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Website of the Week
29th January 2023
Trees
The Bible mentions trees more than any living thing other than humans. The Christian has immensely valuable lessons to learn from trees, whose magnificence emerges from underground, from seeming immobility and darkness. Here we look at the spiritual lessons offered by trees, from three different and beautiful perspectives.
29th January 2023
Trees
The Bible mentions trees more than any living thing other than humans. The Christian has immensely valuable lessons to learn from trees, whose magnificence emerges from underground, from seeming immobility and darkness. Here we look at the spiritual lessons offered by trees, from three different and beautiful perspectives.
Donagh O'Shea OP
"In imagination every forest is beautiful. Trees stood silently on all sides, revealing themselves with perfect clarity, hiding nothing, pretending nothing, holding nothing back, standing undisguised in the full truth of themselves. I have long been enchanted by trees, and I often go in the early morning and just stand among them. They embody meditation and teach me how to do the same."
Donagh O'Shea is an Irish Dominican priest whose life has been spent teaching people - through his writings and his retreats - how to become alive in body, mind, and spirit. Central to all his work is the practice of meditation and, in teaching this, he frequently draws analogies with trees. It is underground, in deep silence and darkness, that the tree produces all its visible beauty.
Read one of his beautiful reflections on trees here.
Donagh O'Shea is an Irish Dominican priest whose life has been spent teaching people - through his writings and his retreats - how to become alive in body, mind, and spirit. Central to all his work is the practice of meditation and, in teaching this, he frequently draws analogies with trees. It is underground, in deep silence and darkness, that the tree produces all its visible beauty.
Read one of his beautiful reflections on trees here.
Hermann Hesse
"A tree says: 'My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labour is holy. Out of this trust I live.'"
Nobel laureate, Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His works explore an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality.
Click on the image to listen to Hesse's stunning prose-poem on trees.
Read the poem here.
Nobel laureate, Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His works explore an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality.
Click on the image to listen to Hesse's stunning prose-poem on trees.
Read the poem here.
Matthew Sleeth
A former emergency department physician, Sleeth wrote his first book, Serve God, Save the Planet in May 2006. As a Christian environmentalist, he has spoken more than 900 times in churches, schools and to media outlets across America about the biblical mandate to care for the Earth.
Click on the image to hear him preaching on trees.