On Trees

Trees really are wonderful. They provide shade, fruit, heat, furniture, and beauty. The first garden was filled with trees as will be the new Jerusalem. Trees grow slowly and imperceptibly from tiny seeds yet become towering giants which can live for thousands of years. Almost like magic, all trees need for this is water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide. Every spring, my maple trees drop thousands of seed pods, each of which begins to sprout a new tree. Every year, the beginning of a small forest is scattered on the ground. Because of their characteristics, trees provide fertile ground for metaphors of education. 

An aspect of trees that I find fascinating and rich for thought is their root system. While we see the large, leafy branches above ground, tendrils of roots of equal size spread out beneath the tree. If you have ever had to remove a stump, you quickly realize how much larger the trunk is just beneath the soil. Of course, it makes sense that trees would need these expansive systems to support the weight of the branches as well as provide nourishment. This is one way to limit the growth of small shrubs or flowers—put them in a fixed pot where their root system cannot expand past a certain size. The foliage is directly proportional to the roots. The roots control the life of the tree; without deep roots, the tree will not grow and may even die.  

Is this not how tradition functions? In order for a culture to survive and grow, it must have connections to the past. As Burke claims, “People will not look forward to posterity who do not look backward to their ancestors.” No man is an island, nor is any culture. Every society originates from a particular place. Children who despise their parents cannot credibly teach their children to “honor your father and mother.” Cutting the roots eventually kills the flower. It may survive for hours or days—longer if placed on life support—but it will wither and die. It is the same with culture. Revolutionaries may coast on accumulated capital and stored reserves, but eventually, the fruit will fail.  

A people who rejects all tradition cannot teach their children to do the same. In an odd paradox, if they train posterity to reject tradition, they teach them to reject discarding tradition; if they do not pass on their “culture-clasm,” then the next generation faithfully receives a tradition of rejection. Instead, revolutionaries find themselves in the position described by C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man; they wish to become the masters of the race by completely rejecting all that has come before while successfully controlling all generations that come after. Yet, he concludes that this would entail the abolition of man—the destruction of the race. 

We cannot wholly cut ourselves off from the past without also destroying ourselves. Even the most ardent post-modern theorist, despite the high-sounding talk, still clings to remnants of modernism—the existence of truth in language and thought. One may reject his mother’s teaching, but he cannot return his mother’s nourishment. Yet without a vital connection to the past, culture will be anemic and weak. We will not enjoy the flower of art, philosophy, or morality without the strong roots of the fifth commandment.  

To branch into another area of application, roots are an apt metaphor for teachers in the classical tradition. They cannot merely parrot other books and talks but need to establish roots in the tradition itself. It’s the difference between reading C.S. Lewis or T.S. Eliot and serving up their commentary and reading the sources that produced Lewis and Eliot. The former seeks to enjoy the fruit without the labor. There can be no flower without the hidden, underground support of direct study.  

During the school year, teachers can be especially busy, and they often search for a quick fix or lesson—something to get through the next class period. While grabbing something from another teacher or snagging an easily digestible morsel from Tolkien will do no harm in small quantities, over time it will create a teacher who is all leaf and no root. The cleanest water is found closest to its source.  

Carve out time to study and dig into the soil. Establish yourself in the tradition and take nourishment from it directly. Find springs—those select authors of clarity and vision—to which you may return again and again to find strength for your soul and teaching. Read not so that you will have something to say, but so that you will have something to meditate on. A teacher cannot give out day after day without also taking in. Build a community of fellow learners who can support and give to each other.  

Continuing to leaf through the metaphors, we find that trees also image the inner, spiritual life of man. Given the focus of classical education on moral formation, we expect that teachers would provide more than intellectual and factual knowledge; they will counsel, exhort, reprove, and correct. By God’s grace, this type of encouragement will be instrumental in the student’s life. But there is always a danger that the appearance of fruit will deceive (Mark 11:12-14). Although the classroom is bustling with activity and filled with insightful moral insights and maxims, there may not be the necessary roots to sustain the tree.  

Once I watched a video of a man felling a tree that was rotting and perilously close to a house. As he began to cut through this four-foot trunk, suddenly, the sound of his saw changed. After he had felled the tree, he showed the trunk and the gaping 2-foot-wide hole within. The tree had completely rotted from the inside and could have fallen at any moment.  

It is possible, for a time, for teachers to provide rich fruit for thought and action, and to positively direct students in morality, and yet have no inner life of their own. Their core has been rotted and their roots are weak. They gave what they did not possess themselves. While dying trees can provide shade and fruit for a time, it won’t last. The base cannot support the canopy. They will fall. This is not merely a law of nature, but of divine justice. “God will not be mocked. That which a man sows, that will he also reap.” 

God has filled the book of nature with rhymes and analogies. For millennia, trees have educated us about the nature of the soul and the good life. The next time you walk through the forest, consider the tree.