Between two trees with Uwe Werner

Uwe is standing below a 400 year old oak. I cannot see the sky--the canopy of trees overwhelms it. But this oak, standing taller than the others transmits the light down to the road we are on. The leaves are phosphorescent green, brimming with light, as if they are convincing us that we too could generate our energy from the sun. Uwe looks up. I see in his face an old warrior-- he is a German man. He is a father with two families, one of girls, the other of boys. What gift does his story bring to this greater story?

Sylvia, his wife, had a vision. She had a vision that the community of people taking people onto the land opened itself to the families. A year ago sh was planning to come to Death Valley for the fast, but then she found out she was pregnant. Rebekka took her place, and now Rebekka herself is expecting.
The theme of family keeps coming up here. Mothers and fathers to be, mothers and fathers already, all looking, calling, for a community to receive them, and more so, calling for their communities of which they are participating to honor and make room for them in their new roles. Not just room for them as individuals in a new role, but room for them as the families that hey have become. How do our communities receive us when we transform from "I" into "US"?

Dark shadows pass through. A great grief that I can only witness in moments beyond laughter. Not far from here St. Boniface cut Thor's Oak, a mystical tree for the early Germanic peoples. Because he was not struck by lightning when he cut it down, they believed that his god was more powerful than theirs. He knew how powerful their connection was to nature, especially to the trees, and so he knew that to establish the church he must destroy this sacred life at the center of their rituals. He built the church out of it. There is a statue commemorating this act. I am hurt to see this statue--a man holding a cross and an ax stands atop the amputated trunk that was a great tree. He holds up a model of the church he will build on that site. He will build it with the tree he has cut.

It strikes me as completely barbaric. And yet it is a local monument. And I suppose it is. We celebrate that we were created. Not the means by which this creation took place. And perhaps we do not question that we are, we will be, will continue to be, even if such barbaric acts were not monumentalized. That the tree could still stand and we too. That our standing here is not and has not been dependent on the destruction of something so grand, so alive.