By DONALD DeMARCO
The sequoia tree (Sequoiadendron giganteum) is the largest living thing on the planet. The oldest living sequoia is estimated to be 2,200 years although there is scientific evidence, through carbon dating, that this extraordinary plant can remain alive as long 3,200 years.
“General Sherman,” the name given to the largest living example of the species, is located in northern California’s Sequoia National Park. It is more than 275 feet high, has a base diameter of 102 feet, and contains approximately 52,508 cubic feet of wood.
Given their massive surface area, one would expect that high winds could easily cause them to topple over. Such is not the case, however. Sequoias typically live in groves, within a community, so to speak, of other sequoias. Although their roots penetrate only between six to twenty feet below the ground, something rather fortuitous takes place that allows them to remain standing even during severe windstorms. The secret to their longevity lies in the fact that their roots spread across a wide area and intertwine with the roots of other sequoias.
As mighty as this tree appears above the ground, it owes its longevity to a sub-visible community of roots that bind the trees together. They are, quite literally “well-grounded.” “United they stand; divided they would fall.” “President Lincoln” might have been a more suitable name for the largest of the living Sequoias.
An analogy between the sequoia tree and the human person is irresistible. We find an analogy between tree and man in Deut. 20:19-20: “When you besiege a city a long time, to make war against it in order to capture it, you shall not destroy its trees by swinging an axe against them; for you may feast from them, and you shall not cut them down. For is the tree of the field a man, that it should be besieged by you?”
The special value of trees is underscored in Isaiah 60:13: “The glory of Lebanon will come to you, the juniper, the box tree and the cypress together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary; and I shall make the place of my feet glorious.”
Did Daniel have a vision of a sequoia tree when he said, “Thus [were] the visions of mine head in my bed; I saw, and behold a tree in the midst of the earth, and the height thereof [was] great” (Daniel 4:10-12).
We find numerable references to trees throughout Scripture: the tree in the Garden of Eden, the tree of Jesse, the fig tree, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, poplar, almond, olive, and plane trees, and David’s musical instrument made of fir wood.
The mighty sequoia can be used to symbolize the person. Whereas the sequoia owes its longevity to its sub-visible roots, man owes his longevity to roots that are invisible. God sustains us. But, in addition, we survive, prosper, and thrive thanks to the invisible cords that bind us in our friendships with others. As mere individuals, no matter how tall we stand, we are vulnerable. As the poet Lord Byron put it, “Happiness was born a twin.”
It is an old story. Isolation from others breeds misery. As the 16th-century philosopher Lao Tze sadly remarked, “Though neighboring communities overlook one another and the crowing of cocks and barking of dogs can be heard, yet the people there may grow old and die without ever visiting each other.”
The sequoia tree reminds us that we are persons, which is to say, that we are both visible individuals and, at the same time, bound to each other by invisible ties. This stupendous example of plant life refutes the individualism that has so haunted the modern world since René Descartes (I think, therefore I am, but I am not so sure about you) and the ideology of Karl Marx which contends that man is merely a part of the collective.
Jacques Maritain is severe in his denunciation of both radical individualism and atheistic Communism. His critique of the former, however, may resonate better with the individualism of North American society. In his Three Reformers, he states that “the modern city sacrifices the person to the individual [giving] equal rights, liberty of opinion, to the individual, and delivers the person, isolated, naked, with no social framework to support and protect it, to all the devouring powers that threaten the soul’s life.”
It is as if society is saying to the vulnerable individual: “You are a free individual. Defend yourself, save yourself, all by yourself.” And this is why Maritain sees fit to describe the naked individualism of the modern world as constituting a “homicidal civilization.”
In Without Roots (2006), co-authored by Joseph Ratzinger and the atheist philosopher Marcello Pera, the latter makes the comment: “The only thing worse than living without roots is struggling to get by without a future.” If we are not well-grounded, can we survive?
Pope Paul VI used the image of the tree to describe the way in which the Church has developed.
“This is how the Lord wanted His church to be,” he wrote, “universal, a great tree whose branches shelter the birds of the air. . . . In the mind of the Lord the Church is universal by vocation and mission, but when she puts her roots in a variety of social and human terrains, she takes on different external expressions and appearances in each part of the world” (Exarchat Apostolique, 1992).
Our roots must be placed in the invisible, but providential protection of God, without forgetting our rootedness in love, friendship, and civility. Here, like that of the Church, is the secret to our longevity.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com.
(Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award.)
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