Recently, I came across a modern fable for our time. It's written by a farmer in Ohio, Gene Logsdon, who was deeply disturbed by the environmental degradation of a part of the country he loved in southeastern Ohio due to the strip-mining of coal. To deal with his own deep sadness and anger at what he saw, he wrote this little book entitled The Man Who Created Paradise, based on a true story. In the forward to the book, ecologist Wendell Berry observes that in this story, the author "has had the generosity and courage to allow a vision of Hell to call forth in himself its natural opposite."

The story goes like this. A farming community has been decimated by strip-mining. The forested mountains have been bulldozed away, leaving sixteen-feet-high spoil banks. The once beautiful place is now ugly, bleak, ruined, and when it rains, the hillsides flood and any remaining soil washes away. People were moving out, the local economies destroyed. But as so many fled in resignation and defeat, one man chose to stay. He bought wasteland at five dollars an acre and in that place, carved out his farm.

Over fifty acres, he planted trees, groves of trees, and seeded fields to grow grasses, clovers, corn and oats. He filled his farmyard with flowers and cackling chickens. He built small ponds in the meadows. In the midst of devastation, he created a place of abundant life.

The faithful farmer called his project "Paradise Valley," but did not see it as a return to a simple life or to his roots or anything like that. Instead, he said of his life's work: "It ain't a return to anything and it ain't simple. It's going forward now and it's very complex."

As we seek together now to find ways to go forward in these complex times, various kinds of memorials will be observed this coming week. In many places, living memorials will be created in the many trees that will be planted to commemorate the dead and honor the living. There will be dogwoods on a bluff in New Jersey, smoke trees near a fire station in Staten Island, and crepe myrtle at a park in the Rockaways, where people gathered last year to watch the Towers fall. The New Jersey Tree Foundation will plant 691 trees native to New Jersey, one for every person lost from that state.

Trees are symbols of strength and renewal and they are one of the most profound and enduring signs of God's hope for us. We find in Scripture that our God plants trees, too, just like the farmer in our fable and all those who will be planting trees of commemoration this week. Humans plant trees because God first planted a tree at our beginning and a tree at our end. God's tree is the Tree of Life, promising fruit for every season and healing for the nations.

This tree, in a profound way, points us in the direction of hope. It is a sign of God's intent for this creation. But, perhaps, such a sign is not as much as we'd like from God. We'd prefer, no doubt, a God who intervenes, a God who prevents the doing of violence, a God who rescues those who are good. But our experience tells us otherwise, does it not? Part of what's been so hard spiritually about this past year has been acknowledging that God did not do what we would have wanted.

Oh, even so, there is hope to be found. But we find it elsewhere, in God's promise, revealed in the symbolism of the tree.

In the book of Revelation, that wild and crazy book at the end of the Bible, in the very last chapter, we are given the promise of a tree. After all of John's visions and prophecies of the end, the end of everything, we are promised a tree. Out of that cosmic conflict with evil comes a time of future blessing, symbolized by a tree. A tree growing along the river of crystal pure water, life giving water, flowing through the center of the city. A tree that will bear fruit in every season. A tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. For the time of future blessing, we are promised the tree of life. Beyond the end, there is a tree.

And the tree was there at our beginning, too. In the book of Genesis, in the very beginning of time and life, there was a tree in the paradise of Eden's beautiful garden. There were two trees-you may remember them. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And though God said not to eat of that one's fruit, we did. And the terrible knowledge has haunted and burdened us even to this day.

The knowledge of good and evil. As God's people, we have journeyed forward since that time in the garden, generation after generation, through times of prosperity and times of devastation. Times of birth and times of death. Times of breaking down and times of building up. Times of weeping and times of laughing. Times of mourning and times of dancing. Times of seeking and times of losing. Times of love and times of hate. Times of war and times of peace. Journeying forward, often forgetting the other tree, the tree of life, while carrying always the burden of the knowledge of good and evil.

On normal days, few of us pause long to consider this knowledge. We leave it to theologians and artists and writers and filmmakers to dare to give expression to the best and the worst of human nature, the most admirable and the most despicable, the most wonderful and the most horrible. Our normal days are full of the smaller acts of life and work, our world made manageable and familiar by the habits of our living and the patterns of our web of relationships.

September 11, 2001 was not to be a normal day. Though it began beautiful and sparkling, brilliant sky hinting at a glorious day of living, it ended in darkness and despair, smoke and fumes blackening the sky. Only those terrifying images of frantic death and calculated destruction remained. And we were left to grieve, to mourn, to rage, to tremble . . . to wonder "why" . . . to plead for solace, to wait for comfort, and to fear what may lie ahead.

