Week 2: Growing spiritually - our 'roots'

‘growing deeper in learning and praying,
living and breathing the way of Jesus’

You can listen to this week's readings and reflections here.

Job 14:7-9

⁷ “For there is hope for a tree,
    if it is cut down, that it will sprout again,
    and that its shoots will not cease.
⁸ Though its root grows old in the earth,
    and its stump dies in the ground,
⁹ yet at the scent of water it will bud
    and put forth branches like a young plant.

Ephesians 3:14-19

¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family^[h] in heaven and on earth takes its name. ¹⁶ I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, ¹⁷ and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. ¹⁸ I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

A ‘cutting’ of tree wisdom (Genny Tunbridge)

We have long understood that a tree’s roots give it stability, and allow it to gather water and nutrients, to be sent up into the trunk and branches, keeping the whole tree alive and growing. We think of roots growing deep, but they mainly grow wide, near the surface, where the soil is most rich and nourishing – and they may grow far indeed, well beyond the canopy of the tree. As a rough guide, roots may reach out one foot for every inch of trunk diameter.

The surprising recent finding is that a tree’s roots are not isolated, but are joined to roots of other trees, via threads of beneficial fungus (the mycorrhizal network), able to share nutrients and communicate underground. In Richard Powers’ novel The Overstory, the botanist Patricia Westerford is excited by this revelation of tree connectedness.

"When the lateral roots of two Douglas-firs run into each other underground, they fuse. Through those self-grafted knots, the two trees join their vascular systems together and become one. Networked together underground by countless thousands of miles of living fungal threads, her trees feed and heal each other, keep their young and sick alive, pool their resources and metabolites into community chests" … “Before it dies, a Douglas-fir, half a millennium old, will send its storehouse of chemicals back down into its roots and out through its fungal partners, donating its riches to the community pool in a last will and testament. We might call these benefactors giving trees.”

Introduction to the theme (Al Barrett)

We begin this journey of exploring our Christian discipleship, that we’re calling Trees of Life, at the lowest level, at the roots: hidden, below the surface, but vital for life and growth. The roots of a tree are essential for its stability (without strong, deep roots, a tree would easily fall over), for its nutrition (through its roots, a tree ‘drinks’ in water, and other nutrients from the soil), and for its connection to other trees (trees share life-giving nutrients through their root networks, and also information that can enable a forest of trees to respond to threats and changes in their environment).

Similarly, when we think about our spiritual ‘roots’, we might think about those same three aspects for us:

• our spiritual roots help keep us stable: the habits and rhythms that help us ‘stay standing’, even when the stormy winds are blowing around us – and that help us to ‘stand still’ (even for a moment) to pay attention to what is going on around us (‘time to stand and stare’, as the famous poem puts it);
• our spiritual roots are the things which nourish us: like the food we eat, we’re thinking about the ‘fuel’ we need to energise us to keep going and to grow, but also like food, our spirituality is about what gives us moments of satisfaction, surprise and joy;
• our spiritual roots help us connect: the things that help us deepen our relationship with God, help us relate to our neighbours (near and far, human and non-human), and help us go deeper into who we are our, ourselves – our present self and our past history, the bits we like about ourselves, and the bits we’d often rather hide.

One of the mistakes that we can often make when we talk about ‘spirituality’, is to imagine that it’s something private. We sometimes talk about ‘private prayer’, for example. But for us Christians, while ‘spirituality’ and prayer are often personal – intimately tied up with ‘who I am’ and ‘how I tick’, and so as varied as we are as people – neither is ever private. Even when we pray alone, we pray in the company of ‘a great cloud of witnesses’ (as the letter to the Hebrews puts it). And our spiritual ‘roots’ are intimately connected to the rest of the ‘tree’ – to our growth as part of the church community (the ‘trunk’), to the ways in which we reach out (the ‘branches’), and to the ways in which we share our faith with others (‘leaves’) and nurture the ‘fruit’ of the kingdom.

