It all began with bookends my grandson made for me. Tree slices, quartered, sanded, and shellacked with the birch bark still intact all its glory.

I adored them simply because Crosby’s six-year-old hands made them with our names scrawled together on the bottom perfectly backwards. But soon, I was noticing every ring, radiating crack and scar.

Tree rings record the honest story of the tree’s life along a timeline. Each annual ring holds two rings in a full cycle of formative growth - a light one indicating robust growth during spring and early summer when leaves were green during active photosynthesis, as well as a dark one indicating slower growth later in summer and autumn when leaves fell and photosynthesis stilled.

Trees rings tell us so much more than age. They also record patterns of wind, storm, drought, stress and damage from insects and fire. Tree ring science, known as dendrochronology, includes a wide range of data reconstructed from a larger picture of a tree’s life including climate, archeology and ecology across time, even beyond their lifespan when seen in stands of trees.

The longer I lingered with the complexity of beauty and pain tree rings held, the more they became a metaphor of my spiritual life and what happens during prayer and spiritual direction when we hold God’s loving gaze.

I explored with my spiritual director what felt like thick rough patches in my bark. Places were I was overly protective for the deep connection I longed for with God, others, and myself.

As the Spirit moved me to my deeper rings, I noticed several old wounds with layered defenses I had built as protection over the years. Initially, I tended to judge my behavior as unnecessary or immature. But looking alongside a trusted spiritual companion as we began bringing all we saw into the light of Christ, this non-judging communal intention allowed me a longer look with more tenderness.

My protections had served their purposes at the time. And now, though I certainly felt the vulnerability of exposure, I wanted to release my guarded stance. I wanted to open up to the love and healing of Jesus.

Macrina Wiederkehr describes a kind of beauty in such exposure,

“I love the way winter stands there saying, “I dare you not to notice my beauty.” What can I say to a winter tree when I am able to see the shape of its soul because it has finally let go of its protective leaves?”

By taking the risk of exposure in the light of Christ’s warm smile, I was indeed beginning to honestly see the shape my soul had taken in the course of living and see other possibilities for healing and beauty.

I find when I examine a crosscut tree, I am fascinated by its beauty and resourcefulness. I am not judging it for its ways of survival and resilience. I am seeing beauty in the record of its life, including the scars it took to survive. For example, the blue stain where a beetle invaded and the resulting red stain from the tree’s natural defenses are a kind of poetry and art within the wood fibers.

A similar story plays out in spiritual direction, both my own and as I hold space for others. I suspend judgement and look with tender awe at the hidden beauty of a difficult journey, noticing the bravery, beauty, vulnerability and hidden strength of a new sound emerging.

Luthier Martin Schelske describes listening to both the grain and arch of the wood when making violins and connects that to a Spirit-filled faith in a loving Artist,

“Faith means to trust in the indwelling wisdom of the Creator and the promised possibilities while still acknowledging, even embracing, the history of the wood that is now essential to the unfolding of its sound. The wood finds its own voice in being born again.”

In spiritual direction, we are looking for more than the record of what once happened. We are opening to the creative presence of the loving Trinity community throughout, not only in the surface and obvious, but in hidden and surprising places closer to the heartwood. When we look together, we discover Jesus perhaps where we missed him before we risked taking a longer loving look.

One of the surprises that never gets old is the discovery that while we are looking for Jesus, we find him already looking for us.

And he goes deeper, inviting us to look back at him, including his wounds. In Luke’s gospel, after walking with two disciples on the road, the risen Jesus shows up and invites his disciples, “Look at my hands; look at my feet – it’s really me. Touch me. Look me over from head to toe.” Jesus invites us to come closer to his pain. Not as any kind of meanness, but to bring connection and healing.

Meditating on Jesus’ invitation, I felt the truth in artist Bryan Nash Gill’s words,

“I found that things were as or more beautiful and complex inside than what was visible from the outside . . . You never know what you’re missing if you don’t find some way to get inside and look.”

Considering tree rings as a metaphor for encountering God’s love just as we are can help us embrace all of our own seasons, robust growth together with slow rest, and wounds as well. And more. Only then can we can count them as growth, take longer loving looks at ourselves and others as we survive with deep awe and mercy. And as we accept Jesus’ wild uncomfortable invitation to touch his wounds, we can begin to trust ours wounds even open ones, to his shaping hands.

I leave you with a line from a Wendell Berry poem I stumbled across while writing this. It could become a prayer for me and you as we realize our growth includes our wounds and hard times and the beauty that comes from Jesus’ tender touch on just those places.

“May we be as a song sung within the tree.”

Here are some books I read while writing this that you might find as delightful as I did. These are ones straight from my bookshelf, well-worn favorites.

As of this writing, most of these are on sale. Good for you.

Also, good for me as these are affiliate links which just means if you order from here I might get some pennies for curating them for you.

Tree Rings Tell Your Story