The Giving Tree
This sermon by Robin Livingston follows a reading of The Giving Tree by Shel Silversteen during our Time for All Ages.
I didn’t pick The Giving Tree for my Story Sermon because it’s a favorite of mine. I didn’t even pick it because I like it. I picked it because for as long as I can remember, The Giving Tree has frustrated me.
I have always found it upsetting how much the Boy takes from the tree. “I am too big to climb and play… Can you give me some money?” “I am too busy to climb trees… Can you give me a house?” “I am too old and sad to play… Can you give me a boat?” And he doesn’t say thank you! or offer anything in return, or even stick around to spend time with the tree. Come on tree, set some boundaries! Tell him, “No” for once! Offer the apples, and maybe even some or your branches, but not all of them, and certainly not your trunk! How can you survive if you give up so much?
I, a giver by nature, have always had trouble with this story. I recognize the Tree in my own habits – giving to others first, and not always saving enough of my time, energy, and care, for myself. I often find myself teetering between giving things that feel sustainable for me to give, and things that, in retrospect, were maybe my branches instead of my apples, and would take me a long time to regrow.
The gifts that the Tree gives the Boy are an unquantifiable sacrifice. Depending on how resilient she is, she might survive giving up her branches, but it’s unlikely she can survive on her own once her trunk is removed. Does she have a community of tree root companions who can nourish her through her roots, or is the gift of her trunk the sacrifice of her life?
Like I said, this book gets under my skin. I didn’t think I was going to pick this story to talk about until I read The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a Potawatomi botanist and author. In this book, she tells stories of the Serviceberry tree and berries as a way to talk about reciprocity and the gift economy. She says:
“In a serviceberry economy, I accept the gift from the tree and then spread that gift around, with a dish of berries to my neighbor, who makes a pie to share with his friend, who feels so wealthy in food and friendship that he volunteers at the food pantry. You know how it goes.”
The Serviceberry trees offer nectar and fruit to the pollinators and birds, who in turn spread pollen and seeds that help the tree reproduce. The nutrients move through the bodies of the other beings in this interdependent web of creation – each giving a gift to each other in sharing the abundance. The farmer shares the berries with her neighbors, who share them with their loved ones. Robin Wall Kimmerer shares the story of the Serviceberry with her readers, who maybe in turn share the story with their friends.
Upon re-reading The Giving Tree in preparation for this service, I noticed the detail that the parts of herself, the apples, branches, trunk, that she gives to the Boy are not asked for, but offered. She gives them willingly in response to his requests. “Take my apples, Boy, and sell them in the city. Then you will have money and you will be happy.” “You may cut off my branches and build a house. Then you will be happy.” “Cut down my trunk and make a boat.” said the tree. “Then you can sail away…and be happy.”
“And the tree was happy. But not really.”
The capitalist system we exist in is built in direct contrast to a gift economy. We live in an extractive economy – one that depends on over-extracting beyond the capacity of our planet and creating a false sense of scarcity in order to accumulate wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many, and our precious planet. To find success in the capitalist system relies on continuous growth with no cap. If we were to see that in a biological system, we would call it cancer. Our planet is a finite system with fixed resources. We simply cannot take and take without regard for the consequences of our actions.
So, we have to find ways to carve out for ourselves a different way of existing. We have to find ways in our modern lives to share in the abundance of what we have, and learn to ask for what we need and to feel and express gratitude for what we have and receive.
I do wonder if the Boy and the Tree in our story could have found a path that would have been a little bit less fatal, or at least a bit more mutualistic.
Robin Wall Kimmerer offers guidelines for an Honorable Harvest which is, “… the indigenous canon of principles and practices that govern the exchange of life for life”:
Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you can take care of them.
Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for a life.
Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first one. Never take the last.
Take only what you need.
Take only that which is given.
Never take more than half. Leave some for others.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.
Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift in reciprocity for what you have taken.
Sustain the ones who sustain you and the Earth will last forever.
What if the Boy in the story was accountable to the Honorable Harvest? Not held accountable by some other source, but accountable from within himself. What would change if he said thank you to the tree, or offered a gift in return that he might give back in gratitude, or pass on the gift he had been given?
A conversation in the gift economy might sound more like:
“I can share my apples to feed your belly while you plant some corn. I can share the shade from my branches to shelter your home as you raise your children. Let them, too, swing from my branches and pick my apples, and share in my shade. Tell them stories of how you played in my branches when you were their age. And when you die, let your body turn to soil among my roots so that the nutrients of my body that nourished your body, can go on to nourish another generation of apples and boys.”
The word “boundaries” has become kind of a buzzword in self-care spaces, but I’d like to talk about what it means for a minute. Boundaries, as Prentis Hemphill says, are “the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously”. “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” They come from a recognition of your own limitations, and what kinds of behaviors and patterns push you over some kind of edge. Boundaries are not a rule that other people have to follow to gain access to you – they are offerings we make to one another to let each other know – “this is what it takes for me to be able to show up in the ways that I want and need.”
