Page 28 - ECOlogic Book

answer, and become mature through the fact. It is a spontaneous
17
expansion.” In this experience, says Da Passano, you have communicated
not only with the tree, but with the thought-form that created it.

Our appreciation of trees needs to go far beyond the aesthetic pleasure they
give us. They are genuine beings; vibrant intelligences, fully sentient,
though not of the human type. A spirituality that excludes these life forms,
that has no sensitivity to their wisdom and their suffering, cannot long
endure in today’s awakening. A religiosity that doesn’t recognize the cosmos
as a continuous process of emergence, coupled with a mechanistic and
materialistic science that denies the spiritual aspect of natural phenomena,
has wrought great damage to the natural world and to trees all over the
planet.

I needn’t repeat here the horrific legacy of the unlikely alliance between
science and religion, (but I will anyway). The most outstanding is the tragic
devastation of the tropical rainforests, the “lungs of the Earth”, which is
finally receiving widespread media attention. Less publicized is the growing
threat to trees in all corners of the planet. In China, the world’s worst forest
fire recently ravaged 18 million acres of forest, and in Germany, the
Waldsterben (forest decline; literally, forest death) is spreading from the
Black Forest to other parts of the continent. In New England, many
observers believe the maple sugar industry is doomed. Acid rain has taken
its toll there and in Canada as well. “In 1982, 52% of Quebec’s forest was
18
considered healthy; today it is 1%.

With the slash and burn method of clearing rainforests for monocrops, the
image of the Burning Bush takes on new meaning. Although all ground is
holy, the ground in which trees in distress stand is perceived as holy
because these trees awaken our compassion. They put us in touch with the
spiritual integrity of the planet, and remind us that as these trees die, part
of us is dying.

In the legend of Quetzalcoatl, it was prophesied that “the Tree of life would
wither and die, symbolizing the end of one age and the beginning of

17 Assano, Inner Silence

18 Mead, Mark, N. Mann, John D., and Yarow, David, The Fate of the Earth Depends on the Fate of the Trees,
reprinted from Solstice in the May, June, 1989 Utne Reader.

28