The Evergreen Grove - Lesson Three

They still stand, just south of the middle stoplight in Pratt, America, along Highway 54, this grove of evergreen trees. Years ago, I wrote about the lesson I learned from the trees, about their glorious diversity, back when they each wore a different color of Christmas lights. And about how, even wearing different colors, in different species, and with different shapes, they all looked to the same sun for light, and how their roots, intertwined, helped them to hold each other up. About how humans could take a lesson from this grove of trees.

But things change, as things must, with the passing of time. Two of the trees are gone now, lost I think in 2001, when we lost two other towering symbols. Their circle is broken, their underground support network weakened. Two new trees, not evergreens, have been planted. And they no longer wear colorful lights; they are all now tastefully adorned with white.

We can see two kinds of lessons in these changes to the evergreen grove. On the one hand, we can say that the breaking in the circle symbolizes the breach of trust in America since 9-11, the demolishing of our invincibility, the weakening of our global leadership. The planting of new, non-evergreens could say that evergreens are out of fashion, like patriotism, responsibility for one’s actions, word bonds, or professing one’s faith, killed by political correctness. The white lights could simply mean that it’s cheaper for the city to only maintain one color of light, city-wide. Or it could stand for the homogenization of our culture, where instead of celebrating our diversity, we elevate minority viewpoints while stifling, even silencing, the majority. It could mean that we have lost America in the fashionable trend not to expect diverse groups to assimilate, but are instead encouraging them to remain separate, isolated, in their ethnic pride. It could symbolize the fact that, in much of America today, there are no wrong answers, everyone is right, no one loses, children must be passed to the next grade to preserve their self-esteem, no matter whether or not they understand what they need to know to survive in life. It could mean that it’s no longer a grove of Christmas trees, but a group of “holiday symbols.”

On the other hand, the positive hand, the grove could teach us that change is inevitable, that torches must pass to new and different generations, and that there is beauty in that passing. The gaps in the grove might tell us that, though some of them fell, the grove itself remained, roots strong, still surviving and overcoming, much like America after 9-11. The single color could mean that, in America today, or perhaps very soon, people will indeed, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” It could mean that we no longer see colors, but simply people.

The grove could teach us that both lessons are true in different ways. The America of today, six years after 9-11, is no longer solidly behind the war on terrorism. Yet, due to those terrorist attacks, we are suspicious of those different from ourselves. Economic pressures and modern life shows us in graphic ways every day that there are indeed wrong answers, there are winners and losers, and that some do fail at tasks they have attempted. Yet, America is like any family: when times are good, or at least, average, we squabble, quibble, whine and fuss. But when someone or something threatens that family, the family is as unified as a herd of musk ox, forming a circle with the weaker ones in the center and the rest of the herd facing the threat with horns and hoofs. Though we fear those different from ourselves, we take the chance to get to know them, help them if they need it, and they in turn help others. Our attitude of no wrong answers is simply a path we have taken in an attempt to overcome the law of nature that only the strong survive. Without giving Him credit, we are exemplifying, though perhaps in a flawed way, the essence of the nature of the Christian God, that He is not willing that any should perish.

That evergreen grove has been around for a long, long time. I’m sure others have gleaned wisdom from the branches, and that it will be there to teach for many years to come, even if it changes from an evergreen to a deciduous or mixed grove. And maybe that it its greatest lesson: that it endures no matter what life and humans throw at it. Lights or not, it is beautiful. Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Ramadan—whatever holiday, it celebrates with dignity. Maybe we really do need to learn the lesson of the evergreen grove.