It’s like how we say at our closing circle – you can stay where you are, you can place your hands over your heart, or you can reach out to hold hands with someone near you. If the person next to you puts their hand over their heart, it doesn’t mean you’re not part of the circle together. It means that what they need or want, in that moment, is simply to not hold hands. We hold love at the center of our closing circle by allowing each other to show up to that moment in the ways that feel good.
Some of you may have encountered some of the boundaries I have for myself around my relationship with this congregation. I use they/them pronouns, and using my pronouns correctly is not something that everyone here is fluent in quite yet. Calling me the wrong pronoun is typically not coming from a place of wanting to exclude me or intentionally make me feel unwelcome, it’s more often coming from a place of not being comfortable yet with the pronouns, or with the language acquisition task of practicing using pronouns that feel unfamiliar. But for me, getting called the wrong pronouns adds up, and if it happens a lot in one interaction or one day, it takes time for me to recover from that, and makes it harder for me to show up next time. It requires a lot of tending to my soft spots. So, I’ve set some boundaries that make it possible for me to show up in this community in the ways that are most important to me.
After a particularly challenging social event here a couple years ago, I decided that I can’t come to social events here anymore. I get misgendered too often, and it hurts too much. So, you don’t see me at the congregational picnics, the Friday fun nights, the social suppers or the auction. And maybe you’ve heard me say this before, and it might have been hard to hear. Running into my boundary may have been uncomfortable. This is not permission for you to invite me to come to one of the social things after the service. Respecting my boundaries looks like hearing my “no” with grace. Setting this boundary looks like me continuing to say “no” gently but firmly. It’s the way that I have energy and capacity to show up here in other ways. If you’re feeling tense or on edge right now – breathe – you’re not in trouble, and I’m ok. This is how we do the work of community.
My many “noes” make space for my enthusiastic, whole-hearted “yesses”. Finding the edges of my boundaries is a continual process. It’s one that I re-negotiate with myself regularly, and my boundaries might change over time as we do the work. To bring it back to our tree metaphor, when we stop clear cutting the forest, curb the invasive species, and make space and time for native plants to come back, they often do. When we intercept harm, and make space for growth, repair becomes possible.
Going back to our friend The Giving Tree – What might a boundary have looked like for the tree? To figure out where that boundary needs to be, it might have started as some time of reflection for the tree. She might ask herself: what can I give freely, abundantly, regularly? What can I give sometimes if I give myself the time to recover afterwards? What kinds of nutrients do I need from my ecosystem in those moments of recovery to rebuild my bark, wood, branches, and leaves? Who do I need to reach out to for help in finding those nutrients? Setting a boundary might look like the tree saying, “I can’t give you any more branches until I grow back a few more. When I have enough to share again, you can have another.” For the Boy who is used to the Tree giving her apples, it might be hard at first to hear that “no”. He might feel defensive. Respecting that boundary might sound like the Boy taking a breath and saying “Thank you for sharing your apples and your branches, and thank you for letting me know that you need time to recover. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you rebuild.”
I wonder. What boundaries do you have of your own that we need to honor as a community? Do you have a boundary that you’re proud of yourself for honoring? Are there boundaries you need to devote more energy and care to maintaining?
The Giving Tree story still doesn’t sit easy with me. It reminds me that taking care of myself sometimes has to look like putting on my own oxygen mask before helping others, and that that in and of itself can be hard work that goes against my programming. It serves as an omen for me of what might happen if I don’t set boundaries and prioritize my own needs.
Maybe just what we’re missing in The Giving Tree is the focal width to see the community of fungi and tree roots who share water and nutrients below the surface that support the tree – even when she’s just a stump. We don’t fully know how forests work, but we do know more and more that trees are not individual creatures alone in the world. They communicate with each other in chemicals they produce and send out on the air, and they share water and nutrients through their root systems with the help of fungi. So maybe what the Tree gave was not, in fact, more than she could offer – and maybe I can’t make that judgement for her.
In coming back to The Giving Tree story, I need to let the Tree tell me, and the Boy, what her boundaries are, and trust that she is finding the support that she needs. I need to make space for the Tree and the Boy to express what they need, and to trust them to know what those needs are. I need to trust that beyond the pages of this book, both the Tree and the Boy have other ways of getting what they need, and hope that they can grow into asking for them.
Spirit of Life, when we reach for healing may we be met with tenderness and care. When we ask for what we need, may we be received with dignity and respect, and may we find sustainable ways to meet those needs. When we bump into the boundaries of others, may we soften defensiveness with compassion. And when we set boundaries may we be held in a love that stays, and does not let us go.
Featured photo by Tim Umphreys on Unsplash