Another way of thinking about spirituality – that has a lot in common with our ‘tree’ approach – is found in the diagram below, from the Quaker tradition. We can think of spirituality as looking upwards towards the mystery of God (although of course we’d want to say that God is not just ‘up’!) – but we need to also think of it as looking inwards in a deepening self-awareness, outwards in our connection with others, and downwards to the earth beneath our feet, and the values that shape the way we walk on it.

A Quaker model of spirituality,

from J. Lee, Spiritual Development (London: Quaker Life, 2007)

So what does this mean in practice? I’ve already mentioned praying – not a ‘one size fits all’ thing, but all the many different ways by which we communicate with God. We should also mention learning – which will rarely be the ‘sit in a classroom and be lectured at’ kind of learning, might sometimes involve reading books (including the Bible!), but is just as likely to happen through listening to a podcast, watching something on TV, being part of a discussion group, or reflecting on an encounter or an experience you’ve lived through. But our spirituality is, more widely, about the ‘shape of our living’: how (and where) we walk (or travel by other means), how (and to whom) we talk and listen, how (and with whom) we eat and drink, how we spend our time and money, how we rest and play, what we first do when we wake up and what we do last before going to sleep. All of these are part of our spirituality, and all of these are worth paying attention to when we think about how we are growing spiritually – and many of them may have changed radically during our current ‘lockdown’ state.

Spirituality is even, quite literally, about how we breathe: paying attention to the rhythms of our own breathing, paying attention to those who breathe the same air as us (and those many in our world who are struggling to breathe), and paying attention to the movement of God’s Spirit, the ‘breath of life’ that is empowering us to follow the way of Jesus, the way of the Kingdom, the way of God’s peace and justice that the Hebrew bible calls ‘shalom’.

So our ‘spiritual’ roots are vital to all other aspects of our growth. They are personal but never private, providing us with stability and nourishment, but also enabling us to connect. Much of this is summed up, for me, in a prayer that I discovered while I was in South Africa. It’s used before the confession in the communion liturgy of the Uniting Reformed Church of South Africa – a relatively new denomination that has brought together previously divided white and black Christians. It speaks to me of what a stable, nourished, connected spirituality looks like – and the love in which we need to be ‘rooted and grounded’ (in the words of the letter to the Ephesians):

“I stand tall and dignified in the presence of God and among my fellow human beings. I accept myself as a precious and unique person, created through Christ to be the image of the living God. Together with animals, trees and rivers we are one living community, belonging to the earth, our common home. Guided by the Spirit, we discover who we are, as a family: Motho ke motho ka batho [a person is a person because of other people].”

Reflection (Sally Nash)

Rootbound

Some of you may have grown up like me singing this song:

Read your Bible, pray every day,
pray every day, pray every day

Read your Bible pray every day
and you’ll grow, grow, grow.

While there may be some truth in this song, I was taught quite narrow ways of praying and reading my Bible and later in my life they began to feel limiting.  Using our tree analogy, I was rootbound as in this picture.  My roots were constrained and couldn’t go beyond narrow confines. One of the limiting thoughts I managed to ditch was that there were ‘proper’ ways to pray and read my Bible and that those were the main things I needed to do (along with go to church) in order to become a better Christian.

I began to read more widely and experiment with different ways with connecting to God, the Bible and my faith.  Thus God speaks to me through nature much more.  I found wisdom from reading spiritual books and fresh insights from traditions very different to mine.  I went on an Ignatian prayer guiding course over twenty years ago and was introduced to the idea of imaginative contemplation, where you picture yourself in the Bible story, a way that opened up new understandings to me.  I would encourage you to reflect on whether there are any areas of your life where you feel your spiritual roots have been bound and hemmed in and haven’t been able to grow and deepen.   Perhaps there is a new spiritual exercise or activity that you want to try.  It may be that you read a book of the Bible you have never or rarely read before or try a new way of praying.

Hope for a tree

This picture of a sawn off tree showing new growth is a tree in our garden.  The verses from Job talk about their being hope for a tree.  Job is a book in the Bible about someone who loses everything, through no fault of their own, and who cries out to God for answers, and receives some not terribly helpful advice from friends! 

