What the Tree Knows
A conversation with the oak outside our sanctuary
There's a tree outside my window at home that I've watched for years — Wayne Muller writes about one just like it in his book How Then Shall We Live? Four Simple Questions That Reveal the Beauty and Meaning of Our Lives. He makes a claim that spoke to me deeply: if you rest your hand against a tree's bark long enough, quietly enough, you can begin to sense its whole story — the wind it has weathered, the wounds it has healed around, the way it has leaned, patiently, toward the light.
Muller uses that practice — listening with your hand, listening with your whole attention — to introduce four questions he believes are enough, if we really sit with them, to reveal the beauty and meaning of an entire life:
Who am I? What do I love? How will I live, knowing that I will die? What is my gift to the family of the earth?
Reading that chapter, I thought of a tree of our own — the one just outside the sanctuary at Unity Church of the Hills, older than any of us, that has shaded picnics, patio concerts, fellowship hours, and children running in circles after service. So I did what Muller did. I went outside. I put my hand against the bark. And I asked our tree those same four questions.
I'm not going to tell you a tree spoke to me in English. What follows is what came, in the quiet, in the listening — in that holy space where paying deep attention to something ancient and rooted starts to feel less like observation and more like conversation. Call it imagination. Call it intuition. Call it Spirit moving through bark and root and breath. However you hold it, I want you to hear these words the way I received them, because I don't think they're only about a tree. I think they're about us.
Who Am I?
I didn't get a name back. I got a lineage.
“I am Life giving of itself; sharing itself; evolving itself; becoming itself. I am the acorn. I am the tree from which that acorn fell. I am the acorn from which that tree was born. And on it goes. I am the Earth that grounds me. I am the Water that nourishes me. I am the life forms that make the soil their home. I am the life forms that make their homes in my bark and on my branches. I am the wind that blows through me. I am the snow that may cover my leaves. I am the ice that breaks my branches. I am strength. I am vulnerability. I am the twists and turns of this life journey. I am the growth. I am the pruning. I am a part of the greater whole. I am the root system that connects me with other trees — the ones you see and the ones you don’t. I am the shade for you as you gather and play beneath my canopy. I am you in another form, rooted in this time and space.”
Notice what the tree didn't say. It didn't say, I am an oak, forty feet tall. It didn't lead with a category or a diagnosis. It answered with relationship — with everything that has ever fed it, wounded it, held it up, or sheltered beneath it.
The tree offers something wider: I am the ones who shaped me, and I am becoming the ground someone else will grow from. I am strength and I am vulnerability, in the same breath, and I don't have to pick only one to be telling the truth.
What Do You Love?
The answer sank deep into my soul.
“I love all that appears before me. I love the sun and the rain. I love the moon and the stars. I love the squirrels and the foxes. I love the owl and the deer. I love the heat. I love the cold. I love the Earth. I love the worms and the mycelium. I love the beetles. I love you. I love because I am love. I love because I know nothing but love.”
A tree doesn't get to choose its weather. It can't decline the drought or opt out of the ice storm. And yet — love the sun and the rain, the heat and the cold. Not love in spite of the whole of it, but love as a response to the whole of it, because that's simply what a life given over to love does with whatever shows up.
I think the tree was describing a state of Being. What might it mean for us to love the whole of what appears before us — the neighbor as much as the friend, the diagnosis as much as the good news? I love because I am love. I love because I know nothing but love. What might change in you this week if you tried that on, even for an afternoon?
How Will You Live, Knowing That You Will Die?
Unlike some of us, the tree did not flinch at the thought of death.
“And she laughed. Oh, my dear, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. I am but Life Energy, living itself, expressing itself, awakening unto itself, sharing itself. Energy is not created and does not die. It simply changes form. I am a Life Energy manifested as a tree in this time and space. I know that this form will change. It does change from season to season. Someday, I may be wood for someone’s fire, keeping them warm. I may be lumber for someone’s home, keeping them safe. I may be mulch for someone’s garden, protecting their plants. I live knowing the impermanence of all things. I also live knowing that Life Energy is eternal. So, I do not die. I simply transform. So, how do I live knowing that this form may no longer be? I live in peace. I live in love with all life.”
She laughed — a laugh that comes from somewhere already settled, somewhere that has stopped mistaking the ending for the whole story, a laugh that arises from a deep connection with the Ground of Being.
The tree doesn't deny that its form will change; it names exactly what may become of it — firewood, lumber, mulch — plainly, without flinching. But it refuses to call that the final word. It simply lives now, today, standing right where it is, in peace, in love with all life — not because it has figured out what happens next, but because it has decided not to let the not-knowing steal what it has right now. How would you live this week — what would you risk, what would you finally say — if you trusted that your form changing is not the same as you ending?
What Is Your Gift to the Family of the Earth?
The last question, and the one this tree seemed to have been waiting its whole life to answer.
“I stand as a constant, present reminder of the value of releasing and letting go of things that are no longer life-giving. Of the power of patience and perseverance. Of the importance of grounding. That you must look closely and pay attention to see what lives beneath the appearance. That life expresses itself in many and varied shapes and sizes. That connection and collaboration are essential to survival. To love what appears before you. Welcome it all.”
The tree's gift isn't its acorns, and it isn't shade, and it isn't even oxygen, though it offers all three without being asked. Its gift is that it stands there — constant, present — a reminder, just by existing in one place for decades, of everything it takes to live well: let go of what no longer gives life, be patient, stay grounded, look beneath the appearance of things, remember that you cannot survive alone, love what appears before you, and welcome it all.
That's a gift none of us has to manufacture. It's a gift of witness — of being, faithfully, exactly what and where we are, so that anyone who pays attention learns something true about how to live. Your gift to the family of the earth may not be a program you run, the book you write, the song you compose, or a check you write. It may simply be that you released something that was no longer life-giving, and someone watched you do it and found the courage to release their own.
An Invitation
Four questions. Who am I? What do I love? How will I live, knowing that I will die? What is my gift to the family of the earth? Wayne Muller says these four are enough to reveal the beauty and meaning of a life. I believe him, mostly because I asked a tree, and the tree, without hurrying, without performing, answered every one of them with its whole body.
Here's what I keep coming back to: the tree didn't have to go looking for its answers. It didn't read a book, attend a retreat, or wait for a crisis to clarify things. It simply stood where it was planted, rooted deep, open to the sky, and let the whole of its life — the drought and the growth, the ice and the shade, the acorns that fell and the ones that will fall from it someday — become its answer.
So here's my invitation to you, and it costs nothing: find a tree. If you're ever at Unity Church of the Hills, there are many trees just waiting, and I hope you'll stop and rest a hand on one of them before you head to your car. Stand still. Put your hand on the bark. And ask it — ask yourself, really — those same four questions.
Then do what the tree does. Don't rush the answer. Just stand there, rooted, and let your whole life start to speak.
