The Spiritual Importance of Trees

Resensitizing to the divine

My father’s religion was Mother Gaia, especially her cedar trees. He wrote poetry to the great cedars that once stood in Lebanon.
Below is a picture of a Western Red Cedar with whom I’ve cultivated a relationship over the last year. They’ve become my friend and teacher.
Only recently, I learned they are a cedar. I’m surprised and not surprised. My father’s legacy lives on in me and makes this tree and our connection even more special. (They’re a ‘new world cedar,’ a member of the cypress family, and I, having moved to the States, am a 'new world person.')
Trees like Western Red Cedars who live here in the Pacific Northwest are spiritually important able to aid in “spiritual awakening.” Northwest coast tribes revere them for their healing and spiritual powers. From my interactions with the below cedar, I totally get it.
To me, however, communing with my cedar friend is less a spiritual awakening than becoming resensitized.

Each of us is born into a unique experience of life. Yet, once we move out of the baby stage of total freedom, societal pressure begins to push us to fit into its mold. One that denies the magic children sense all around them.
​
Thankfully, this sensing capability isn’t lost. We can become resensitized through nature.

Trees are some of the most helpful guides and companions. I think in part because their lives, compared to human lives, are slow, modeling presence. And in presence, we find life’s magic again. (To me, this magic is the divine.)

Take the contemplative pace of a tree’s transpiration: water slowly rises due to changes in internal pressure caused by moist exhalations through the leaves. From root to crown, it takes my cedar friend four hours to raise a volume of water through their slender veins of xylem.

Near them, my soul senses the low hum of their life. My body adapts and slows its breathing.
​
As I lean against my friend, my soul takes up the vibration and shimmies my awareness back into my special spot in the web of greater existence.
In those moments, I know again that I’m woven together with all beings, and for a time, bound to the earth and to each other. And when my earthly life expires, with the greater life beyond.

▫▫▫

Next time you’re close to trees, gently place your hand against someone’s bark. Close your eyes. Slow. What do you feel? A message, a sensation? Not all trees are equally generous, and the connection does not always happen instantly. It didn’t with this wonderful tree.
​
But with patience, openness, and frequent visits, a relationship will develop. And if you can befriend a Western Red Cedar, all the better. How will you know it’s happening? You just will.

Dear friend, I hope this article brought you closer to trees in ways you enjoyed. Thanks so much for taking the time to read. It’s you who make my Medium journey special.
Henry ♡

Henry India was born in W. Germany and lives in Seattle, Washington with their soulmate, hummingbirds, squirrels, rabbits, chickadees, sparrows, robins, jays, plum, cherry and apple trees, a very old pear tree, and magnificent laurels. Also, ants, snails, a few rats, and a raccoon family. They are a nonbinary writer and soul coach.