Although it doesn’t always feel like it at the time, we can grow spiritually and learn through some of the difficult times that we experience,  what St John of the Cross calls the dark night of the soul.  Many of us will have had such an experience in our Christian lives and one of the things which can be important to remember is that often it isn’t anything that we have done to cause it, life happens.  For some of us lock down may have triggered such feelings.  Job is a good role model for us, he is real with God, he shared his feelings, expressed his anger, laments, complains, grieves.  We find similar expressions in the Psalms. But some of us were discouraged from showing feelings like these, both in a family context but also towards God but they are not wrong.  And better to express them to God than someone else be on the wrong end of them. We need often to wait and to try and trust God, that suffering and death in our Christian lives brings resurrection and transformation.

Rooted and grounded in love

We are commanded to love God, our neighbour and ourselves (Matthew 22.37-40).  Just as the trees in this picture have roots going down into the water so we need to learn how to do the human equivalent so we can be rooted and grounded in the love of God.    My beginning place with this is the need to love ourselves and to have an understanding of who we are as deeply loved children of God.  Peter Scazzero summarises it well:

• I hold myself in high regard despite my imperfections and limits.
• I am worthy to assert my God-given power in the world.
• I am entitled to exist.
• It is good that I exist.
• I have my own identity from God that is distinct and unique.
• I am worthy of being valued and paid attention to.
• I am entitled to joy and pleasure.
• I am entitled to make mistakes and not be perfect. 

It is from this place of a more biblical understanding of who we are that we can then move out to think about growing spiritually and learning within the communities we are a part of.  We don’t live, learn or grow in isolation.  Who we are and how we act impacts others and we need and have roots beyond our family and our faith.  Simone Weil writes:

'To be rooted is perhaps the most important and lest recognized need of the human soul. It is one of the hardest to define. A human being has roots by virtue of his real, active and natural participation in the life of a community which preserves in living shape certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future. … Every human being needs to have multiple roots’.

We are part of other people’s roots, in our church, in our communities, in our families.  We grow and learn from those contexts too and as we undertake this journey let’s begin to think about how our roots can provide support and encouragement for others along the way. 

What one thing might we be able to do this week to help someone else feel rooted with us, grow spiritually, learn something new or feel loved? I was so blessed when our next door neighbour brought round a get well soon card as Paul had told her I had shingles.  It helped me feel rooted in my community, loved by my neighbour and  lifted my spirits.  It is the little things that can make such a difference and be that drop of water we need to feel refreshed and to replenish our roots encouraging our tree to grow.

References:

Scazzero, P. (2006).  Emotionally Healthy Spirituality.  Nashville:  Thomas Nelson, p.54

Weil, Simone (1952). The Need for Roots. Translated by A F Wills. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, p.41.

Reflection (Lyn Lynch)

If we go back and trace our roots in the scriptures, we find trees give us images of our beginnings, and our spiritual growth in our relationship with our loving creator God and each other. In Job we pick up signs of hope, if a tree is cut down it can still live and come into leaf, an image of God’s restoring love.

Since we have been living in these strange times when everything in life seems to change shape from day to day, I have drawn strength from a daily prayer walk, taking time to reflect and listen to God in the quietness of the woodland near to home. Some parts of the walk follow an even path, while other parts become more wild and rough under foot, yet the many varieties of trees seem to grow in harmony, weathering the changing seasons over many years of life. On my walk I have been drawn to a very large horse chestnut tree, her trunk is massive, supporting strong wide branches and an abundance of lush green leaves and seedlings, but it is her unseen roots that bring life to all this visible growth. From the beginning of life, this tree has been pushing her roots deeper and deeper into the moist fertile soil, and has spread them far and wide, deep beneath our feet for stability and growth.

