Revelation 22:1-2
I go among trees | Wendell Berry
I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.
We had been in Kenya for less than 24 hours when, at my brother-in-law’s recommendation, we called his favorite cab driver to take us to Karura Forest, in the midst of the rapidly developing city of Nairobi. Fran and I walked through the woods, marveling at the giant trees, trying to pronounce their unfamiliar names. Fran veered off and settled in under a grove by a picnic area. A church was having a party, playing a circle dance game. One of the young people went over to invite Fran to join them in their dancing. When she declined with a smile, others came and sat with her.
I walked on–a path along a stream. It was peaceful, but not quiet. This was school vacation, and groups of teenagers talked and laughed, flirted and took selfies. A couple of young, heavily armed soldiers took great pleasure showing me a Colobus monkey leaping through the trees. I felt the stress and exhaustion of our travels recede.
There was a lot going on in Nairobi last August–a contested election that spawned unrest, rage and despair. Those teenagers, I knew, would soon be sitting for highly competitive exams that would determine their futures. Still, in Karura Forest, there was a lightness of spirit.
“I go among trees,” Wendell Berry writes. “My stirrings become quiet around me like circles of water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle.”
I went back to Karura Forest several times during our stay in Nairobi, grateful for the peace the trees brought. It wasn’t until we were heading home that I learned that Karura Forest had been the site of a key battle in the struggle to reverse the degradation of the environment in Africa. This place of beauty, which exudes peace and lifts spirits, only exists because people were willing to stand up, to put themselves in harm’s way to fight for our planet.
On the trip home, I read a book by Wangari Maathai, Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World. A mention of Karura Forest led me to google it. I learned that in 1998 the Kenyan government made plans to privatize portions of Karura Forest, distributing land to political supporters. After a letter-writing campaign, Wangari Maathai and other environmentalists began going into the forest to plant new seedlings. One fateful day, as they planted trees in an area designated for privatization, they were attacked. Police stood by and watched.. A video of the beating sparked a massive student protest, which ultimately led to a change in government policy.
Wangari Maathai was an amazing woman. She was a scholar–the first East African woman to receive a Ph.D. She was a scientist, Professor of Veterinary Anatomy at University of Nairobi. She was a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. She was a global leader who was equally at home in a conference room and getting her hands dirty. She built alliances amongst diverse groups. She made some people very angry.
What would ultimately become the Green Belt Movement dates back to 1975, when Wangari Maathai attended the United Nations Decade for Women Conference in Mexico City. In preparation, she met with women from rural Kenya, asking them about their struggles. Most of their problems, she concluded, could be traced to degradation of the environment. Deforestation was leading to frequent, long-lasting droughts. As streams dried up, women and girls had to travel further for water, reducing time available for education. Non-indigenous cash crops were depleting the soil. Polluted water was contributing to high infant mortality, which was the source of deep grief and pressure to have even more babies.
The solution Wangari Maathai saw was simple: plant trees. She started a small non-profit, traveling to rural areas to teach about the value of planting trees, raising money to pay small stipends to rural women for each seedling they planted.
This simple model turned out to be complicated. As she ran into roadblocks, she began to see that the barriers were spiritual in nature. Even though she was working with women in farming communities, she discovered how disconnected they were from the land. During and after the colonial era, they had been urged to shift from subsistence farming to cash crops for export. They no longer saw the earth as a source of sustenance; instead, it was an ingredient for producing a product.
Even more, she began to see how disempowered her people felt. They experienced themselves as victims of forces beyond their control; they did not believe their actions could make a difference. Added to that was their distrust of people who came in from the outside promising to help. The cumulative result of decades of scarcity left them reluctant to volunteer their time and energy.
Wangari Maathai discovered that planting trees was both more urgent and more difficult than she had thought. It was about healing the earth, and it was also about healing broken spirits, broken trust and broken communities. The organization she created, the Green Belt Movement, developed four spiritual principles to guide their work.
The first principle is love for the environment, “demonstrated,” Maathai writes, “in one’s lifestyle.” The second principle builds on the first: gratitude and respect for earth’s resources, “valuing all that the earth gives us, and because of that valuing, not wanting to waste any of it.”
The third principle is self-empowerment and self-betterment. Maathai explains: “It encompasses the understanding that the power to change is within you, as is the capacity to provide oneself with the inner energy that’s needed.”
The final principle is “the spirit of service and volunteerism.” It puts, she says, “a priority on doing one’s part to achieve the common good.”
These are beautiful spiritual principles, and on the surface it’s hard to imagine anyone could disagree with them. Wangari Maathai, though, was thrown into jail, banned from running for Parliament and even divorced by her husband for trying to teach and live these four principles. People invested in holding on to their power were threatened by a woman telling ordinary people that they had power too.
In the face of daunting opposition, Maathai persisted. The Green Belt Movement expanded beyond Kenya to the entire continent of Africa, and encouraged similar movements around the world. The difference her movement made was acknowledged when she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.
We live halfway around the world from Karura Forest. The trees in our woods have other names and other shapes of leaves. Our lives are very different from the lives of the rural Kenyan woman at the heart of the Green Belt Movement. For all our differences, we share a common planet–a glorious planet, a planet in distress. And we share human spirits that long for security and beauty, hope and meaning. Wangari Maathai’s story speaks to us here, now–insights into our calling as stewards of God’s good creation.
The first insight is the recognition that restoring our planet is at root a spiritual struggle. Science, strategic planning and political coalition-building rest on a foundation of love for the earth. We need to go among the trees and sit still. We need to plant wildflowers, taste herbs and create places of beauty and peace. We need to listen in awe and wonder for the music of creation. We need to sing our joyful hymns of praise, music to give us strength for action.
The second insight is that we have the power to make meaningful change. Rural Kenyan women struggled with the belief that their actions didn’t matter–a belief reinforced by the legacy of colonialism, a corrupt government, and persistent poverty. We may struggle with the same belief, for different reasons–the overwhelming volume of bad news we hear every day that makes us feel so small, our frustration with a broken political system, our awareness of the poisonous power of money. Wangari Maathai challenges us to act anyway. Start by planting a tree. As that tree grows, she promises, so will your awareness of how you can make a difference. The leaves of the tree you plant, she assures us, will be for the healing of the nations.
The third insight I take from Wangari Maathai’s life is the reminder that when we take bold action to protect our planet, we will confront fear. We will bump up against people who are afraid of us–afraid that they will lose power or privilege or comforts. We will bump up against our own fears–fear that we will need to change our lives, fear of anger directed at us. It takes courage to act in the face of fear.
I selected Wendell Berry’s poem for today’s service because it offers an intriguing approach to fear and courage. Sit still, he advises. Don’t run away from fear as it approaches you. Don’t leap up and try to force it away. Sit with it. Acknowledge that it is real. Trust that God can transform fear into compassion, into determination, into a song. Wait. Listen. When you have heard your song, sing it.
Wendell Berry’s poetry invites us to sit still among the trees, trusting in the transformative power of nature. Wangari Maathai’s words call us to kneel down to plant a tree, trusting in the transformative power of action. Her actions challenge us to stand up for the trees and the planet, trusting that we do not stand alone.
May we dare to sit still. May we dare to plant trees. May we dare to stand firm. Amen.