Madrone Trees, Transfiguration, and a Workshop Update

Below you’ll find some botanical illustrations and my sermon from the Feast of the Transfiguration. I’ve been talking more about trees, prayer, and light of Christ.

What stories could you tell of trees that radiate, glow, invite you into compassion and service and to draw near to God?

Also, a workshop update about the Art and Spiritual Direction Series.

We’ve changed the format somewhat for the coming year. It should make a nice post-lunch/midday break of 1 hour, once a month. We’ll spend time looking at several works of art, and meditate more leisurely upon one. You can sign up for one session, or for all seven at a discount.

You can find the details here under ‘Build’.

Feast of the Transfiguration, Church of the Holy Spirit, Vashon, The Rev Evan Graham Clendenin

I was waiting for the ferry last Monday at the south end, I was early for the 2pm. It was sunny and warm, so I got out of my car and sought a shady spot under some trees where I could read. As I stood there in the shade, I found several madrona trees growing right there, and began to just marvel at their bark. Beautiful, brown peeling back to reveal a green-orange glow, luminous, smooth. It was light like was shining right from inside the tree and out. And my mind went to what I had just been reading. “And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.” Like the disciples before Jesus, I wanted to stay there in that light a while longer.

Those Madrone trees are really beautful. They glow. Now other trees glow too. A big ponderosa pine, rusty gold like ripe wheat in the sun, its bark smelling like vanilla if you get right up close and smell it. Or the american sycamore, patchy white, grey and brown bark, smooth, like molded clay, proclaiming by their presence a nearby flowing river. A person walking along an inland trail out to the edge of Vashon Island will emerge from the dense jungle of fir, cedar, maple, salal, salmonberry and more, into mixed tangles that involve a new green gold, the glow of the madrone. Beautiful, you want to stay a while and just soak in that light.

We do stay in that light, it follows us, graciously it shines in us more and more. And at the same time, we also need to get back in our cars, get on the ferry, or continue down the trail that leads off of the mountain and back into town. And so it remains important for us to return our minds and bodies to these sources of light and beauty where God seems to and does break through for us, even here and now, with touches and tastes of salvation and eternal life. Because these can and do sustain us as we face the demons and diseases of our own lives and those neighbors and strangers and family with whom our lives are linked like trees in a forest. The light goes with us even as we take up our cross and follow Christ, even as we at times find ourselves going to the mountain, and realize we have followed Christ to the mountain of gethsemane, where we can’t stay awake with him like we have done before. That we must sink ourselves into the forgiveness of sins and the steadfast love of God made manifest in Christ crucified on a tree.

Oh in that blessed wood we receive life and health and peace, and the dark rich ground where the forgiveness of sins and new life together are bestowed, a root system and proper shade and proper light. 

Now the madrona seem to be in a decline. People have been noticing them get sick and die around the puget sound. But the cause may be less mysterious and intractable than chestnut blight, a fungal disease that killed off chestnut from georgia to maine, for which people have been working for a hundred years to find solution and salvation.

It’s us, its our grasping for one part of what is a whole. 

The madrona thrives with a balance of shade and light. Too much sun will cause their thin bark to peel more, and heats the bark and growth layer, stressing or injuring the tree. As surrounding trees are cleared for homes and driveways, or to render the madrones all the more visible and picturesque for human gazes, we expose them to too much sunlight. Our desire to live near them and showcase their beauty, to build three tents here for us and ours to stay in, is loving them to death. The practical solution lies in learning to let the trees be, to know they are there, even if we can’t always see their glow. And take care in your clearing, building, and planting.

So know that as we take care tending creation, and in bearing our crosses, as we go into the world with the diseases and demons we all suffer, there is a light that goes with us. The memory of seeing it, and its ongoing work in us and all creation, promises a hopeful way for humankind and all the creation rooted in the life giving light and shade and dark rich ground of eternal life. Let our prayer and listening, our worship and sacraments, our daily efforts and life together bring us to dwell in the light manifest on that mountain, even if we can’t always see it.