I have always felt the living
presence
of trees the forest that calls to me
as deeply
as I breathe,as though the woods
were marrow of my bone
as though I myself were tree,
a breathing, reaching arc of the larger
canopy
beside a brook bubbling to foam
like the one deep in these woods,
that calls that whispers home
Michael S. Glaser
Tuesday morning there was a lovely article in the Star Tribune called simply ‘Divine Shelter’. It told the story of a young Polish-born Jewish boy who escaped the death march to Auschwitz and found a home with a family in Czechoslovakia. Though he lived in the attic of the family’s home, at the sound of the approaching army, he would hide in the trunk of a hollowed out thirty-three foot high birch tree…..once for nine hours. Having survived the horror of those times, the now eighty-three year old man lived to see the tree that held his life named a ‘righteous tree’ in Israel’s Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. Jakob Silberstein said, while in the tree he found hope by looking up to the open sky from the confines of the carved birch. "I had someone protecting me from above".
The family who had hidden Jakob had always held the tree in sacred trust, never entering it, never allowing harm to come to it. They held his story, his life and the life of the tree in their care. What a blessed responsibility!
These days we are all witness to the changing life of trees. As vibrant colors turn to brown, as oak and birch leaves let go their firm grip on life, giving in to gravity, do you ever wonder what life the trees you watch have saved? Do you ever wonder if a marriage proposal was offered under the spreading branches? Did someone lean against the firm trunk struggling for a last breath? Whose strong, nimble legs climbed toward the highest branches to declare themselves "King…or Queen..of the World?" What young family spread a blanket, laid an infant down for a nap and watched the slow,steady rise and fall of its chest with vigilant gaze?
Like Jakob Silberstein, perhaps others have had their lives saved by a ‘righteous tree’. If not an actual tree, I am certain we have experienced "Divine Shelter." As the leaves float softly to the awaiting ground, may we have the grace to offer thanks for all those people and places that provide a safe place for us….those that ‘whisper home.’