Sally McFague writes that a practice of kenosis, or self emptying deepens and strengthens “an awareness of our radical interdependence with all other life forms, as well as an increasing appreciation for the planet’s finitude and vulnerability” in her article, Earth Economy: A Spirituality of Limits. (https://reflections.yale.edu/article/money-and-morals-after-crash/earth-economy-spirituality-limits)
She continues: “Old-growth forests are a mess – literally a mess. On first view, such a forest strikes one as a tangle, a jumble, of stuff of all sorts: trees standing, lying down, or half-way down; caves, holes, and openings; ferns, mosses, and lichens; mushrooms, rocks, and epiphytes; springtails, crustaceans, and dragonflies; water dripping, running, standing; trees on top of other trees, trees with bushes growing out of them, trees with holes and knobs and twisted limbs like pretzels. An old-growth forest is seemingly chaotic, but it works, it sustains billions of different forms of life. Its haphazard quality is part of its genius: anything that can find a way to live there is accepted. Animals and plants live with, in- side of, on top of, beneath, partly inside and partly outside, one another. It is impossible often to tell what is what: where does this tree begin and this other one end?
“Nurse logs are lying-down trees – some would say dead trees – that having lived several hundred years as standing trees are now into a second career as homes for other trees. The body of the nurse log provides a warm, nutrient-rich birthplace for young saplings of all sorts to grow. It is not just seeds from the nurse tree that grow on it, but anything and everything. All are welcome! The nurse log can live another several hundred years as the giver of new life from its body. A new tree stretches its roots around the nurse log and still retains this odd position after the nurse log disappears. With the hole between its roots, it is a visible sign of the invisible tree that nurtured it. What is living and what is dead? Life and death are mixed up here.”
By Dawna Wal