How Could Appreciating an Oak Tree Change Your Life?

Genuine appreciation of what is taking place in the world around us is directly related to our capacity for presence.

Conversely, our capacity for presence is practically nurtured by taking the time to appreciate the world around us. The truth is that many of us are so distracted, that we spend very little time appreciating our lives. We are often so busy that our perception is blurred and many beautiful and enriching elements of our daily existence fly by unnoticed. Many of us are so engrossed in problem solving and producing that we can go days on end without taking a few moments for a deep breath and inquisitive gaze at the world around us. Most of us would say that we don’t stop often enough to ask a genuine question in curiosity about the people we share a workspace with and give a little time to explore their response together. These types of interactions seem like good ideas to us but most often “have to wait.” The truth is, most of us have much better lives available to us than we are actually living. We simply spend so little time appreciating the wonder all around us.

Jesus called this out in what is perhaps his best-known teaching, the Sermon on the Mount. In it, he highlights how many of us are slaves to a quest for control and for “more” that is fueled by an ethic of self-reliance but ironically requires an allegiance to money and the process of acquisition. Instead, Jesus proposes that the very world around us invites us into a story of being known and loved by God, who has already provided what we need. Diligence and creativity are not about securing what we do not have but enjoying and stewarding what we already do have.

The doorway to beginning to seek the good way God has invited us to walk begins with stepping through the door of APPRECIATION.

Jesus says in Matthew 6:28-29, "And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." In the original language, when Jesus challenges us to "consider" the lilies there is a challenge being presented which is rooted in a confidence that as deep as you "dig" into an understanding of the lily you will still not exhaust the benefit and wonder that comes from the inquiry. Yet, the starting point of this invitation is not study but APPRECIATION. Pause from the break neck speed of your life and the culture that pumps anxiousness, conflict, and uncertainty into our public awareness (because they are needed to drive consumption) and notice that the natural world around you is telling a very different story.

Of course, the applications of this wisdom transcend (quite broadly I might add) the personal implications. Leaders of all types of organizations can testify to the vital place that organizational culture has on the health, productivity, and sustainability of their entity or group. Still, so much of our efforts to fix and improve our corporate endeavors are part and parcel of the broken culture tearing away at our personal lives and perspectives. Far fewer have considered that the incredible natural environment around us that is so full of beauty, abundance, interconnectedness, and collaboration without co-opting has something to teach us.

Jesus understood this though. His teaching is echoing across the ages. We can still benefit from responding to it.

What does the landscape surrounding you have to offer you in addressing not only broken perspectives but genuine and practical problems as well?

This is the question that I am engaging with a growing group of others. I live in Sonoma County, which has been identified as the 2nd most bio-diverse county in America. Among the most iconic and prolific features of our landscape are over a dozen different types of Oaks. These beautiful trees serve as a "keystone" species for the ecosystem around them. They are prolific producers of food, shelter, protection, and ecological restoration. They accomplish this not by how fast they function, but rather by how SLOW they function. It seems so counter-intuitive, yet also obvious when you consider that sometimes it is much more important how long something lasts than how soon it arrives. Oaks restore dry, nutrient poor environments around them precisely because they have staying power. For example, their leaves decompose very slowly. This allows them to provide food coverage for a vast array of essential microbes and insects while also capturing water, preventing runoff, and instead feeding the water table around the tree. The lessons we can learn from oaks are many and learning them while gazing upon their beauty, enjoying their shade, and creating space for APPRECIATION is an exceptionally restoring experience.

For most, the take-away from this reflection is to fight for moments of APPRECIATION each day.

But for some, there is something more that is tugging at your heart. For those, I invite you to explore more about what we are learning and offering through Signaterra.

~Adam Peacocke

Fire Scars

I’ve learned to rethink how I see the challenges and personal “fire” that I go through by observing the potentially productive influence of physical fire as I walk through the redwood forests. Redwood trees are naturally fire-resistant because of their thick, fibrous bark that protects the trees. But, when fires sweep through redwood groves, they leave a mark on the trees that can still be found centuries later. The fire often doesn’t kill the tree and can actually make it stronger, but the scar will always be there. What can we learn from redwood fire scars?

Dr. Lee Klinger writes about what happens to the redwoods with massive fire scars:

What the native people also seemed to know is that if you set a very hot fire next to the trunk, and severely scorch and kill the cambium layer, the scar tissue that forms is thick and bulky, and it spreads out at the base. After a number of years the tissue growing next to the fire scar organizes to become an important stabilizing structure of the tree. In other words in redwoods, no fire scars = no flared bases, fire scars = flared bases. Think Eiffel Tower vs. Tower of Pisa. Fire also improves the nutrient content of soil and tree. Just as in building strong bones, calcium is needed to build strong wood.

The National Park Service has a good description of why Coastal Redwoods are so resistant to death from pests and from fire. The trees contain tannins that protect them from pests, and have thick bark, and do not contain resin like more flammable trees, such as pine trees. What is in the tree, what the tree is made of, and what covers it all goes in to how well it makes it through the inevitable fires that comes its way.

When there is a fire, it will leave a scar that the tree then incorporates into its history. When a redwood is cut, you can see the fire scar in its rings, see when the fire happened, and see how the tree grew around the fire damage and kept going. You can also measure the wet years and dry years from the width of the rings.

There are obviously many applications for our own lives. We all have been through fires that leave a mark on our memory and our souls. Those marks remain and are incorporated into our lives, changing us. I have been through a lot of “fires” myself over the years. But, the question for us when we go through these things is “what comes next?”

