Recently, I was driving on Mickey Drive in Farmington, NM, and spotted a mulberry tree that looked healthy in spots and almost dead in others. It captured my attention, so I took a picture of it.
The tree appeared to be struggling to stay alive and healthy. I wondered what message it would have for us if it could speak in a way we can understand. While I pondered this, I began to breathe deeply several times. Could the tree be encouraging me to be more conscious about taking deep breaths?
It may seem hard to grasp that a tree could communicate with people. Thomas Berry thought it was possible. He was a Catholic priest, cultural historian, historian of the Earth and its evolutionary processes, and scholar of the world's religions. He wrote many books related to those themes. He was born in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1914 and died in 2009 at the age of 94, also in Greensboro.
His obituary in the National Catholic Reporter stated that Berry "was among the first to say the earth crisis is fundamentally a spiritual crisis."
Victoria Loorz wrote about some of his beliefs in her book, Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred published in 2021 by Broadleaf Books, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
On page 90 of her book, Loorz wrote, "Berry suggested that restoring conversation with the rivers and deer and trees can actually repair the world. I don't think he was talking metaphorically – at least not completely. I think he was speaking to the inherent capacity we, as beings on Earth, have to actually engage in a conversation deeper than words, one which is going on all the time. And that conversation is what actually holds the web of life together."
Loorz noted that Berry was saddened by the loss we as humans and the entire world have suffered because we are no longer hearing and respecting each other's voices. "We are talking only to ourselves," she wrote, quoting Berry. "We are not talking to the rivers, we are not listening to the wind and stars. We have broken the great conversation."
That conversation is still available to us. All it takes is a willingness to listen to nature around us, to suspend the misconception that such communication cannot take place.
On age 89 on her book, Loorz affirmed this. "The skies, the waters, the deer, the forests: these are speaking all the time. We may have forgotten that we have the capacity to understand their voices and to speak with them, ask their advice, and seek their wisdom."
I am grateful for the mulberry tree's encouragement for me to breathe more deeply. In spite of its struggles to maintain health, it is willing to share its wisdom with any of us who will listen.