Gum tree shedding[i]

Over the past few weeks, I have watched one of my favourite gum trees in the nearby park shed its bark.

It is time for the bark that has protected it over the past year to drop to the ground.  It’s work protecting the tree has finished.

The bark must leave for the tree to continue to grow, expand, continue its work of home for birds, small animals and insects; for its roots to hold the earth firm and its leaves to clean the air all creatures breathe.   To say nothing of its majestic beauty in the evening sunlight.

Now it stands white against the embankment (railway line included) and the sky showing a new skin which bears the scars of its life – fallen branches, claw marks and insect tracks.  In the sunlight it glows with the reflected light.

But the discarded bark is not wasted or lost.  It lays around the base of the tree as protective mulch cooling the earth and tree roots in the summer heat and warming them in the winter.  Small creatures of the earth thrive in it finding shelter and food.  Over time it will become good earth to nourish the tree and the land.

Nothing is lost.  A community of life.

This gum tree has accompanied me during my years of living here particularly during COVID.  This Advent and Christmas the tree has accompanied me through a time of personal shedding which has enriched my sense of the Antipodean liturgical celebration of something new afoot in the universe with the birth of this Child.

To be human is to allow ourselves to shed at each stage of our lives in order to grow into the next moment of being human.  Often it means shedding the good as well as the not-so-good – from childhood to early adulthood then the time of inexorable changes that come with age, and perhaps some maturity. 

So often, I have found that the choice to allow someone or something good and precious to leave my life is the hardest choice.  Even enforced leavings have to be chosen, embraced if wisdom and maturity are to come.

Today is the anniversary of my father’s death.  He was a good man, an ordinary man, unremarkable in so many ways but a man of duty, family love and care for others.  I remember times when he took difficult stands over needy or unjust situations.  These were costly but he, with the support of Mum, reached out with honour to address the matter.  He was no loud crusader – just an ordinary man seeing a need.  An ordinary man who bore the scars of living justly and lovingly.

Over the years since his death, I have seen something of his legacy in myself.  His death was the shedding I had to choose – a farewell in order to continue life.  Yet in that choice, I see the shed shards of his life and values around me and in me enriching me (compost?) and encouraging growth in love, compassion, justice – until my own final summer shedding.  His shedding is now finished in the mystery of God-with-us.  He is what he was meant to be. 

This is the life the One who is the Word and Wisdom of God embraced.  Flesh of our flesh.  Our summer Advent and Christmas speaks of the sun’s brilliance, the necessity to shed like the gum tree to let Christ be born is us – day in and day out; to embrace the seasonal rhythms of our lives. 

In the end, nothing is lost – all is Grace.

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[i] https://youtu.be/75wKPrLhGu4 About gum trees for those not familiar with them – including Aussies!