When I was little, my grandfather planted two trees in his yard. When I was a preteen, my cousins and siblings would play baseball in the yard and use one of the trees as second base and the other as third base. Within a few years these trees reached over 20 feet tall, but by the time I was finishing high school and hoping to play softball in college, the trees were gone and a depression in the ground served as second base and a random brick was third base.
These trees grew quickly, but one fell over during a windstorm and the other broke several times before being cut down. Fast-growing trees tend to be weaker while slower growing trees are often stronger. Why is this? Not being species specific, but in general, slower growth allows trees to pack-in the wood fibers and cells. Faster-growing trees are made up of more pockets of air and water rather than wood. Wood cells take time to produce, and trees with more wood per unit area are going to be stronger. Therefore, those slow growing trees are going to be able to better withstand wind and ice.
I’ve been reading Joan Chittister’s book Radical Spirituality recently. In this personable book she describes Benedictine rules as she has made sense of them during her life as a nun, advocate, and author. The fourth rule is about endurance and patience. Within this chapter she gives account to situations she was not happy with and wanted to change, but she learned about life and herself as she patiently waded through the unpleasant situations.
Patience and endurance are not to be learned from the sidelines. They can only be learned by slogging through the muck, the places we would rather not be, in situations we think we cannot stand any longer. These situations can include an innumerable list – stuck in a job with a critical boss, being in a relationship that is miserable, living in a place we do not like, suffering from illness, feeling trapped, etc. We just want to hop on another train and get off this one! But for many, many reasons, that is often not possible. We just have to keep placing one foot in front of another (unless we are in physical danger, then that is something that we must get out of), even though each foot may weigh 10 pounds and feels like it is stuck in mud. These situations can push us to our limits and force us to learn how to strengthen our patience muscles. Like trees, we grow stronger when we grow slowly and build our mental and emotional stamina bit by bit (because unfortunately you can’t build stamina quickly).
Some of the oldest trees are the bristle cone pines within the White Mountains of California. These trees can live to be over 5,000 years old! I attended a tree ring workshop in that area where we had the chance to visit a bristle cone pine forest and view the wood of these ancient pines. Many trees you are likely familiar with have easily-seen rings. Take a look at a tree stump and you will be able to count the rings. These trees however, grow such dense wood, their rings are almost imperceptible. They also grow extremely slowly. These trees are not huge, most were smaller than what you would see on a hike in the Appalachians. But their wood is extremely durable and able to withstand the intense climate conditions of the dry, rocky conditions in which they live.
Within struggling times when patience is needed, think of the strong trees building wood cells moment by moment at an imperceptible rate. One foot in front of the other.
Nature is Sacred 