As this year has gone by, I know, from speaking with so many of you, that we have reacted and tried to cope and carry on in a great variety of ways. We have different ways of explaining things, of understanding things, of experiencing the presence of God in the midst of it all. We have different ways of praying and different ways of hearing God's word for us. In this, we are as varied as the people of God have always been.

And yet, we have gathered this morning all longing to come home to the kind of assurance and peace that can be found only in this place, among God's people, gathered in the presence and the power and the promise of the Holy Spirit. We're going forward now, and it's very complex. We are longing for a word, a presence, a promise. We are thirsty for the water of life, desperate to sit in the shade of the tree of life. Needing to lay down our burdens and rest. Hungry for the solace of some kind of hope.

There is hope to be found, for hope has been promised. But it is not an easy thing. Not at all simple or obvious. Perhaps in this post-September 11th life we are ready to ask: "What is it, this hope?" Perhaps this year, after what we still carefully refer to as "the events of September 11th," as if it's still too awful to speak directly of the horror, the fear, the loss . . . perhaps we are more ready to grow up in faith.

In those weeks of late September and October last year, we all made resolutions about how we would live differently because of what we had seen that day, what we had experienced, what we now had to face of the evil and the good of this world. We said we would spend more time with those we love, our friends and families. We said we'd not take life for granted, or any of the blessings we enjoy. We were eager to learn more about the Islamic faith and the many Muslims who are now our neighbors. We said we'd try and open our eyes to the world and be more aware of the cultures and needs and longings of others. We said we'd invest in those things we value most-our family, our community, our schools, our church. And if, as the year has gone on, we've fallen away from those commitments, today is a good day to remember and re-commit.

It's still up to us to decide what to do with whatever insights we gleaned from that dark day. In this September 2002, we might well be reminded through the words of futurist, Glen Hiemstra that "the future is something we do, not something that happens to us." And as we re-examine our lives this morning, maybe now we are ready to revisit our faith as well. Maybe now we are also ready to probe the depths of Scripture and our faith and find, within the experience of God's people over the generations, a faith and a hope complex and deep enough to speak to our new knowledge of good and evil. If we began to feel, after September 11th, that perhaps our God was too small, as J.B. Phillips put it years ago, maybe we are ready now to explore the larger dimensions of God.

Perhaps we are ready now to go on a new journey with this bigger God, into a deeper and more mysterious place, a place of complexity and unanswered questions. A place that embraces doubt as well as conviction. A place of silence that will not tolerate easy answers. A place that demands the full, naked honesty of our soul, and offers in return an uneasy peace, something that the world and the things of this world cannot give.

There are hints in Scripture about how to go there. It has to do with the choices we make, the way we choose to live, living as we do, with the knowledge of good and evil. The choice is posited in the Book of Deuteronomy by Moses, just before he is about to die. Just before the people are to finally enter the Promised Land, he reminds them of God's commandment at the heart of the covenant. "See," says the Lord God, "I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity . . . choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving and obeying God, holding fast to him."

Knowing all that we know, seeing all that we have seen, experiencing all that we have experienced, we can still choose life. In the face of evil, choose life. In the grip of fear, choose life. In the place of devastation, choose life.

Dear brothers and sisters, like the farmer in this story, it is up to us to choose life, to practice those "habits of the heart" that put into action our deepest values and commitments, to plant "trees of life" in every aspect of our living. At the very heart of life, as a person of faith, is a fundamental choice, a choice about what we truly value and honor. A choice about our allegiance. A choice for that which is sacred and holy. A choice for God.

The hope is there. It depends on God and it depends on us. We have the knowledge of good and evil and we cannot make bad things go away. Nor can God. But we must remember that God also gave us the Tree of Life. We can choose the person we will be, the life we will lead, the world we will help to create. We can choose to hold on to hope. And, like our God, we can choose to plant trees of life.

This Homecoming Sunday, dear brother and sisters, come home to God's promise of hope: the Tree of Life, at our end and at our beginning.

NOTES
1. Logsdon, Gene. The Man Who Created Paradise. 2001, Ohio University Press.
2. Raven, Ann. "Honoring Loss with the Power of Green." New York Times. September 5, 2002.
3. Glen Hiemstra at www.futurist.com

© Patricia E. Farris, 2002. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution. All other rights reserved.