{"id":121,"date":"2015-01-18T11:02:02","date_gmt":"2015-01-18T19:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/wrestlingwithgod\/?p=121"},"modified":"2015-02-15T17:10:22","modified_gmt":"2015-02-16T01:10:22","slug":"memento-mori-a-walk-in-the-woods-with-the-deadness-in-my-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wrestlingwithgod\/2015\/01\/memento-mori-a-walk-in-the-woods-with-the-deadness-in-my-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Memento Mori \u2013 A Walk in the Woods, With the Deadness in My Future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"An<\/a>
We spotted an\u00a0acorn tucked into a crack in the dying tree\u2019s bark. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The tree was a valley oak, it was half dead. A valley oak because of its up-reaching branches, deeply lobed leaves, and elongated acorns. Half dead because most of its trunk was rotted, and only a couple of limbs showed signs of life.<\/p>\n

The tree stood at the trailhead as I began a solo hike during a retreat at Bishop\u2019s Ranch, the Episcopal Diocese of California retreat center deep in California wine country. I had intended for this to be a brisk walk in the woods, but the old valley oak, its deadness<\/em>, stopped me in my tracks.<\/p>\n

The trunk was a pallid gray in some places, a rich, rotten brown in others. Except for the two fresh limbs, awash with leaves, that grew from the decay, the tree seemed a goner.<\/p>\n

The live part of the tree was pretty, but it was the dead part that caught my eye. It was riddled with life.<\/p>\n

On the side of the trunk nearest the trail, for example, grew a lush, inch-deep patch of moist, green moss. Inches away, on another side of the tree, flat pink and purple mushrooms had sprouted one atop the other, like dirty dishes stacked in the kitchen sink. Still farther around the tree, a weird lump of fungus pooched out from a crack like a hunk of gorgonzola.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
The\u00a0valley oak tree, half dead,\u00a0at Bishop\u2019s Ranch in Northern California. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I walked around and around the tree, discovering something new and vigorous with each pass. Another hiker joined me. She told me that back home she was taking horticulture classes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the phloem,\u201d she said pointing to a spot where the bark had fallen away, exposing the tree\u2019s innards. \u201cThe phloem takes nutrients from the leaves to the rest of the tree. And this,\u201d she said, \u201cwould be the xylem, which brings water up from the roots.\u201d<\/p>\n

My companion was as taken with this tree as I. Together we circumambulated it. Around and around we went, inspecting this, puzzling over that.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook here,\u201d she said. On the back side of the tree, weirdly enough, were a dozen or so of the tree\u2019s own acorns tucked into cracks and holes in its core. In some places the cracks had been expanded into holes. \u201cWoodpeckers, I\u2019m pretty sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few more circles around the tree and my companion resumed her hike. I lingered on, fascinated by how truly dead and rotten the old tree was \u2013 and how aggressively other life forms were feeding on its helplessness.<\/p>\n

For some, this old oak might serve as an upbeat meditation on the eternal cycle of life and death. Life endures, or so the thinking goes. Life lives on; rotten oak trees become nurseries for fungi, mold, burrowing insects, and the next generation of valley oaks. Ruptures in a tree trunk become opportunities for enterprising woodpeckers.<\/p>\n

Yes, life goes on. But not for that tree, and not for me. That tree will be dead one of these days<\/a> \u2013 and so will I.<\/p>\n

\"Mushrooms<\/a>
The tree was host to\u00a0this\u00a0stack of mushrooms. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The fifth-century Saint Jerome kept a human skull on his desk to remind him of his mortality \u2013 memento mori<\/em> \u2014 to remind him of death, of\u00a0the terrors of hell and the sinful temptations of his body and this world.<\/p>\n

Why do I write an essay on the deadness in my future? Why do I drag myself and my readers through the Valley of the Shadow of Death? (If you\u2019re still with me, that is, and you haven\u2019t moved on to sunnier thoughts.)<\/p>\n

I do the memento mori<\/em> thing not to berate myself with how sinful and tempted and demented I am. Not at all. Jerome got it wrong, in my opinion. No, I take note of dead stuff in order to wake myself up, to remind myself that I\u2019m actually alive, right now, in this world.<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago I was walking around on planet Earth, inspecting and photographing the heck out of a half-dead tree \u2013 and having a blast doing it. Today, I\u2019m back in my writing studio, still on Earth, poring over my photos and being entertained by that old oak tree all over again.<\/p>\n

These moments, this particular moment in the world wherein I find myself gazing into a computer monitor, my shoulders aching a bit, my eyes going bleary \u2013 it\u2019s gotta be some kind of miracle. A gift from somewhere, or something. As I see it, my only obligation, if I have one at all, is to open my eyes and lungs enough to take it in.<\/p>\n

\u00a9\u00a02015 Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

A version of this essay first appeared on\u00a0<\/em>www.BarbaraFalconerNewhall.com<\/em><\/a>, where Barbara Falconer Newhall riffs on life, family, books, writing, and her rocky spiritual journey. Her interfaith book,\u00a0<\/em>Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith\u00a0will be released early this year\u00a0by Patheos Press.<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The tree was a valley oak, it was half dead. A valley oak because of its up-reaching branches, deeply lobed leaves, and elongated acorns. Half dead because most of its trunk was rotted, and only a couple of limbs showed signs of life. 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