Arbor Day

April 2023

This month we asked our writers to consider the importance of celebrating
 Arbor Day, which is marked by the planting of and caring for trees as a
way to sustainably protect our planet's natural resources; people often
dedicate these planted trees to loved ones.

Hug a tree

Sarah Miller
MSMU Class of 2026

There is a saying in a famous movie, The Lorax, that I feel everyone should hear during times like ours when the environment can sometimes be pushed to the back of our minds with our busy schedules. Mr. Lorax states, "I am The Lorax. I speak for the trees! I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues." Imagine if the trees surrounding us every day had tongues: what would they tell us? The trees are so giving, and they supply us with everything that we need, and they have been around far longer than we have been inhabiting Earth. Without the trees, there would be no us. We wouldn't have plans tomorrow, Superbowls to watch, relationships to form, clouds to interpret, oceans to swim, and a year after this one. But imagine if we all advocated for the trees, or likewise if the trees had tongues. Arbor Day is a way of giving the means of communication back to nature, yet, it is a holiday that isn't greatly advertised. Arbor Day is for the good of the Earth, and it is just one small step that is for the greater good.

Arbor Day originated in Nebraska in 1972, when individuals found that there were very few trees within the terrain of the state. Nebraska had minimal biodiversity before this holiday, which was looked down upon because of the fundamental good that comes from trees. Trees help fight climate change and maintain healthy air; biodiversity helps minimize carbon and fight diseases that could harm populations. Arbor Day is a holiday that has no bad effects for the environment. Fourth of July has the tradition of blowing up fireworks in celebration, but it also produces a lot of harmful chemicals to get in our atmosphere; Christmas has gift wrap that makes a lot of waste and single-use paper that goes right into the landfill. Our American and religious traditions are meant to be fun and lighthearted, and, true, sometimes seeing the negative effects are not the most joyful to look at; but, to keep our climate alive, we need more trees, and Arbor Day is keeping our traditions alive and continuing keeping our world healthy.

Arbor Day started during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency and made a lasting impact in the United States when he signed it as a new national holiday. The first year that Arbor Day took place, one million trees were planted. Now, Nebraska has nearly 400 million trees, much to the credit of this special holiday that was made to help the environment and help keep our planet greener.

Arbor Day's counterpart, Earth Day, focuses on the education surrounding climate change and protecting the environment. In contrast, Arbor Day’s goal is to help create the environment that we need in order to thrive and flourish as a human population. Earth Day strives to bring attention and awareness, educating on how one can limit carbon footprint and reduce waste. Arbor Day also strives to help, but chiefly through a tangible way of action.

When I think of humans' environmental impact, I also think of the scenery around me. I think of the places that I couldn't go without a healthy environment or the places I couldn't appreciate without nice weather. I think of the places where I wish I could go in the future, like Alaska or Scotland or Costa Rica, that is known for its natural beauty. Although Arbor Day can also be a day where you dedicate a memorial to someone with a tree, we don't want that memorial to be for the foliage that was present or the places that didn't survive rising sea levels. We need to appreciate the nature around us so that nature can give back to us even more and continue to flourish. A good example is from the famous book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. It depicts how humans are always taking from nature but never look back and appreciate what nature has truly given humanity. The book explains that the tree is never really happy until the boy is happy, signifying the danger in humans focusing on what we want, rather than reflecting on all that we have. In contrast, the environment tends to be much more selfless.

Arbor Day is run by a nonprofit company, called the Arbor Day Foundation, whose sole purpose is to plant as many trees as possible. Since 1972, the company has grown over 10 million trees. Dependent on the climate, each state dedicates a day for Arbor Day, even though it may not get as much attention as it should. Also, in climates that are unable to plant on the usual last Friday in April timeframe, the holiday may be moved around so the environment can properly grow more trees. In Alaska and Hawaii, there are different days dedicated to Arbor Day because of the extreme weather, but it is still celebrated nevertheless.

Although it may be a holiday that doesn’t receive as much publicity as it should, and it isn't as celebrated as Christmas or Thanksgiving, it is a holiday that impacts the earth positively. Recognizing the good that is coming out of the community where they come together and plant trees is impactful. It helps humans live in a cleaner environment while also cooperating and organizing something that does something greater. To offset the emissions that each human produces every day, we need at least 15-20 trees planted per individual. Each tree matters, and without them, our planet would suffer greatly. Sea levels are rising, and the ozone layer is weakening, but with more trees and people who want to impact the world on a day like Arbor Day, there is much to be commended. So do yourself a favor and go outside and plant a tree. If you can't plant a tree, educate others on the importance of Arbor Day and the amazing effects it has on the only planet we call home.

