to what purpose?

I could tell you didn’t have many years left when I moved into the house that June. The grass under a mature crab apple tree is usually a cool and welcome relief from the summer sun but your shade was… dappled at best. Your leaves were sparse and small.

When I saw the arborist and the botanist talking together after church one Sunday, I asked for their opinions but they were already well into their own topic and their responses were brief: it could be anything. Finding the fungus growing up from a root while mowing that summer and later observing the woodpeckers that attacked your bark as they sought the bugs within, my suspicions only grew.

Your trunk is large with an equally large stump removed years ago, perhaps after a heavy rain caused it to crack and split. If I’d been around when you were younger, I’d have pruned you differently – to show off the beauty that your kin reveal. This single straight trunk seems out of place.

And yet you are beautiful, especially in May when you are bedecked with blossoms, their fragrance filling the small backyard. Soon afterward, petals carpet the grass in pink. In rain, your inner bark turns a rosy hue that contrasts handsomely with the brown outer layers. For five winters, I’ve watched eagerly as chickadees, finches, cardinals, juncos and woodpeckers visit your branches. Other times of the year, I watch and listen for your visitors. Who haven’t I noticed before? Last year, it was a cedar waxwing!

Is old-age beauty enough of a purpose?

For three years, I’ve been working toward healing. For two, I lived in near isolation, mostly for fear that Covid-19, if I caught it, would make the Lyme disease so much worse (as it has for others). But I have felt so useless. If I had a purpose, I couldn’t see it. Again and again, I threw my question into the void, toward the waves, at the darkness, “What am I supposed to do?” Strangely, surprisingly (even for one who once earned a living encouraging people to listen to that still, small voice), I heard the whisper. “Heal.” And again, “Heal.”

So I took that as my (hopefully short-term) purpose. Grimacing as I downed Japanese knotweed and cordyceps powders in an herbal tea that is recommended for rebuilding collagen. Imbibing more alcohol than I ever had before in the form of a dozen herbal tinctures. Swallowing tens of pills, morning, afternoon and evening. Soaking in Epsom salt baths. Taking far-infrared saunas. Journaling, making my peace with the past. Meditating, working at living in the now. Practicing compassion and gratitude (each of which has done wonders for my morale). Healing is s-l-o-w but it’s happening, body, mind and spirit. Someday my ears may quit ringing; I may go into remission. (Or not?)

In the old movie Ben Hur, the lead character meets a young woman who cannot walk who tells him about Jesus visiting her village, healing people and teaching them. Why didn’t he heal you? he wonders. She explains that he did. She used to be bitter, eaten up by her anger at the life she was forced to live. Now she sees the beauty, the love, in the world and the people around her. She recognizes that, for her, this is the healing that matters.

I’m aiming for remission yet I can honestly say that my life is really good, right now, today. And tomorrow will be too. What does this have to do with my old crab apple?

Most of us have been trained to measure our worth by how much we accomplish, how clever we are with numbers, how many books we read or items we sell. What if that’s not really our purpose? What if we could measure our worth by the quality of the lives we touch, the beauty we observe around us and share, the web of support we weave for each other and for all the world?

In the end, we may be not so very different from the old tree. One that lifts its arms to its neighbors as if to say, “Take a weight off and rest a moment.” That for one week out of the year blesses all who witness it with an unrivaled beauty.

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