📍Put A Pin In It #04

Trees - Pruning Trees - Dear Elon - Prayer

Feb 27, 2025

📍TREES
I observe this Oak tree at the far edge of our property with interest. Its leaves turned color in November, along with all the other deciduous trees in its vicinity.

But while the other trees let their leaves fall to the ground, the Oak holds on.

Last year at this time we were getting ready to cut down a handful of unhealthy trees in our yard when I noticed the leaves still hanging on the Oak tree.

At that time I was also taking a collage class with trees as the focus.

And that is when I ran across these lines in Mary Oliver’s poem The Trees (from her collection Evidence) —

The Trees
Do you think of them as decoration?
Think again.
Here are maples, flashing.
And here are the oaks, holding on all winter
to their dry leaves.
And here are the pines, that will never fail,
until death, the instruction to be green.
And here are the willows, the first
to pronounce a new year.
May I invite you to revise your thoughts about them?
Oh, Lord, how we are all for invention and
advancement!
But I think
it would do us good if we would think about
these brothers and sisters, quietly and deeply.
The trees, the trees, just holding on
to the old, holy ways.

And here are the oaks, holding on all winter
to their dry leaves.

Exactly That!

So I have been paying more attention to the Oak tree in our backyard this winter, keeping track, watching and wondering what will happen in time1.

This is what the tree looked like this morning —

New buds are waiting. Have been waiting.

What will cause all these many remaining leaves to let go? And when they have all finally fallen, what conditions will be in place for whatever happens next?

…….Meanwhile, as our Oak tree works on letting last year go, I’ve been spotting delightful pops of color in this new growing year as I walk around town—

📍PRUNING TREES
I pruned the orchard trees last week — after the two-day snowstorm and before an atmospheric river stalled over our heads.

I do love this work. But after my first few hours on the job and with only a couple trees complete, my arthritic hands were screaming with pain and I wondered how I was going to get through the rest of the project. It’s a hard reality that my body no longer has pain-free strength for the outdoor work I love so much, and each year gets harder.

Thankfully, this particular project was met with a solution! We purchased a battery operated hand pruner and I finished all the rest of the trees the next day. It was fantastic.

But……it could have been better.

Last year I pruned the trees with the help of my girls.

I loved those girls!! They were so delightfully good at being exactly what they were made to be.

Just a few weeks after last year’s pruning project was complete, they were all, but one, killed in a backyard massacre.

I have a chicken-shaped hole in my heart. 💔

📍DOGE
Ryan texted me last week reporting that one of his professors said that 10 of his former students who worked for the parks service have told him they’d been fired. Mostly researchers and historical guides, Ryan added.

Right there is the sweet spot of your expertise and a much needed role, I wrote back with grief for the world my son, a student of history, is launching into.

After we exchanged these texts, I glanced down at the jigsaw puzzle I happened to be working on and then shot him this picture —

HA! he wrote back. At least you are putting it back together.

Indeed, I wonder, what will be the world that we assemble from all the reshaped pieces??

📍SPEAKING OF DOGE

One of the most beautiful things I read this past week is a poem by Tania Runyan in the voice of Poet Jesus (and the name of her Substack), which begins —

Dear Elon,
From the Department of Spiritual Inefficiency……

You Can Read It Here. Please Do.

Every week in our Anglican Church liturgy we pray together The Prayers of the People. Within that text are these lines:

For our nation, for those in authority, and for all in public service especially Donald our President, Tina, our Governor, and Bill, our Mayor.
Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer.

Do not mistake me. I am not answering my question — what sort of world will be assembled from all these reshaped pieces — with simply thoughts and prayers.

Rather, as we imagine what can be made from these pieces and what our particular roles and responsibilities might be, I again paraphrase Dallas Willard —Prayer is talking to God about projects we are working on together.

And this from my reading this week —

Young man, do not forget to say your prayers. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, a new feeling will shine forth, and in it, a new idea, which you haven’t had before and which will hearten you; and you will understand that prayer itself is an education .

- Father Zosima, The Brothers Karamozov

📍ASSORTED PINS BOX

🧷 Pastor Richard Dahlstrom — Shalom vs Domination

📌 Food and Theology Scholar Kendall Vanderslice — Why I can’t just stick to recipes and prayers

📌 Author Aimee Byrd — The God of Parking Spaces

🧷 For the Life of the World Podcast - Kendrick Lamar’s Political Theology

🧷 Me - Things on My Desk 🙃

📍AND LASTLY —
It was his first season helping with the orchard pruning, but Rusty the Farm Dog knew exactly what to do.

I have not extended the observation beyond my own backyard, but I assume this is the way with all/or a certain variety of Oak trees, since Mary Oliver also observed it and named it in a poem? I have also not spent time with the Google.