Read other articles by Sarah Miller

No man’s shadow

Joey Carlson
MSMU Class of 2025

St. Clare of Assisi is known to many simply as St. Francis’ lesser-known companion, or perhaps to a few who have encountered a Poor Clare. In many ways, however, St. Clare had more influence than St. Francis. While the Franciscan order spent centuries fighting amongst themselves about what their rule of life should be, and whether or not they should actually give up all of their possessions as St. Francis had insisted, the Poor Clares never strayed from St. Francis’ original rule of total poverty. The unity in the mission of these little nuns was accomplished singlehandedly by St. Clare, their first member, abbess for forty years and the inspiration for the founding of the order.

St. Clare of Assisi was the spiritual daughter of St. Francis, literally called alter Franciscus (other Francis) for her undying commitment to poverty and prayer for the poor. At age 17, she heard Francis preach and was so moved that she begged him to let her live the same lifestyle through which Francis so perfectly showed the love of Christ. Clare was the daughter of a wealthy family who had been distinguished since the days of the Roman empire, and she was apparently very beautiful and was already going to be wed. Clare snuck out of the family castle by night, where she was met by friars carrying torches, exchanging her jeweled belt for a common rope. The patriarchs of her family pursued her with soldiers and arms, even breaking into the chapel where Clare was praying. In a dramatic scene, Clare pulled her new veil away to reveal her long hair cut short, a sign of her fidelity to her husband, Jesus Christ. Her father and uncle left in a huff, and nineteen days later, her sister Agnes came to join her in the convent (her story is well worth telling another time). Francis himself had been persecuted by Church higher-ups and noblemen who saw his commitment to total poverty as a challenge to their privileged lifestyle, so when Clare asked to join his order, he knew that she, as a woman, would receive even more resistance. For this reason, he decided that she would maintain a monastic life of prayer, penance, and poverty, separate from the world, unlike the men, who would spend less time in prayer and more time in service. Clare’s order eventually became known as the Poor Clares.

Though it may seem that Clare was relegated to an inferior position, as if her femininity was a scandal to be locked away, in Catholic theology, contemplation of the Divine is the highest calling human beings can answer. The Poor Clares would become, in many ways, the very lifeblood of the Franciscan movement, and by the close of the century, hundreds of monasteries had been set up across Europe, providing for the poor what the mendicant Franciscans could not – unceasing supplication and prayer before the Throne of God. In this new religious environment, women played a privileged role, with many having a distinct authority over the men surrounding them. This was not unseen in Christianity’s history (Mary, after all, was the spiritual mother of the apostles and held unique authority even over those bishops of the Church). The Poor Clares carried a distinctly female spirituality, and this age in the Church’s life saw lowly and holy women dictating even to the Pope (St. Catherine of Sienna, not a Poor Clare, but a contemporary, ordered the pope to directly contradict the king of France, and he did). St. Clare herself was visited by popes often, and she, a lowly woman not unlike the Mother of God, chastised, encouraged, and received reverence from the Vicar of Christ. St. Clare, visited by popes and bishops, washed the feet of her own sisters, and for all her austerities, never ceased valuing charity as the highest good.

Francis was correct that St. Clare would endure much in order to live her unique charism of total poverty. Francis’ original rule of life for Franciscans did not allow any ownership of private property, and Clare insisted that her order follow suit. Religious rules of life must be endorsed by the pope. Various popes attempted to write rules for St. Clare’s order while she was alive, but none of them forbade private property as Clare desired. For forty years, she fought for her rule of life, and finally, the pope endorsed the rule that she herself had written for her sisters two days before she died in 1253. She is the first woman to write a rule of life for a Catholic religious order.

To give you an idea of how holy St. Clare was, it took nine years after the death of St. John Paul II for him to be declared a saint by the Church, and 19 years for Mother Teresa; Clare was canonized two years after her death. The pope personally sped up the process because he was so impressed by this little Italian woman!

To close, "a well-known story concerns her prayer and trust. Clare had the Blessed Sacrament placed on the walls of the convent when it faced attack by invading Saracens. ‘Does it please you, O God, to deliver into the hands of these beasts the defenseless children I have nourished with your love? I beseech you, dear Lord, protect these whom I am now unable to protect.’ To her sisters, she said, ‘Don’t be afraid. Trust in Jesus.’ The Saracens fled" (fransiscanmedia.org).

