麻豆社

In this week鈥檚 heat, I鈥檓 sure I wasn鈥檛 the only one to seek shelter in the shade of a tree. Mine was a gorgeous copper beech; its cooling presence, a God-send. In fact, I was so grateful and moved that I found myself thanking not just God, but the tree itself, albeit self-consciously. 鈥淒id you really just say that out loud?鈥� spluttered my inner-critic.

Anyway, the tree didn鈥檛 need my thanks, did it? It was being a tree. And yet ... as one newspaper reported yesterday, trees are far from the independent, solitary entities we often presume them to be. As science is finding, they鈥檙e very much relational beings.

A study by the ecologist Sebastian Leuzinger in Auckland highlights the case of a tree stump he found, while hiking in a forest. It had no leaves, no branches and had been felled long ago, yet he found living tissue, and discovered to his amazement that the stump was being kept alive by neighbouring trees, feeding it water and nutrients through an interconnected network of roots.

His rare discovery fits too with other research which shows that trees up to 60-feet apart exchange nutrients with the help of fungi.

Scientists are now beginning to see forests as 鈥榮uper organisms鈥�. For me, this resonates spiritually too. The eco-theologian Thomas Berry describes the universe itself - as being not just 鈥榓 collection of objects, but a communion of subjects鈥�. The super-organism, if you like, sustained lovingly by God, is one in which we humans, like the trees, are not solitary, independent types, but interwoven - with each other, and with the whole of the Earth ... though sadly, of late, to the Earth鈥檚 detriment.

The Iroquois Indians have a famous ritual which thanks the Earth, the rivers, the crops, the trees, the wind, and finally the Creator. It is a spiritual practice which encourages loving our neighbours in Creation without condition.

Certainly, we now need all the help we can muster from trees, not just for the shade they offer soulfully, and the mental health benefits that forests provide so freely, but for the CO2 they capture and store as we urgently seek a net carbon-zero world.

Planting saplings is one small practical way of addressing climate change; though of course we all need to do so much more to reduce and off-set carbon emissions, and thus (crucially) to restore the perilous imbalance of our relationship. Any change in lifestyle requires a change in mindset. Cultivating gratitude, for me, begins to do just that, by helping to move the heart as well.

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