If you are near Harvard Divinity School next week, you have an opportunity to worship. This letter recently went out from the Div School administration, concerning the controversial removal of an old oak tree. I received it from an HDS alumnus:

Dear members of the HDS community:

As you know, the red oak tree adjacent to the Andover-Harvard Theological Library entrance will be removed beginning Friday, March 29. To many members of our community, this tree is explicitly sacred; for others, while it may not be recognized as part of their own particular religious tradition, the sense of loss at the tree’s removal is great. For over 100 years, this tree has sheltered many and much here; and it has been cherished in return.

To mark this great loss, a gathering has been arranged for anyone who wishes to attend on Wednesday, March 27, at 5 pm. There will be two parts to this gathering. The first will be a communal storytelling, which will give anyone the opportunity to speak about what this tree has either meant to or taught them. The second part of the gathering will be led by members for whom this tree is a religious/spiritual site and/or being; they will invoke great sacred trees in their respective spiritual traditions. Anyone who feels called to participate in the latter half.

In preparation for the oak tree’s removal, members of the HDS community who wish are encouraged to offer their personal farewells in a manner they see fit in advance of the March 27 gathering. For those seeking materials to construct private farewells, a waterproof box containing note paper, pens, markers, and ribbons will be made available near the tree Monday, March 25 through Wednesday, March 27. The materials can be used to affix notes or artwork of grief, gratitude, and witness to the fence around the tree. Those notes will be removed and included in the Wednesday afternoon ritual. Additionally, the chaplain interns would be glad to speak with or to accompany anyone who would like support in this.

As you are aware, the tree is not structurally sound and HDS recommends that pedestrians not use the area under the tree. HDS will not, however, prohibit those who wish to participate in the gathering. Please keep the safety risks in mind when in the vicinity of the tree.

The Harvard Divinity School is going to provide papers, pens, markers, and ribbons so its students, teachers, and others associated with it can tell a tree goodbye. And pastoral help will be available for those overcome with grief. I love trees too, but golly, this is something.

UPDATE: “The beloved tree was survived by countless acorns, and a collection of nuts.”

Rob G. comments:

“Maybe I just read too much Tolkien at an impressionable age but I sort of wish we had more people who were moved to mourning when an old tree was scheduled to be torn down.”

As a tree-lover myself I fully agree, but have to admit that much of this is overwrought. Maybe it’s too much to ask that some point of balance might be found between simple callousness and hysterical sentimentalism?

To which I replied:

My own thoughts about this is that it is important to mark the removal of such an aged and venerable tree. I don’t laugh at that at all. I seriously do mourn, ever so slightly, when I go visit my cousin’s house and see bare ground where once the sycamore that shaded our grandmother’s house once stood. It had to be removed, but it wasn’t just a plant. That tree meant something more, somehow. Yet I confess I find it hard to look at what the divines of Harvard are doing here without snickering.

UPDATE.2: Reader Frances gets it right:

I love old trees too. We all know about the redwoods, but are you aware of aged gingkos? I’ve seen probably 4 gingko trees in Japan 600-800 years old. let alone others that were probably half that age. And then I’ve seen [one] that was 1000 years old, fell from rot and is now sprouting. Of course, Shinto believers believe such an old, huge tree growing on shrine grounds was a significant spiritual being or kami. So maybe HDS is addressing Shinto believers??

The point Rod is making is that a Christian Divinity School now recognizes and encourages a pagan and mushy sentimentality of feeling about plants, conflating nostalgia with spirituality. I don’t know what “official paganism” is these days, but I do know that the denial of the special spiritual essence of mankind has led to murdering unborn children and the sick and elderly and unhappy. See Rod’s Belgian article.

Yes, this. Anybody who knows my work knows that I hate the materialist right-wing attitude that sees the natural world as nothing but material to be shaped according to human desire. I think it is a fine thing to mark the removal of a venerable old tree. What amuses me is the mushy sentimentality of Harvard’s Divinity School, and forcing the respect for a venerable old tree into contemporary therapies (e.g., putting out crayons for the adult children to write messages to the tree, and offering pastoral interns to assist those who are emotionally overwhelmed by the passage of a tree).