New Pilgrim Path is a website aimed at introducing fellow Christians of all denominations to the great wealth of online spiritual resources that our small team has discovered, and continues to discover. We provide links to, and a brief description of, a variety of websites we have visited and found valuable. We hope these links will help visitors to encounter the person of Christ.
To find out more about us, click here.
In addition to our permanent pages, each week we feature a different Website of the Week, Poem of the Week and Music of the Week. If you would like to receive an email each Sunday notifying you of the updates, please click here.
To find out more about us, click here.
In addition to our permanent pages, each week we feature a different Website of the Week, Poem of the Week and Music of the Week. If you would like to receive an email each Sunday notifying you of the updates, please click here.
Website of the Week: 9th August
Trees
The Bible mentions trees more than any living thing other than humans. The oldest known tree in the world, the Methusaleh Tree, was a sapling when Abraham undertook his immense journey at the dawn of salvation history. The Christian has immensely valuable lessons to learn from trees, whose magnificence emerges from seeming immobility and lightlessness. Below, we look at trees, and the spiritual lessons we can learn from them, from three different persepctives.
Donagh O'Shea is an Irish Dominican friar and author who is renowned for his retreats. He frequently draws parallels between our spiritual lives and the lives of trees: "A deep truthful interiority is essential to a Christian life. A tree has to sink its roots deep into the ground, otherwise it comes down in the first storm ... If you project your imagination down into the ground where the roots are, you find a strange world of darkness, silence and stillness. How frightening darkness can be, especially when it is filled with strange unaccountable shapes! How deathly silent it is down there! And it is like the tightest prison imaginable; nothing ever moves...
"We human beings are like trees. There is a hidden half – hidden even from ourselves, hidden in darkness and mystery. And there is a half that is all light and noise and activity. If we identify ourselves only with the public part, the part ‘above ground’, we will not be able to withstand the storms of life, and we will have no profound resources for growth. Our actions, our lives, like trees, emerge from a rich darkness, silence and stillness." Read the full text of his reflection here.
"We human beings are like trees. There is a hidden half – hidden even from ourselves, hidden in darkness and mystery. And there is a half that is all light and noise and activity. If we identify ourselves only with the public part, the part ‘above ground’, we will not be able to withstand the storms of life, and we will have no profound resources for growth. Our actions, our lives, like trees, emerge from a rich darkness, silence and stillness." Read the full text of his reflection here.
Herman Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist and Nobel laureate. In a beautiful essay on trees, he wrote: "Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
"A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
"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 labor is holy. Out of this trust I live". Read the entire essay here.
"A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
"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 labor is holy. Out of this trust I live". Read the entire essay here.
Matthew Sleeth, an Evangelical environmentalist, left his post as emergency room physician and chief of medical staff in a New Engand hospital, to teach, preach, and write about the biblical call to be good stewards of God's creation. He points out that:
"Whether it is the Fall, the Flood, or the overthrow of Pharaoh, every major event in the Bible has a tree, branch, fruit, seed, or some part of a tree marking the spot.
"Moreover, every major character in the Bible appears in conjunction with a tree. In the Old Testament, Noah received the olive leaf (Genesis 8:11), Abraham sat under “the oaks of Mamre” (Genesis 18:1), and Moses stood barefoot in front of the burning bush (Exodus 3:2–5). The same pattern holds true in the New Testament. Think of Zacchaeus climbing the sycamore (Luke 19:1–4), the blind man seeing people as if they were trees walking (Mark 8:24), and the disciples gathering on the Mount of Olives (Luke 22:39). Jesus Himself declared that the kingdom of heaven is like a tree (Matthew 13:31–32).
"The problem with subtracting trees from our theology", says Dr Sleeth, is that God put them in the Bible for a reason."
Read more at this link.
"Whether it is the Fall, the Flood, or the overthrow of Pharaoh, every major event in the Bible has a tree, branch, fruit, seed, or some part of a tree marking the spot.
"Moreover, every major character in the Bible appears in conjunction with a tree. In the Old Testament, Noah received the olive leaf (Genesis 8:11), Abraham sat under “the oaks of Mamre” (Genesis 18:1), and Moses stood barefoot in front of the burning bush (Exodus 3:2–5). The same pattern holds true in the New Testament. Think of Zacchaeus climbing the sycamore (Luke 19:1–4), the blind man seeing people as if they were trees walking (Mark 8:24), and the disciples gathering on the Mount of Olives (Luke 22:39). Jesus Himself declared that the kingdom of heaven is like a tree (Matthew 13:31–32).
"The problem with subtracting trees from our theology", says Dr Sleeth, is that God put them in the Bible for a reason."
Read more at this link.