the heart-broken tree

One has to stop doing an ideological frisk of everything, to stop pigeonholing works by their presumed ideology…. A film isn’t an affirmation, an answer to a question, just as art does not refer to something, but is a thing in itself.

Film director Lola Cuevas responding to a question at a press event
From the satirical movie Competencia oficial (2021)

Storms hit southeastern Michigan hard a couple weeks. I had barely stepped off the plane on my return from Spain when the thunder and rain started Wednesday night. Power outages, flooding, and lots of damage. Manageable compared to other disasters in the world, but still a thing to contend with.

It was a one-two punch. Whilst dealing with the damage from Wednesday night’s storm, a second one pounded the area on Thursday night. That second one was a bit too much for some of our older trees to withstand. We woke up Friday morning to find several dear trees on our land fallen to the ground.

I didn’t see them at first. I got a text message early in the morning from a nearby nun saying that her next door neighbors (also nuns) had a tree “branch” come down on their driveway. I was headed in that direction any ways to check on flooding by the river so I figured I’d stop at the house and heft that branch out of the way.

Well, that was no branch. And no amount of hefting would have budged it from its place. It was one of three trunks of a tree in the backyard of the house. It broke in the storm and fell in the narrow space between the house and the garage, with nary a scratch on either. “It was like its final gift to us,” one of the nuns marveled.

I went to the main tree still standing, quietly as if to a bereaved partner. I reached out and let my hands lightly trace the crevices etched in the bark. Though rough and weathered, the bark was also soft, still moist from its tangle with the storms of the past two days.

I listened to the silent creaking of the tree. Yes, silent creaking. The wind was still pushing against the tree, but I heard nothing. The tree was silent. There was just the sound of my expectation, the creaking in my imagination.

In the background, I could hear the nuns murmuring.

I stepped back from my face-to-face communion with the tree. And that’s when I saw it. The heart of the tree.

The place where the tree had cracked was heart shaped. I could hardly believe it. “I’m gonna have a mystical moment right here, right now,” I thought. Thousands of spiritual ideas about a broken-hearted tree flooded my imagination. Oh the symbolism! Oh the cosmic oneness! This I can write about! This I can preach on!

I broke my so-called “mystical” train of mind so that I could snap a photo. I was intent on capturing the moment.

And just as quickly as I snapped that photo, I felt sick to my stomach. In my gut ⎻ in las entrañas, as Teresa de Ávila would say ⎻ something was wrong.

My mind quieted, and I saw that moment, just minutes earlier, when I first walked up to the house. One of the nuns was already outside standing by the tree. Her eyes sparkled with both tears and delight as she looked at the fallen tree. There was nothing for either of us to say. The tree was gone. Neither words nor prayers would bring it back.

Fast forward to yesterday. I stood in the kitchen with a coworker, a spray bottle of pine cleaner in one hand, a rag in the other. She told me about her friend who was killed just a few days prior in a car-jacking in our neighborhood. There was nothing for either of us to say. This young man was gone. Neither words nor prayers would bring him back.

There was no “meaning making” to be had. No mystical insight. Just sorrow and anger.

We did the only thing we could do. We started cleaning.

[An event, a happening,] isn’t an affirmation, an answer to a question, just as art does not refer to something, but is a thing in itself.

I am not one to sit restfully in silence and contemplation. It makes me uncomfortable, anxious, and restless. I used to think that that was a lack of virtue on my part, stunted spiritual maturity. But I’m slowly accepting that it is part of my makeup. And I wonder if it is not also a form of contemplation in its own right. [I’m using the word “contemplation” in a more general sense, not the more specific ways that we’d use the word in theology or in studying the works of Teresa].

As I write, I’m reminding of a website that was run by Carmelite nuns called PrayTheNews.com. It strikes me that these women knew what it meant to enter into contemplation that was messy and uncomfortable, that inspired not inner communion but anxiety and restlessness. I wrote about this years ago in an article called “Pray the Newsfeed” for Global Sisters Report though my focus then was different.

And so.

The tree is broken. The heart we see is splintered biomass, not a mystical manifesto.

We do not have to make the splintered whole, the suffering meaningful, the grotesque palatable.

We do not have to invoke God to this broken space. God is already there. This is true mysticism.

Even though my mind is still racing with spiritual thoughts, I think it’s time to take up my contemplative posture of restlessness, discomfort, and anxiety. And to pick up a spray bottle and rag and start cleaning.

A final thought from Lola Cuevas. [I’ll have to remember this next time I am tempted to go all-out manifesto on some experience!]

The fact that you see a manifesto in my film is rather reductionist, to my taste, intellectually lazy.

Film director Lola Cuevas responding to a question at a press event
From the satirical movie Competencia oficial

What is it like for you to read this? Do you too struggle with these heart-broken moments? How do you approach things?

image credit: julie vieira