Trees, like humans, can be magnificent.

A lone tree, open to full sun and wind, can grow to something so amazing that the local culture remarks on it in their literature and the tree is remembered for thousands of years.

With a forest, things get even more amazing. The lack of singularity makes what we see less notable, but the web of life, and the way it varies from one hill to the next, from the boggy spot to the exposed cliff, this system of relationships draws us toward an understanding of our own situation, helps us FEEL our own place, nestled in the Grand Scheme of things.

Forests “work” some places on the planet and not others. In the upper Midwest forests thrive when we allow them. And they support life with oxygen production, shelter from extremes of weather and by providing reservoirs of moisture. “Forests” are a lot more than trees, but we humans have found the trees especially useful. Wood has served humanity in an astounding number of ways.

In the upper Midwest, the forests have been mostly cleared, the wood used for building, the land tried for farming. Where farming didn’t work, the woods are slowly coming back. There are lessons here for us. Whether it’s because of short summers or sandy soils, forests do better than farming in some places. We European-Americans have learned this about the Midwest through trial and error. There are many more lessons for us to learn. In the Midwest, forests have been dancing with prairie ever since the last ice age, back and forth. How do we humans learn to dance with our forests, in ways less clumsy-footed than in the past?

The lessons we have already learned, and the learnings that lie ahead, are valuable on many levels. There are the basic levels of:

• How do we get food, AND wood for building things?
• What are the right times of year for planting, pruning and harvesting?

And then there are more sophisticated questions:

• What do we owe “the land,” the natural system within which we live?
• Are there proper cycles of “working” and lying fallow?
• What are the considerations regarding erosion and species diversity?

And then there is the ineffable:

• In what ways is it right for us to be here, in this expanse of grassland and forest, mid-continent, in North America?
• How can we understand ourselves and our woodland settings as an expression of something far larger than ourselves, whether we call it “God’s creation” or something else?
• Surely, as we explore our relationships to our woodlands and forests, we can discover fundamental truths about right relationship with all ecosystems and with the entire living planet.

Quakers, members of the Religious Society of Friends, are willing to accept all of these questions as spiritual questions, or as having a spiritual component. Most of us are also comfortable saying there is a spiritual dimension to an ecosystem, and to our lives within it.

Quaker Community Forest calls us to an affirmation of that spiritual dimension, and urges us to attend to it. As we look at the mess humans are currently making of the planet’s ecosystems, let us re-enter the forests of the upper Midwest, in prayer and sorrow, in excitement and wonder. Let us tend groves of trees, returning year after year. Let us look to them as teachers. Let us open ourselves, in humility and with as little selfishness as possible, to see what our ecosystem is up to, and let us discern and co-create our proper place within it.

– Summer Solstice, 2007