THE COMMUNION OF CREATION: OF FORESTS AND THE EUCHARIST IN TURBULENT TIMES
I walk outside barefoot year round. I stand on the forest floor with fallen leaves cushioning my steps and crunching beneath my heels. On brisk mornings in the fall and spring, the temperature difference between shaded spots and sunny spots makes stepping from chilly or frosty blades of grass onto ground with a few hours of sun warmth delicious.
I step on ground that my senses register as solid and unmoving. But is it? Visible plant growth–even the largest and oldest of trees—is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg when we consider what is happening in the soil that we take for granted beneath our feet.
Forests are vast cooperatives. Rather than competing with each other for resources, trees share amongst themselves–even between species. They communicate threats across miles and help each other weather storms and insect attacks. In her work on forestry, Suzanne Simard mapped her findings of the connections in the forest. She noted, “Emerging from my drawing was a pattern like a neural network, like the neurons in our brain, with some nodes more highly linked than others.” (1) The biggest hubs were the oldest trees, with saplings arrayed around them, leading her to dub them “mother trees.” These older trees shared with their offspring via the mycorrhizal network, giving the baby trees a much better chance of survival than saplings planted by foresters with no understanding of this vast network. Even in death, the mother tree sends out a final burst of information and nutrients to her offspring and other trees in the area, and then when she eventually falls, she becomes a nurse log, with her children and grandchildren finding nutrients from her very body.
The trees give themselves as literal communion, saying this is my body, take and eat.
Nor does the forest seem overly concerned with the time it takes to accomplish growth. Perhaps this is because it is always growing, and more is happening in the invisible world than the visible.
The forest is able to communicate because of the vast network of mycorrhizal fungi that live in symbiotic relationships with the trees and plants of the understory. These relationships go back to the dawn of the planet when plants first emerged from the sea to take advantage of unfiltered light on the surface. Plants that can photosynthesize create complex sugars that fungi cannot. However, fungi are specialized masters at harvesting minerals and nutrients from the soil. So they developed a relationship older than almost anything else on the planet, and now some researchers go so far as to say that plants don’t have roots like we have thought of roots, they have “fungus-roots.” Indeed, you can’t separate a tree from the fungi and expect it to thrive.
My knees press into the stiff, embroidered cushion at the altar rail, hands raised one atop the other. “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven,” the minister murmurs as she presses a thin wafer into my hand. The sunlight streams through stained glass windows older than I am and remind me of taking communion in a chapel at Canterbury Cathedral, a building where the sheer size of the building is designed to take your breath away.
One of the volunteers later that day enthusiastically pointed out the oldest stained glass window, called “Adam Delving”--a portrayal of Adam digging in the Garden of Eden that dated back to about 1176 CE. (2) I stood in the cathedral and felt something I usually only feel in the forest: a sense of my own smallness in the grand scheme of things.
In old churches especially, I feel the weight of centuries of prayer lingering in the air. It creates a hushed atmosphere, a weight like a warm blanket enfolding you as you enter. If you stop a while, scoot into a pew and just sit, you can feel the connections through time and across the space to the people who prayed and the people who are praying now. It’s unseen, like the mycorrhizal network in the forest, and yet it connects us to all the people through all of time.
In Eucharistic Prayer D, just before we sing the Sanctus, the celebrant says “Joining with [the angels], and giving voice to every creature under heaven…” In Prayers A and B, we find that we are “joining our voices with Angels and Archangels and all the company of heaven.” Our prayers remind us that this little bit of bread and this tiny sip of wine carries vast significance. With it, we become one with Christ. With it, we are joining the company of heaven. With it, we are joining our voices with every creature under heaven. This communion is with all the saints, the church as a whole, and with all of creation. The bread and wine are gifts from the earth infused with heaven. Earth has made them, human hands have formed them - and Christ makes them into the means by which we receive him. They are then both creation and creator. As we eat and drink them, they become part of us.
Back outside, I sit with the warmth of the sun on my toes and wonder if more people understood that the trees and the fungus are inseparable, would we create such harsh differences amongst ourselves? The fungus grows in waves, dies back, and grows again at an incredibly rapid rate. I picture waves of fungus, invisible to us surface dwellers, pulsing beneath our feet, spreading life wherever it goes.
I stood in the empty nave of Canterbury Cathedral with one of the priests and one of the parishioners. Together we put our fingers in the water of the font at the entrance and blessed it for the coming day. Off to one side, it stood unassuming, offering a reminder of the waters of baptism and the waters of creation to the visitors and tourists who would throng the halls that day. I slipped out after the morning service to return later as a tourist myself. It was hard to recapture the same feeling as the buzz of conversation filled the air. The nave was now filled with people who came to look at this old building as an old building and didn’t see the communion of saints through the years. I dipped my fingers back in the water and drew the sign of the cross on my body before moving further into the building. Church is constituted by people and the intent, not the building. And someone can walk through a church building without that intent and the real Church may very well be invisible to them.
I’ve hiked with folks who push through the forest without seeing it. Some people might miss the forest for the trees, but I also see too many people who miss the trees for the forest. It’s almost as if the idea of hiking and the idea of being in the woods appeals to them, but they go through the hike as if it’s something to be done, something to be checked off, and they don’t really experience the forest. They fill up the space with their own words and leave no space for the conversation of the forest.
People come to the communion rail too like it’s something to be done, something to be checked off a list. They are physically there, but not truly present. Still the gifts are offered.
The gifts are offered regardless of how we receive them. The forest is there, at least for now, regardless of whether we connect with it or not. The bread and the wine are there whether we are fully present or whether we treat it like it's an item on our todo list. What we receive is up to us.
The invisible world of the forest carries on beneath our feet, pulsing with nutrients and information. The community of the forest has its own time and its own rhythm that moves forward inexorably if left to its own devices. Growth is slow, almost imperceptible at times, and yet it is there if only we take the time to observe it.
The contrast with recent news cycles is stark. It seems sometimes that wherever waves of humans go, we spread death and destruction. We view other members of our own species as competing for resources, and we use artificial lines on maps and quantities of melanin in our skin to decide who is in and who is dead. We think that a difference in religious beliefs causes irreparable separation and enmity even between two people that are more similar than they are different.
In truth, no two humans are very different from each other on a genetic level. And where we differ culturally, we have much to offer each other if we could learn to cooperate instead of compete. We forget that we are also nature, and we behave as though everything within our reach is to be exploited or controled. We forgot that like the trees and mycorrhizal fungi we were meant to exist symbiotically with the rest of nature. The relationship should be characterized by mutuality, not power or competition.
But this isn’t universal. For every war and terrorist action initiated, I see people uniting on the side of life and thriving. I see people creating art and books and beauty. I see people working for justice and shalom that will never be realized in their lifetimes and preparing to pass on the work of their lives to those that come after, leaving their words and actions behind as the nutrients for the next generation.
They too give themselves as very communion saying, this is my body, take and eat. This is the work of my hands, the work of my life - let it be food for your journey.
Sometimes it seems we take more steps backwards than forwards, but on those days I walk barefoot into the forest and I remember: there’s more happening in the invisible world than the visible world.
The forest has taught me to dig deep and depend on others because only together can we intertwine our roots and stand against the storms and the pests and those who would seek to cut us down. Communion has shown me that I am connected to a long line of people who came before me and who will come after me. I take the bread and the wine and reach out and grab hands with all those who worked, who are working, who will be working for the life of the world. Progress might be imperceptible, but if we stay connected, it will come.
When everything looks visibly bleak, go stand in the forest with your bare feet and listen. If you’re still long enough, you’ll hear the trees whisper to you about what it takes to overcome.
