Slim Odds
by Carl Mazza

Four years ago, in the middle of a violent nighttime thunderstorm, a lightening bolt scored a direct hit on a lone tree standing proudly at our Clairvaux Farm entrance lane. The jolt was so severe that it blew a large hole in the trunk and started the tree on fire. Persons in the farmhouse who had literally been shaken out of bed by the thunder gazed from a distance as the flames roared out of the tree's heart. The fire continued all the next day, settling into a smolder. We watched smoke streaming out of the holes in the trunk for hours, and even at night embers continued to glow from deep inside the tree's gutted body. Over the next few days the fire slowly consumed everything it could until the once proud tree stood hollow from its base up through the main part of its trunk.

As I write this paragraph, the old tree is yet blooming another season, as it has for the last four spring times. That's the story here--not the tree's demise, but its incredible endurance. The lightening and fire did its work, but it could not snuff out the life of so proud a being.

The lesson in this may seem transparent. Like the tree, we are inspired to stand as tall as we can, confident that we too can survive even the most violent of life's adversities. We might picture the images of the gods of ancient Greece--towering playful, all-powerful men who capriciously tossed bolts of lightening like spears into people's unsuspecting and otherwise calm lives. The ensuing chaos was food for the god's amusement as they watched the wounded souls struggle to cope with the havoc wrecked in their lives. I suppose the story of the tree at Clairvaux Farm is an example of how we ought to live courageously, even through the bedlam of senseless (perhaps even self-inflicted) turnabouts and catastrophes.

As valuable as such an insight may be it is not the greatest lesson the stricken tree has taught us. Something even more deadly struck after the lightening had gone and the sky was once again calm. While it had heroically survived that initial shock, it now had to stand alone and listen to bystanding humans discuss how it "needed to be cut down." It was essentially dead, many commented, and should be entirely eliminated before it either "fell on somebody" or "slowly rotted as an insect attracting eyesore right at the Farm's front gate." Our beautiful tree had endured the lightening, but could it now survive the unrelenting negativity of its critics--fellow living beings, who were not at all convinced that the tree had what it took to function after such a disastrous episode?

Last month I was part of a large delegation from Meeting Ground and Settlement House that attended the annual conference of the Delaware Housing Coalition in Lewes. It was a good day for all of us! Lunch was a buffet, and the serving line quickly got long. I gave up for a while and decided to wait outside in the fresh air of the courtyard. An old friend with the same idea happened to be there as well. We began what proved to be a short, yet very substantial conversation. Tracy had been a resident at Clairvaux Farm as a young teenager with her family. She is now in her mid-20s, but when she was a child she had been struck by lightening.

Tracy's shock was far more powerful than that which got the tree. Her bolt was of the sort that strikes the vulnerable, tender heart and soul of an innocent. She has only recently emerged from the smoldering embers of many years of catastrophic abuse and neglect. Her very survival is due to that miraculous life-force which even has the power to carry us through fire. She works hard a licensed practical nurse and continues to further her education.

Tracy has a large vision of the world and of life itself. She can't be satisfied with the laurels of mere survival, even given the greatness of that accomplishment in itself. Tracy wants to achieve, to aspire to a great goal for the benefit of humanity, and her face is alive with hope and energy. How has she come to this place?

Yet even more persuasive is her life impulse which has prevailed against the forces of abuse, bitterness, negativity, and heartbreak. She too has had her share of bystanders who never thought she would blossom so brightly, and perhaps the very loneliness of her struggle against such odds has made it even more majestic. That she has so emerged from such an era of homelessness and sadness is a powerful clue to the nature of that vast and powerful force of creation, the good and beautiful source of all living things.

Her comment at the end of our conversation was stunning: "There is so much beauty in life and I have been touched by that as well. I have the advantage of being able to really help other people in trouble."

In my lifetime of acquaintance with homeless persons I have seen this common reality. Although many are practically torn to pieces by harsh, unrelenting exposure to catastrophe and consequent disparagement, they will never give up. Sometimes this resilience is even in the face of a fire storm of negativity when even society itself shakes its head and declares their life at an end, no longer capable of revival and certainly never again to flourish. I have known times when the only well of support from which they could draw was that cradled deep within themselves. Yet from this single source, the water of life was slowly taken up once again to restore an exhausted body and soul.

This renewed life, although well weathered, stands tall as an inspiration of the grandeur of its own essence. Like the bruised tree it becomes a signal beacon to others around it that the God-force within is only made more beautiful and resilient in struggle, and that the patience of life's energy is inexhaustible. As we stand beside such beings we may finally sense that love is indeed so powerful precisely because it dissolves the walls of our imaginations, the barriers we think stand between us and other living beings. And after the lightening strikes we may come to realize in the very glimmer of our survival that the illusion of our separateness was indeed only an absurd notion of our fragile ego.

We know this because as we quietly stand and look into the heart of a hollow, gutted tree -- it speaks to us. Incredibly it beams to our very marrow the dignity of creation: that the love of life is at our core, and this is not easily dissolved. This love overcomes especially when the odds are slim in its favor, drawing strength even from the doubt which surrounds it. Any anyone who doubts this ought to see this tree.