The Tree She Will Not Sit Under

Her neighbor did not mean anything by it. He is a nice man and he was carrying a ladder.

He stopped at the fence and looked at the hole and the sapling lying beside it with its roots wrapped, and he asked what it was, and she said a walnut, and he did the arithmetic out loud without meaning to.

Fifteen years for a decent crop, is it not.

And then he heard himself, and went slightly pink, and said something about the weather.

She is eighty three. She was not offended and she is not fragile and she has buried more people than he has met. What bothered her, standing there with a spade, is that she did not have an answer.

She knew she wanted to plant it. She has wanted to plant it since the spring. She could not have told that man, or anybody, why a woman of eighty three puts a walnut in the ground, and the not being able to say it has sat with her for about a week.

She has a suspicion that the real reason is stubbornness and she would rather it were something better than that.

Sit down on the step with the spade. There is a psalm about old age that says something people do not expect.

Still bearing fruit in old age

Here it is, and read the last part slowly because it is not the sentiment people assume.

They are planted in the house of the LORD; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green.Psalm 92:13

Still bear fruit in old age. Not remembered fondly in old age. Not resting after fruitfulness. Still bearing.

The image is a tree that is producing now, at the far end, and the phrase full of sap and green is about live wood rather than about dignity. That is a deliberately physical description and it is applied to people who are old.

You are described in that psalm as somebody who still bears rather than as somebody who is finishing. Psalm 92:13 puts fruit in old age without any note of exception, and the Spirit inspired the words sap and green about people your neighbor was doing arithmetic about.

And the tree in that image is planted rather than self seeded. Somebody put it in. Which is the other half of what you are doing on that afternoon, on both ends of it: you were planted by people who are gone, and you are planting for people you will not meet.

What the answer actually is

Now the thing you could not say at the fence, because there is a real answer and stubbornness is not it.

A tree planted by an old woman is a statement about what she believes is coming. Not about her own years, which she is entirely realistic about. About whether there will be people, and whether the ordinary good things will still be wanted, and whether it is worth handing something forward into a future she will not personally occupy.

That is a theological act performed with a spade, and it is a far larger statement than most things said out loud in a church.

Your neighbor asked the arithmetic question, which is the wrong question, and you did not have the answer because nobody has ever put it to you in words. Here it is in words: I am planting because there will be a world with people in it, and God has not asked me to stop handing things forward at the point where I stop collecting.

You are not being stubborn. What is written puts fruit in old age and sap in old wood, and the Spirit is the one who keeps a woman of eighty three wanting to put something in the ground.

Who it is actually for

Here is the part worth sitting with, and it is not about the walnuts.

Somebody will eat them and you will not know who. That is the whole shape of it and it is not a sad shape.

Every good thing in your life came to you that way. The trees at the end of that garden were planted by somebody who never met you. The church you sat in was built by people whose names are on a board nobody reads. Half of what you know how to do came from women who are dead.

Psalm 92:13 has fruit and sap and green wood in it, and the Spirit put that in the book about people your age. You have been on the receiving end of exactly this transaction your entire life, which is why the impulse to plant is not sentimentality. It is the recognition of a debt paid forward, and it is one of the most ordinary and most Christian things a person can do with an afternoon.

And there is something in that psalm worth carrying out to the fence next time. The tree it describes is planted in the house of the Lord, which means the fruitfulness it is talking about is not a private arrangement between an old woman and her own garden. It is corporate. What you put in goes into a place where other people are, and the psalm assumes that is where a life is meant to end up bearing.

You are permitted to plant for somebody you will not meet. Psalm 92:13 has the fruit coming in old age, and the Spirit is not requiring anybody to see a harvest before He counts a planting.

And put the sapling in this week, before the ground gets hard, and let the neighbor watch.

He may well ask again, and now there is something to say. Not a speech. Something like: because there will be people here, and somebody planted the ones at the end of my garden. That is the whole of the answer and it will do for a man with a ladder, and saying it out loud once will settle it in you far more than a week of thinking about it has.