And thereby hangs a tale” may be said of every tree. For instance, the raintree that grows a step from the road, on which the wife and I travel every morning, and which stretches for upwards of ten kilometers with many a winding, but never leaving the side of the sea. That tree is now fully grown, and has reached the height of a house.
One morning years ago, when the raintree was but a sapling, I tried to take shelter under it, half-successfully, or perhaps a quarter successfully, because the shade, no bigger than a schoolgirl’s umbrella, was as mottled with light as a Christmas tree–the leaves were too small and few and far between to stop the drive of the robustly growing morning sun.
Not far from me was the taxi I had taken. It had suddenly stopped and thence, like a stubborn old dog, would not move. The driver could not call Houston because his cellular phone had a problem. If I had to be stranded, this was not the place. Nothing with any resemblance to a house was in sight, and ninety-nine percent of the vehicles that were passing by had either too much speed or their drivers had too little courage or kindness or both to stop for and give a ride to a waving stranger. Still I pinned my hopes on the one percent and prayed, and waited in the pseudo-shade of the juvenile tree. Shortly after that, a white van stopped in front of me and asked if I wanted to be picked up.
That story comes to mind and is told every time I pass by the tree, which is often, and I know that with every telling I bore the wife and the daughter, my constant companions, to tears.
If every tree has a tale, it should begin with a seed. I recall the ipil-ipil that used to ring our garden before it had a fence, which it served as at the time. When I was working for a mining company, and assigned to its gold mining operations in the mountains of a far province, I stayed in a staff house with another lawyer who was constantly splitting ipil-ipil pods and removing their seeds, which he collected. He would do this while taking coffee or watching TV or playing chess, after clocking and while waiting for the other player to make a move. If memory serves me right, I likewise opened the pods and flicked out the seeds while waiting for him to decide which between the bishop and the knight he should block my queen with. I learned that the seeds he was collecting were for his farm in Bohol, to be used to fence out the neighbors’ hungry and incontinent cows and goats. Which was a light bulb moment for me–I decided to slip into my bag the seeds I had collected during the game of chess, which I lost, and implanted them around the garden. In no time, the trees grew tall and big and became a favorite stopping place for the tailor birds, wagtails and shrikes, and passers-by with a need, as well as a peeve for stray pets.
The seed of the ipil-ipil (Leucaena leucocephala) is quite small. Even smaller than it is the mustard seed, which Jesus used to describe the kingdom of heaven to his disciples, and thereby attached to it a story that will always be told for as long as the Gospels are preached. In this sense is it the luckiest of seeds. Mark writes that Jesus gave his disciples several images with which to illustrate the kingdom of heaven. One of them is the mustard seed, which, “when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.”
I read somewhere of Jewish texts that compare the earth to a mustard seed, to emphasize its insignificance, and to induce in us, proud earthlings, a humble attitude. Jesus used it to demonstrate how the presence of God–a loving father who guides and takes care of us and heals and protects us–can grow in our consciousness, from even a faith that is as small as a mustard seed.
That friend, the lawyer, who has since joined the Lord, taught me to make use of time, that one could collect seeds or do a useful little task even if one were occupied with something else, be it as demanding of one’s attention as a game of chess. The seeds or the act of collecting them could be prayer, a raising of the heart and mind to God, a moment for a word with him, as to a friend, which one can do in any situation, even while waiting to be rescued after being stranded and while sheltering in a youthful tree’s ephemeral shade.