The Glory of the Grove

We live in the mountains of Colorado now, and our surroundings are worlds away, literally, from the jungles of SouthEast Asia.

The leaves are changing a bright yellow, and I must admit we walk around pointing and exhaling in the forest like we are some country bumpkins at the Taj Mahal. It’s our first fall for two years, so maybe we don’t assume the beauty of it like maybe we used to.

And we were geocaching with our family this morning {if you haven’t done this with your kids, you really must}, and it was these changing aspens that painted the trail glorious. And we took a rest, all sitting on roots and leaves in the shade with this giant aspen grove before us, like some display of Monet at a famous art museum I’ve never been to, but probably should visit before I die.

And my five-year-old, the one who thinks Jesus calls Pharisees buttheads, she says, “Let’s have church!” and so we do.

Looking at those yellow aspens quivering in the breeze with nothing but God’s handiwork all around us and the quiet of birds and forests and a country road a long-way-off.

And I started to tell the kids the small bits I know about what makes an aspen tree, and it’s community, the grove, so unique. I tell them that an aspen grove is one of the largest living organisms because their roots are all connected to each other in the shallow underground. I told them about how an aspen root system can actually shoot up new trees centuries after the grove began, in random places, long as a root from the original grove can get there. I told them about how the roots are intertwined and feed off each other, somehow bringing life and health to every member of the grove– the young saplings to the thick white-barked ones, as well.

And we talked about how an aspen, when alone and transplanted, has a hard time of it.

The tree will sometimes survive with a few sprouts, but it will seldom thrive. Like the one in our backyard, for example. How five years after we planted it, the poor thing still only has a few dull leaves and the cumulative growth of an inch, maybe.  

And then we talked, amid interruptions over which kid got to dig a hole with a stick first, about how God made humanity a bit like the aspen grove.

How we need community to thrive, need the roots of the larger system to really bud-yellow and grow-tall.

How God made us to depend on each other and that if we strike out alone, and choose to stay alone, we all have a tendency to end up withered and stunted.

And then we miss out on the glory of the grove.

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How are you pursuing or tasting community right now? What are the challenges of true, authentic, life-giving relationships in your world right now?