Connected While Apart
Root for Others

Steel Roots at Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum
Chicago, IL

Dear Mayfield,
There is a company called Your True Nature.  For quite a while now they have been putting out products including magnets, tee shirts, greeting cards, book marks, and art prints, to name a few.  Their items most often include wisdom from various elements of the natural world.  Wisdom providers include prairies, the night sky, snowflakes, a campfire, seeds, a tree, a wolf, a butterfly, a penguin, a glacier, the sun, sled dogs, a manatee.  Their list goes on and on and on.  Your True Nature products are meant to inspire, to get us thinking, to help us see our lives from a fresh and often playful perspective, to remind us of the great unity of the natural world that embraces us.

For a long time Ilan Shamir’s “Advice from a Woodland,” a small art print was held in place by a magnet on the front of my refrigerator.  It’s suggestions are these:

Find your path
Start from the ground up
Stretch your limbs
Branch out
Root for others
Make room for new growth
Recycle, recycle, recycle!

The short line he wrote that I understood the least was — Root for Others.  When I considered roots, I was aware that they hold plants, bushes, and trees in place, and serve as conduits for water and minerals soaked up from the soil around them.  I had very limited knowledge about the remarkable life among trees that those roots sustain.

In April of 2018, the spring Mayfield Fellowship retreat for the congregation was held for the first time at McQueen Forest Preserve.  I was excited that we were going to spend the day in such a beautiful setting with its large lodge.  It made all good sense to develop the day around this theme “Pause with the Trees.”  Preparations were coming together smoothly until several days before the retreat was scheduled.  It was then that I realized it was simply going to be too cold for us to participate in any of the outside activities that were woven into my design.  Turns out it was too cold for the caretaker to even turn on the water.  With great grace, everyone gathered for retreat used the outhouse with good humor and several of us carried tubs of dishes and silverware back to church where the water ran freely for washing.

As I laid my notes out to redesign our day with the trees, I dug into everything I had learned about tree roots.  There is a great system of connection deep in the soil among the roots of neighboring trees.  Those roots are covered with a web of fungus fibers.  The combination of roots and fungus web are sometimes called the internet of the forest.  In return for the sugar made by the trees which is passed through the roots to the fungi, the fungi transmit vital information from tree to tree.  The trees are able to warn one another about growing dangers like an attack of beetles.  Trees are also able to pass vital sugars to other trees if they are in a weakened state.  Even though trees appear to spend a lifetime standing firmly, holding their ground, by themselves, in one place, they are able as well to communicate and care for one another effectively over distance.

Yesterday tree roots and the line at the top of every web note — Connected While Apart came and stood side by side within me.  The best public health advice repeated over and over in this long season of pandemic is the advice to keep our distance.  Keeping our distance doesn’t mean that we are disconnected.  Yes, there is much that we miss or even long for.  But if we take some of our spiritual cues from the trees, our imaginations can be set loose regarding communication, nourishment, and protection among us even in this difficult and sometimes heartbreaking time.  When our spiritual roots sink deeper and deeper into the soil of life here, the possibilities of what might pass among us increase.  Indeed, we are able then to root for one another.  May our roots be strong as steel and allow us in our own ways to enhance the connections of the Mayfield community, the connections of our families and friends, the connections of those with whom we learn and serve, even while we are apart.
With thanks for trees and what they have to teach and with peace, Martha