The Redwoods are called “eternal trees” because they keep going. The fire scars become part of who they are, but finding their lives intertwined together with other redwoods in groves with interlocking roots, they keep going and keep growing. They soak in the moisture from the fog and give to and receive nutrients from the forest. They point to heaven in worship and cause the eyes of all who see them to look up. They do this bearing scars, but the fires that brought the scars became just a mark on a much longer journey.

 As I’ve been through things personally – sickness, death of loved ones, relational and emotional trials, set-backs, failures, and opposition, I’ve been tempted to let the “fire” I was going through define me. I think we all face that temptation. It seems all encompassing in the moment. And, even after, the burning smell lingers. We tend to think that the fire and its effects is all there is. But, the redwoods have taught me that the fires that seem so devastating at the time are just a mark in a much longer journey that keeps going. Can we grow again? Can we incorporate what we’ve learned and grow new rings and grow new bark and be a shelter and refuge for others? Can we point up to what’s ahead instead of letting the fire be the end? The redwoods say that there is a future after the fire and though the fires of our lives inform us, they do not dictate what comes next. That story is yet to be told.

 As we walk through the Redwood forests, we listen, watch, learn, and observe what God is saying to us through creation. There is a reason that people have walked into these forests and have looked up, their souls stirred to contemplation and worship. I’ve come to believe that God speaks to us through his creation in unique ways as he calls us to “consider” what they might be saying to us.

The question for us is, “Are we listening?”

~Alan Cross

How Vineyards Shaped My Heart

A few years ago, when our circumstances changed, my husband and I moved out of our lovely flat in San Francisco, overlooking the Bay, to our little wine-country weekend home in Healdsburg.  On the surface it doesn't sound like a difficult move, but it proved to be one of the most challenging moves we've ever made.   As busy, professional people, we were pulled out of the colorful, active center ring of the circus and plopped into the much slower pace and stark landscape of a fallow garden.  All of a sudden, we were filled with emptiness and faced with a "crisis of quiet" and we weren't anywhere near retirement!

FALLOWNESS IMPLIES EMPTINESS--INTENTIONAL OR NOT--FOR THE SAKE OF REPLENISHMENT, AND IN THAT THERE IS HOPE.  ~SUSAN PHILLIPS

It was in this context of a “winter season” in my life that Conversations in the Vineyard was born. I leaned into the long obedience of letting God cultivate in me what had been there all along, learning to listen and be attentive to God's voice and observe the rhythms of the vineyard during this quiet season of my life.  Three areas of my life converged at the same time:  I finished a leadership degree at Fuller Seminary, I began to spend time with a Spiritual Director, and I began to visit more wineries.

I remember feeling empowered by the first class I took at Fuller.  I had never really thought of myself as a leader before then but, as I constructed my Life Work Resume, it became clear that I had been a leader since I was a kid.  When I was doing High School by correspondence (from the University of Nebraska!) with a small group of friends in Guatemala, I was the one that started the yearbook for our host school, The Mayan School.  I had never been an editor, but it turned out great!  At the time I was attending Fuller I was board chair for Synergy Women's Network; I was president of International Impact, a small, crowd-funding non-profit; and I was an elder at City Church San Francisco.  Yes!  I was a leader.  At Fuller, I studied leadership in the context of theology and missiology.  I learned the importance of leading out of my "being" and I wanted to experience this in my leadership.  Little did I know that pruning and isolation would be the path God would use to cultivate the "being" part of me that was buried under the effusive effort I was putting into leading.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN YOUR LIFE IS NOT WHAT YOU DO, IT'S WHO YOU BECOME.  ~DALLAS WILLARD

When we moved to Healdsburg, life became so ambiguous and disorienting, I decided to meet with a Spiritual Director.  Every time we met, she turned my attention back to seeing God at work in the roots of my life and hearing God's quiet voice of love and leading.  I began the work of paying attention, of listening.  My prayers became less about talking and more about listening.  I read Scripture with more holistic attentiveness and less dissection.  I sat in wonder and awe at the mystery of God.  I had the luxury of time and the dirt of a garden to turn my heart towards God.  

As I continue to experience intimacy with Christ through attending to our relationship, I am compelled to create a space for others to begin their own journey towards intimacy.  We live in an incredibly fragmented, disconnected culture and I long to see leaders and influencers (re)discover their intimacy with Christ--to be so deeply connected to Christ that they truly ARE Christ to the world.

THE PLACE GOD CALLS YOU TO IS THE PLACE WHERE YOUR DEEP GLADNESS AND THE WORLD'S DEEP HUNGER MEET. ~FREDERICK BUECHNER

Slowly, quietly the metaphor of the garden and the vineyard began to speak to me.  I planted a garden and watched the seasons come and go.  I began to understand that both life and death are held together in the garden.  I watched the vineyards change with the seasons...the tiny buds of spring; the riotous growth of summer; the joy of harvest; and the pruning and fallowness of winter.  I put the top down on my car and drove slowly through the vineyards, drinking in the beauty of my context.  I let my senses be filled with the joys of wine.  

Vineyards and wine bring together the spiritual and the physical in a unique way and I want to share the beautiful gift with everyone I know!  And, why not? That is how Conversations in the Vineyard came into being.

“If wine is indeed a special gift from God, then it should be enjoyed prayerfully. Drinking wine at its best is like prayer. We respond to God by enjoying his gifts and allowing wine to instill within us a sense of wonder, not just for the wine but even more for the generous giver of such a lavish gift. Wine calls us to worship.”

— Gisela Kreglinger