Hiking alongside Big Tesuque Creek near Santa Fe, New Mexico, last
week, I felt the urge to stop and stare at a little pinon tree. It was
sprouted from a nut likely dropped from the full-grown pinon under
whose scrubby arms it was sheltered. I observed my reaction to the
sight of this baby tree growing beneath the bigger tree’s branches. I
felt a wave of warmth, a feeling of the love of a parent for a child.
I almost scoffed at myself: trees can’t feel such emotions, so why am
I reading love into a situation where it doesn’t exist? But as I
pondered further, I asked a question about my role, my task, in the
natural world. Am I here to love on behalf of things that cannot love
on their own? Perhaps the love I feel belongs to the parenting pinon
as much as it does to me.
Am I here on earth to feel for trees, since they don’t have their own nerve endings? I stood and wondered. I looked up at the tumble of stones on the mountainside above me. Since rocks have no brains, am I here to ponder their origins and their futures on their behalf? Perhaps I am not here just to think for myself. Perhaps this mind isn’t just mine, but rather was put in my head for the sake of the other creatures and entities in the world around me. Perhaps my mind belongs also to the pinon tree, enabling it to love its offspring. Perhaps my brain also belongs to the boulders on the mountain, enabling them to consider their places in the cosmos. Perhaps my feelings enervate the tumbling creek below me, enabling it to appreciate the music it makes as it splashes over the stones in its bed.
“I am not here for me,” my fellow seminary student friend Dan Rauker once said to me, years ago. His words have served as a mantra ever since. I found myself chanting this mantra as I hiked into the mountains. I felt for, I loved on behalf of, the birds and butterflies and even the mosquitos I encountered along the trail.
And at least for a little while, I was not there for me.
