Set far back from a main road in Westfield, Massachusetts, the Genesis Spiritual Center provides silent respite from the endless grind of work and worry. Established by the religious order of the Sisters of Providence, the center is one of a slowly decreasing number of Catholic retreat settings in the United States.
As a writer, long-time retreatant, and lover of trees, I have fallen in love with this sacred place, especially because it’s located on Westfield’s Providence Arboretum. Arboretums are magnificent stretches of wooded acreage, often saved from encroaching development by property owners who donate or sell the land parcel to a private conservancy or town. Depending upon what the landowners or stewards decide to plant, many arboretums are rich patchworks of disparate tree species that aren’t necessarily native to where they grow. The Providence Arboretum boasts over 300 species of trees and other plants, among them oak, plane, fir, spruce, birch, pine, Callery pear, purple beech, an impressively large copper beech, kousa dogwood, catalpa, and even a ginkgo tree, along with cherry and several beautiful maple species.
I recently wandered through the arboretum on a sunny, 70-degree, late winter day, while under my feet, nearly eight inches of melting snow glistened and gasped in the surprising, luxurious heat. Nothing was growing on any of the trees. The leaf scars and bud scales resided quietly on the branchlets and branches, seemingly in no hurry to release fresh green leaves, flowers or catkins. Save for the identifying markers placed on them, to my still untrained eye, each tangle of trunks and roots looked pretty much like every other one; the bare arboreal bodies sported similar shabby grey and brown uniforms that prevented me from easily distinguishing the catalpa from the Callery pear, the birch from the beech.
I’m often just a bit too goal driven, working against too many time constraints, so I wasn’t surprised when I started feeling an unsettled impatience. The winter had already been too long and cold, blanketing everything and everyone with the depressing colors of dirty snow and clouds, an endless grey of sadness. I needed the trees to bloom at that moment, exploding in varying shades and shapes of green leaf and flower, bursting with colors and abuzz with bees. “Come on, show me, each of you, what you are and what you really look like. I need vivid color and I need it now,” I nearly barked at them all.
As it were, the catalpa and the Callery pear, the birch and the beech, along with all their branched cousins, could care less about my needs. Dormant but full of expectant sap, each magnificent tree knows what it is; each one waits patiently – no rush - for the proper amount of sun and the approaching Spring rains that will grace it with the power to dress itself once again in its unique foliage finery. Each one has inherited ancient, non-neural, slow growth timetables that evolved over nearly 400 million years. It grows how it grows, nurturing what the poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, called its inscape, the singular inner essence of that tree which grants it its “treeness.”
Battling recently with my growing impatience and the angry self-righteousness it can engender in me, I felt blessed to walk among the trees in the arboretum. Unlike them, I have too many things I need to accomplish as I grow older, and my life ever-so-slowly draws to a close. My impatience with the world around me is rooted in my impatience with myself and my fear that I won’t be able to get everything done. Unlike me, the trees have no interest in barreling the present into the future. They sway under the force of the wind, as if waving at me and calling: “Do you think we care about your ridiculous on-demand schedules? Why don’t you get over yourself, sit near or under us, relax, and spare us your useless anxiety.” Walking among them in late winter, I’m reminded that patience is more than a practical strategy for interacting with others, it’s a spiritual orientation.
When I’m patient with myself, I’m able to transcend the corrosive need to always be doing something, to constantly prove my worth and my productivity. When I’m patient with others, I’m more easily open to loving them for who they are and to not being angry and resentful toward them when they won’t be who I want them to be. When I’m patient with the world, I find myself despairing far less about its stubborn resistance to improvement and healing. My hope that it can become better is paradoxically strengthened.
It’s hope with which these trees that look toward Spring fill me. Having slept for so long in the cold, they are gradually reawakening and returning living verdancy to the earth’s palette. If I wait, I’ll be witness to that joyous yearly celebration of life’s patient persistence.
Dan Ornstein is the rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom and a writer living in Albany, New York. You may check out his writings at www.danornstein.com
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