| Sermon in Wood | Page 1 / 3 | Print this article |
Richard Mabey
, the naturalist and author of Country Matters, separates the woods from the trees
In 1787, John Wesley, founder of Methodism and charismatic outdoor preacher, decided to create a sermon in wood. He bound two beech saplings together in an Irish garden, hoping that as they matured they would grow closer together and become a model of the unity of nonconformism and orthodox Christianity of which he dreamed. The pleaching took, and for a while there was an ecumenical intertwining. But the trees had agendas of their own. Breakaway branches began to shoot off in all directions. The point where the trees had been joined became a mass of argumentative wood, distorted by scars and bosses and rot-holes. And above them rose two quite new trunks, off on their own unruly business, their own counter-sermon about independence.
The story of Wesley’s beeches is a comic allegory of our ancient and contrary relationships with trees. The shepherd of men sought to manipulate their longevity and grandeur for his own ends, to be reverent and masterly at the same time. Trees have been cast in these ambivalent roles since the beginnings of civilisation. They’re essential to human culture as raw materials and regulators of the climate, yet are physical impediments to human ‘progress’. Collectively, they’ve been used as metaphors for the family, for the body politic, for life itself, but also as symbols of chaos. There has been a mythical (and forbidden) Tree of Knowledge and a real tree of knowledge, which dropped its revelatory apple onto Newton’s head. In Norse mythology the ‘world tree’, Yggdrasil, was the ash, whose branches spread over and unified the whole globe. In England, in a more secular vein, it’s the oak which has been the symbol of the strength of the nation and the resilient ‘heart’ of its people.
Yet simultaneously, forests of ash and oak have been hacked down to make way for cities. They’ve been regarded as refuges for the lawless (Robin Hood now replaced by the hoodie), as wastes of space, as land not yet in a state of grace. In 1712 the writer John Morton summed up the prevailing attitude when he pronounced, ‘In a country full of civilised inhabitants, timber could not be suffered to grow. It must give way to fields and pastures, which are of more immediate use and concern to life.’ The field versus the forest. Civilisation versus the wilderness. But also, in our own time, the timber tree versus the ornamental, utility set against beauty – or ecological value.
What is it about these obstinate and immobile beings that has such an indiscriminate hold on us? I think it has something to do with the way they make us recalibrate time. It isn’t simply that trees outlive us in life span. They seem immortal, sprouting again like Sir Gawain’s Green Knight when they’re beheaded. Above all, their presence is inescapable. They tower into the sky, blot out the light, stay put, insinuate themselves into every kind of environment. They are the third dimension into which all the living surfaces of the land aspire to spread. They are a challenge to us.
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