Mother Nature

“I am sorry, Boy,” said the Tree, “But I have nothing left to give you.” – The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

It’s May, it’s Mother’s Day, we had our concert last weekend and my ordination this coming weekend. It’s an exciting time for the Community Church!

If this is a day you celebrate, or a day you feel complicated about, or a day you’re simply aware of because the world around you keeps reminding you of it, you are not alone in that.

And I also want to say, especially today, that whatever your relationship to the word “mother” is—whether it feels close, distant, painful, joyful, complicated, or something in between—you belong here.

We are a community that tries, imperfectly but earnestly, to hold the fullness of human experience. And that includes today.

Around this time of the year, each kindergarten class at my elementary school would put on a production of The Giving Tree. Since there aren’t actually many characters in the book, about ten students would get the illustrious roles of “Boy” and “Tree” at different stages in the story, and every other student in the class would sit on the stage and pass down a microphone, each reading a line of the narration.

I was thrilled to be one of the five little girls selected to read the line of “Tree.” I stood off stage and read my line into a microphone while a cardboard tree with removable branches and a trunk stood in my place on stage, being dismantled by a rotation of five year old boys “growing up” in real time.

It was exciting to be in a play as a kindergartener and it was even more fun, year after year, watching the next class of students retell the story. I grew older, but the story stayed the same.

But as I grew older, I also began to think a little more critically about this story. Wait a minute… Why does the Boy demand everything from the Tree while offering nothing in return? Why does the Tree keep saying yes to the Boy’s requests even when it costs her herself? And hey–why is the Tree a girl and the Boy, well, a Boy? That doesn’t seem fair.

I don’t know if Shel Silverstein sat down intending to write a story about the undervalued labor of women, especially mothers, and the extractive ways that we treat both women and nature in society. I don’t think that’s what’s happening. But…stories absorb the values of the worlds that produce them… and they also shape the worlds that come after.

And the older I got, the harder it became not to notice the ways this story echoed other things too. The expectations placed on mothers. On women more broadly. This idea that love means giving until there’s nothing left of yourself. That being needed is the same thing as being valued. That exhaustion is proof of goodness.

I think that’s part of why the story feels so emotional to people. Most of us recognize something in it. Maybe we recognize ourselves in the Tree. Maybe we recognize someone who loved us that way. Maybe we recognize the Boy.

Because the Boy learns to see the Tree primarily in terms of usefulness. What can she provide? What part of her can be turned into something else? Apples into money. Branches into a house. Trunk into a boat.

This is a children’s book, which means that it’s one of the first stories we learn. I think of my school, with class after class of kindergarteners retelling this story, and the little girls – now women – who have grown up to find themselves in the role of the Tree.

That’s what we learn in this society: How can we make things more efficient? How can we be more productive? How can we do more, make more, earn more?

Under the system of late-stage capitalism we have found ourselves in, it can be very difficult to imagine what is meaningful about a relationship outside of its usefulness. We are taught, over and over again, that our value is tied to what we produce. That rest must be earned. That care is valuable only if it is efficient. That even love can become transactional.

I think that’s part of why the image of the Tree stays with us. Because somewhere deep down, we know this way of relating is unsustainable.

So I’ve been thinking about all of this, sitting with the story of The Giving Tree and wondering what to say to you all on this Mother’s Day.

We tend to have very particular stories about mothers in this culture. Sometimes they’re idealized almost beyond humanity—endless patience, endless sacrifice, endless capacity. And sometimes they’re taken for granted in a way that is much closer to what The Giving Tree is actually showing us: care that is expected, assumed, and often unreciprocated. Gratitude that’s only shown on a day Woodrow Wilson had to sign into law for us to observe and has become an excuse for Hallmark and flower shops and brunch places to make more money on yet another holiday that has, like so many things, been absorbed into consumerism.

Mother’s Day can be a complicated day to preach about. I’m not a mother myself, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be. I have a mother, and a soon-to-be mother-in-law, both of whom I admire and adore. I know that is not something everyone gets to say. I feel lucky in that.

And I also know that in this room, there are a whole range of experiences and feelings about today. Pride, sorrow, anger, excitement, regret, numbness, fear, grief, gratitude… sometimes all at once, sometimes none of those things at all.

