A pine tree planted this morning as a sapling won’t offer much shade for decades. Trees grow slowly, imperceptibly, yet the long-term payoffs are immense. In a similar way, we do not see our project as just for us, but for our children and grandchildren. Our goal is a community of life-long learners who are on the adventure of slow, future-leaning growth.
Self-Propagating. Fruit, botanists tell us, are bloated plant ovaries that enable reproduction. A bird eats an apple with its little black seed and flies many miles before dropping that seed into new soil. “Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the apples in a seed.” Our project was seeded anonymously by many great thinkers, writers, and pastors, and we hope to be part of a self-propagating tradition that seeds into others.
Generous. There is something fundamentally generous about trees. When you see fruit in the supermarket produce section, do you think the trees who gave that fruit protested? Of course not. Trees are cultivated to bless others, and we want to do likewise. Anything we say or produce is free for the taking. If it blesses you, that blesses us.
Elastic and Resilient. Although humans can engineer amazing things, no skyscraper in the world can approximate the dimensions of a tree. Comparing ratios of height to width, trees are taller and more slender than any buildings that humans make. Yet they bend with the wind and can weather fierce storms. These are characteristics of the spiritual life we seek. We know storms are coming. Our time in history has enormous challenges. So we seek the intellectual elasticity and resilience that will see us through.
Human-Shaped. At the halfway point of the creative week in Genesis 1, God causes trees to burst forth from the ground. At the symmetrical end point of that week, God creates his image-bearing creature. Then, in Genesis 2, God breathes life into the dust of the earth, fashioning humans, just before he causes trees to sprout from the same earth. In the Hebrew original of these passages, a pattern is established that will recur throughout the Bible: humans and trees resemble on another. (See the amazing Bible Project episode on this.) Given all of the above qualities of trees that our project seeks to emulate, we can perhaps sum up by saying we hope our project breathes something of the fragrance of the forest—tree-shaped humans learning from human-shaped trees.
Blessed is the man…
Whose delight is in the Torah of the Lord…
He is like a tree planted by streams of water
That yields its fruit in its season,
And its leaf does not wither.
~ Psalm 1:1–3