A Lenten Devotion
Let everything that breathes praise our God!
Psalm 149:6
When someone first told me that trees breathe, I was skeptical. I know trees are well-evolved to collect, store and move liquids. Consider the maple tree and the flow of sap. But breathing?
I didn’t grow up understanding Lent, and from what I’ve learned as an adult, I understand it to be 40 days and nights of breath-holding, fasting, and simplification. It seems to be focused on reestablishing spiritual priorities and habits. It seems to be a time of withdrawing from the status quo and making sacrifices. This year, I’ve been thinking about the way a tree is dormant during Winter; silent, withdrawn, fasting, holding its breath, yes, breath.
During the Spring and Summer months, trees make food through photosynthesis, a process of combining solar energy, carbon dioxide and water to create sugars. During the day, tiny holes in the leaves called stomata open up to take in carbon dioxide and then release oxygen during the process.
The tree exhales. When it is dark at night, things change. Those tiny stomata open and allow carbon dioxide to leave the cells. Oxygen enters. The tree inhales. When dawn comes, the process repeats. Breathing, creating sugars that fuel nearly all of the plant’s needs. A healthy tree will accumulate too many sugars for it to consume. Excess becomes available to the rest of the ecosystem as food.
However, when trees lose their leaves in Winter, photosynthesis stops. Breathing stops – for a while.
I am frequently stunned by the complexity of this process that is so frequently taken for granted. I tend to simplify, categorize and too many times pass off the complexity and depth of trees, ideas, and dare I say, people.
The weight of the world during this Lent can feel suffocating. So, with whatever discipline I take up during this time, I will try to remember to breathe the air I share with each tree and person in this world.
Inhale and exhale. Breath of life, teach us to breathe. Amen