And I think it matters, too, to say that motherhood is a beautiful and expansive thing. For me, it’s not primarily about biology. People of all genders mother. People of all genders are mothered. There are ways we are held, and ways we hold others, that don’t fit neatly inside the boundaries of gender at all.

And at the same time, it is also true that in this culture, the labor of mothering has been deeply gendered. It has been expected, extracted, and often made invisible in ways that fall disproportionately on women. So when we talk about mothers, we’re talking about something that is both expansive and shared—and also something very specific, shaped by history, expectation, and inequality.

It’s not a coincidence that Shel Silverstein’s “Tree” is described with she & her pronouns.

In cultures all around the world, for thousands of years, nature and the earth have been described in maternal terms: Mother Earth, Mother Nature, Gaia. Images of the earth as something generative, something that brings life forth, something that nourishes and sustains.

And I find myself wondering why that metaphor stuck so strongly.

Because if we are going to use that language at all, then it has to mean more than sentiment. It has to include care in both directions. It has to include limits. It has to include respect. It has to include the possibility that what we call “mother” is not an infinite resource, but a living relationship.

And that’s part of why I keep coming back to trees.

I’m graduating from seminary this Friday, and I’ve been thinking a lot about my time at Union over the past three years. I remember back to my first year, in class on Unitarian Universalism, where we were exploring what spiritual development meant for ourselves and others. One of our assignments was to adopt a new daily spiritual practice.

I decided that mine would be to touch a tree.

When I tell people back home in Oregon that I live in New York City now, they ask me, “Don’t you miss the trees?”

And true, Oregon is verdant and beautiful and full of trees.

But there are a lot of trees in New York, too – we just don’t always notice them.

If you don’t believe me, the New York Parks department has done the math: as of yesterday’s count on the interactive “NYC Tree Map”, there are 887,439 trees managed by the Parks department. That doesn’t even count all of the ones that are privately planted and cared for.

Nearly nine hundred thousand trees.

Once I started looking for them, I saw them everywhere. Outside the doctor’s office. Outside the grocery store. Outside cafes and apartment buildings and subway entrances. I started noticing the ways they adapted to the city – and how the city adapted to them. Roots erupting through concrete, leaving cracked sidewalks behind. Scaffolding built around trunks, little cutouts in the boards so branches could keep stretching toward the sun.

Next to the skyscrapers and tourists and commuters, the trees were right there. Quietly accompanying all of us.

And I realized how rarely I actually looked up. I’m usually moving quickly from one thing to the next, listening to a podcast while answering texts while mentally organizing the rest of my day. When I have down time, I somehow manage to be watching Netflix and scrolling on my phone at the same time, which I don’t think is good for my brain, probably.

But until I started intentionally looking for trees, I didn’t realize how much of the world I was moving past without really seeing.

That summer after my first year of seminary, while I was interning as a chaplain at New York Presbyterian, there was one day in particular when I felt completely overwhelmed. I had spent the day holding grief and conflict and pain, and by the end of it, I felt like I couldn’t carry any more.

I called my friend Martha, (now the Reverend Martha) and told her I didn’t know what to do with all of it anymore. And in typical Martha fashion, she asked me, “Is there a tree nearby?”

There was. A Japanese pagoda tree just a few feet away, though I didn’t know that was the species at the time. I only figured that out later by finding it on the Tree Map.

Martha told me to put my hands on the trunk and release everything I was carrying.

At first I resisted. It felt strange. Unfair, even. Who was I to place all of my sadness onto another living being? The tree didn’t deserve that.

But Martha just said, very calmly, “The tree can hold it. It’s big. It’s strong. It can handle your pain.”

So I stood there on a New York sidewalk with my hands against the bark, and I cried.

And surprisingly, I felt better.

Now, I don’t think the lesson here is that trees exist solely to absorb human suffering. That would just be The Giving Tree all over again.

But I do think we underestimate how much relationship with the natural world can sustain us. Not because nature is an object for our spiritual consumption, but because we are already part of it. Whether we act like it or not.

