A windstorm battered our neighborhood not long ago, bringing down tall and storied trees and spilling their remains across integral roadways. One such tree blocked our path to preschool. As I put our SUV in reverse, pulling off a dramatic K-turn, my backseat passenger asked a question.
“Daddy, are trees falling good for the environment?”
With one eye on the road and one eye on the clock, I had no eyes to spare to glance at my daughter. I imagined her staring out the window, looking at the broken bark blocking our route, her brow furrowed, her lips pursed tightly together.
I smiled, measuring my response. “They can be,” I said. The downed tree was now in the rearview mirror. “They break down and form new homes for forest friends. And eventually the tree decomposes and makes new dirt. So, yes, I think it can be good for the environment when a tree falls.”
I smiled again, pleased with my big-picture, circle-of-life answer. What a great moment to teach the interconnectedness of all things!
But my daughter didn’t miss a beat in her response. “Not for the birds that live in the tree. It’s not good for them.”
“But they can fly away,” I replied.
“Not the babies.”
I did glance back at my daughter then and nodded. “That’s a really good point,” I said. “A really thoughtful point.”
Though I conceded the argument to my daughter, I don’t think my answer was wrong. It’s important for us to take a long view and a step back and observe the ebbs and flows of the natural order. So often, it’s impossible to stop the windstorms in our lives, whether literal or metaphoric. All we can do is hunker down, inspect the damage, trust in God’s ongoing presence, and carry on.
Isn’t that what I said about that fallen tree? In time, it will return to the earth. And in the process, it will provide new hidey-holes for small critters, raw materials for other birds’ nests, and eventually fresh dirt and debris for the forest floor.
But my daughter is right too. Those flightless baby birds should not and cannot be dismissed so easily. They don’t get to take a long view; their lives have been cut short.
My daughter’s response calls to mind a foundational principle of Catholic social teaching: the preferential option for the poor and vulnerable. How easy it is to get caught up in the big picture, in the dramatic unfolding of processes across time and space! In so doing, we may forget to look closely at individual details. We may forget to look closely at individual people or purposely ignore them. We may forget to show empathy.
Yes, that fallen tree is good for the environment, from a certain point of view. But from another, it represents the bitter end of life: a home destroyed, a family displaced, and futures cut short.
In the end, life’s windstorms strike with little concern for how we feel about birds and fallen trees. Perhaps we’re called to remember those baby birds and recall their sacredness and how they manifested some small insight into God. We’re called to notice the vulnerable creatures and to name them, so as not to forget them.
Perhaps in the remembering and the sanctifying, we’ll struggle on, trying to imagine a future where that family of birds is made able to withstand that powerful wind and also made whole. Perhaps we’ll help build that future, one in which the vulnerable are made strong and that term, “vulnerable,” becomes unnecessary.
Because we’re not just talking about birds, are we? We’re talking about all of us.
Photo by Mike Bird on Pexels.
Very timely considering recent events. Thank you Eric!