This tree brings close Paul’s prayer for the people in his letter to the Ephesians. He goes down on his knees and asks that we will be like well rooted trees in the deep love of Christ Jesus. His love will be our stability, the rich soil in which our roots can grow and spread outwards. In the love of Jesus we can grow steadily together, in harmony with each other and with our creator God. Could this be our prayer for our world, a deep rooted yearning for a restored harmony between the nations, between the many gifted cultures and peoples and all of creation? For it is God who provides for all our growing needs, and who continually renews and restores us with the riches of His love, rooted in Jesus through the Holy Spirit.

Going back to my prayer walks over the weeks when we have seen our world struggling to cope with an unseen threat to the wellbeing of body, mind and spirit, I have been drawn from my usual busyness and given time to deepen the roots of faith. Trees have silently played a great part in my reflections on stability and harmony. Again we are reminded that Paul prays that we have the gift to connect with the love of Jesus in all its depth and richness, in all its length and breadth and height and depth, and nothing can separate us from him. Just like a well watered tree, we will survive and weather many storms, some bringing uncertainty and change, but firmly rooted in Jesus we will survive and grow and blossom in spirit and truth.

As we reflect on the image of trees, and the depth of our roots in the love of Jesus, many of us have had more time to be in touch with our creator God in our gardens. While in my garden when I was kneeling weeding and thinking about our roots, three special gardens came to mind. I was aware of images of Eden, the beautiful garden of creation. Gethsemane, the garden of tears and abandonment. Then the Easter garden – the garden of new life, new beginnings and of resurrection. So it seems God is continually creating and recreating and restoring us and all of our natural world through Jesus. Jesus is the rich soil which protects and feeds our growing roots and is our life giving water. He is our strength and in Him we grow into the people God wants us to be.

A final thought from Cardinal Suesens, who writes on hope in his ‘Ways of the Spirit’:

            Reflect upon winter in the woods.
            Trees which seem to be devoid of life
            are waiting for the sap to rise.
            Lopped branches enable others to take their place.
            Winter is not the end, it is the soil
            where the foliage of the future is nurtured.
            Winter is not desolation,
            it is a time of waiting.
            It is the darkness before the dawn.

Questions for reflection / discussion

As I read / listened to the readings and reflections for this week…

·         what did I notice, or what particularly stood out for me?

·         what did they make me wonder, or what questions am I pondering?

·         what have they helped me realise?

·         is there anything I want to do or change in the light of this week's topic?

On this week’s theme – growing spiritually (‘roots’):

·         In what ways am I noticing myself [or us as a church] growing spiritually during this time?

·         What are the things that are helping me [or us] grow spiritually at the moment?

• What am I noticing at the moment that it would be good for us, as a church community, to nurture and develop, in the coming months, to help us continue to grow spiritually?

• What is not happening at the moment, that am I missing, that would usually help me [or us] grow spiritually?

• Is there anything that is not happening at the moment, that we have an opportunity to let go of?

Any other reflections…

A prayer for this journey:

God our Maker, Jesus our Grounding, Holy Spirit our Living Water,
in you is our hope, in you is our life, in you we grow and flourish:
in the changes, challenges and uncertainties of our world,
help us to reach down deep, as we root our trust in you;
help us to reach out wide,
in loving connection with our neighbours near and far;
and may we see and share your goodness
as the life of your kingdom springs up in us, around us and beyond us.
Amen.

Activities / conversation-starters with young (and not-so-young!) people

• If you’re able to get out walking, see if you can find a tree where the roots are visible. Spend some time ‘up close and personal’ with them, using as many senses as you can. How far can you trace the roots before they disappear? How do they look? How do they feel? How do they smell?
• Can you take a photo of some tree roots – up close, or showing them spreading out?
• Talk together about the different reasons that trees need roots (you might want to refer to the ‘tree wisdom’ and introduction to the theme, in this booklet). Spend some time wondering together: what are the things – or people – in my life that do for me what roots do for trees? Spend some time being thankful for your ‘roots’.
• You might want to draw a picture of some tree roots – from a photo you’ve taken, or from a book or an image on the internet. Around the tree roots, you might want to write down some of the ‘roots’ that are important in your own life.