And maybe that’s part of the spiritual task right now. Learning how to relate differently.

To other people. To the earth. To ourselves.

To practice forms of love that are rooted in reciprocity rather than extraction. To stop assuming that care means depletion. To remember that rest is holy. That living things are not valuable simply because they are useful to us.

And I think it’s important to say that none of this is about disappearing into some kind of endless self-giving. That’s part of what makes The Giving Tree so controversial. The Tree doesn’t seem to have any boundaries at all. There’s no sense that she could say no, or pause, or rest, or even ask for something in return.

And I don’t think that’s what love is.

I think we tend to swing between two extremes. Either we imagine love as total self-sacrifice—where you give until there’s nothing left—or we imagine protection of the self as complete independence, where you don’t need anyone and no one can ask anything of you.

But neither of those really feels like life.

That’s why, as Unitarian Universalists, one of our core values is interdependence. This slightly messier middle place where we actually do need each other, and also have limits. Where care is real, and so is exhaustion. Where generosity matters, and so do boundaries. Where it turns out you cannot actually pour from an empty cup, even if you want to.

I’ve been traveling a lot this spring, and I keep hearing flight attendants remind me that I need to put on my own oxygen mask before helping someone else. It’s a cliche line used to talk about self-care, and also, on an airplane, it’s a very real directive. Not because we are isolated individuals who should only care about ourselves and always put ourselves first, but because to actually be supportive to others we need to be able to survive.

“I am sorry, Boy,” said the Tree, “But I have nothing left to give you.”

In the story, it ends up working out. All the Boy – now an old man – needs is somewhere to sit, and thank goodness, that is all the Tree has left to offer. Even at the end of her life, as her fruits have been taken from her and her limbs stripped, she is the resting place for this Boy – this Man.

But what about the bees who used to buzz around her blossoms? What about the birds who sought shelter in her branches? What about the other, smaller plants, who grew strong beneath her dappled sunlight? What about the other trees around her, who relied on her to send water and messages through their interconnected root systems?

“I am sorry,” said the Tree, “But I have nothing left to give.”

And I know these are big ideas. Climate change and capitalism and societal collapse can all feel so massive that it becomes difficult to imagine what meaningful relationship even looks like anymore. It’s easy to feel disconnected from it all, especially in midtown Manhattan. Easy to assume that “nature” is somewhere else. Somewhere upstate, maybe. Or even just sectioned off in Central Park. Not here between the scaffolding and the subway grates and the corner stores.

But there are nine hundred thousand trees in New York City quietly insisting otherwise.

And I think paying attention can actually change us. Maybe not all at once. Maybe not dramatically. But slowly.

Once I started noticing trees, I started caring about them. I wanted to know what kinds they were. I wanted to remember where they were rooted. Apparently I cared enough that while writing this sermon, I somehow ended up signing up to volunteer for the city’s decennial Tree Census next week.

Which is, to be fair, a little on the nose.

But maybe that’s how relationship works. Once something stops being an abstraction, once it becomes familiar, once you begin to recognize it as part of your community, it becomes harder not to care what happens to it.

So after the service today, we’re going to have the Tree Map open on the computers in the back at the Love in Action table. And I want to invite you to spend a few minutes with it. Find a tree near your apartment, or your work, or this church.

Find one tree near you. Not the most impressive one. Not the “important” one. Just one you pass by. Maybe one you’ve never really noticed before.

And if it helps, you can think of it less as “choosing a tree” and more like… noticing a relationship you are already in.

Take a moment to look at it on the map. What kind is it? How big is it? When was it last pruned?

And the next time you stop by it, take a moment to notice it. You say hi, or give it a pat, but you don’t have to. Just acknowledge its existence in this world, in this moment, that you also exist in.

And maybe that sounds small. It is small.

But I don’t think small things are insignificant.

What I’m learning is that paying attention is a spiritual practice, that noticing is a form of love, one that goes right to the center of all that Love is and can be. Whether it’s the pigeons fluttering and squawking, or the trees standing silent and tall… we are all in this together. And if we are to build a world built on reciprocity and interdependence instead of consumerism and extraction, I think it begins with something very ordinary: learning to see one another clearly again.