There is a new book out on her life: The Light of Assisi: the Story of Saint Clare. The catchphrase of the book is "the story of a woman who stood in no man’s shadow." Her name, of course, means ‘clear’ or ‘bright’, thus the irony in the title. If there is anyone who imagines that women played some subsidiary role in the life of the Church during the Dark Ages, I would encourage them to encounter this true light of faith, councilor to popes, servant of the servants of God, and spiritual mother of all who, in their love for God, serve the poor with joy and perseverance.

Read other articles by Joseph Carlson

The Uncle Jerry Tree

Claire Doll
MSMU Class of 2024

Trees are captivating, the way they move with the seasons. The way their rhythm falls in sync with the spring-to-summer change, the raining leaves of autumn, the slow fade to winter. Almost as if trees represent the motions of life, themselves.

When my sister and I were young—super young—we experienced our first death. My great-great uncle, who had lived far from us in West Virginia, died, and I had never met him. In fact, I had hardly known of his existence until my mother sat us at the kitchen table, placed her hands on ours, and said: "Your Uncle Jerry has died, girls."

I don’t recall much about my own reaction, but my sister broke out in tears. For days, she cried herself to bed, would look through old photographs of our great-great Uncle Jerry: a sweet-looking, old man with gray hair and etches of smile lines beneath his eyes. We didn’t know that he was nearly ninety, that he had passed away in his sleep, that his death meant peacefulness at the end of a long life. All we knew was the word "death," the cold, abstract hollow of the word, a vast abyss of confusion and unexplainable pain.

But I think my mother told us because children need to know about these experiences. When my sister learned of Uncle Jerry’s death, she asked my dad to plant a tree in the front yard. In the following weeks, my sister asked every member of our family to come to our house, write letters and cards, and bury them in the earth where my dad would plant a new tree. Then we would release the balloons, watch the sky swallow them up.

My great grandmother and great aunts and uncles drove from West Virginia—a two-hour trip—to join us in our front yard for the planting of what would be called "The Uncle Jerry Tree." Uncle Jerry had already had a funeral, though. This was for my sister and me, an innocent coping of death when it was still abstract to us.

That day, we wrote cards for Uncle Jerry on construction paper with markers. Even my adult family did as well. My father dug a hole in our front yard, deep enough to bury all the cards, and then he placed a small dogwood tree in the garden bed. I don’t have many memories of this day, but I do remember the shovel, dirt and mulch sprinkled around the little tree. I remember that it was spring, and there was a chill in the air that made you reminisce on warmer days. I remember the balloons floating into the sky, little spots of yellow and pink and blue that grew into small dots, and then nothing at all.

And I remember feeling complete, as if this tree were Uncle Jerry’s grave, as if I had known my great-great uncle all my life.

As I grew up, there was a birchwood tree in our yard and a maple tree and the Uncle Jerry Tree, the beautiful dogwood that had spiderlike, thin branches in the winter and oval, pink-rimmed petals with white centers. We never called it anything else. You knew it was spring when the buds began to blossom from nowhere, from nothing, and then all of a sudden, you walked outside and the Uncle Jerry Tree was bending in the wind, petals raining and flying around it.

When I think about the Uncle Jerry Tree, I don’t think about my great-great Uncle Jerry, because truthfully, it was never about him. On the surface it was—the cards, the balloons, the family gathering. But my sister and I demanded the tree should be planted because we didn’t know what death was. We didn’t know that people weren’t permanent. It’s a shattering feeling that breaks down the barriers we once thought we knew, and my sister and I decided to cope using nature.

We used a tree because to us, trees are more permanent than people, but they still reflect the changing conditions to each season. It’s something we can rely on. We depend on scarlet leaves to fall in autumn because we’ve never known anything else. We depend on the bare branches of winter because instinctively, we know. We depend on the growth in spring because we crave hope, we need it to survive.

Trees provide this.

Trees reflect the artwork of nature, the rhythmic movement of the seasons. We use them as metaphors for life and death, for hope and growth, because they are permanently rooted in the earth. Even when they die, too, their remnants are still here. Trees are found in the wood of our desks, the pages of our books. They are signs and sources of life, everywhere.

I didn’t know what Arbor Day was until I had to write this article. We celebrate it a week after Earth Day. Arbor Day is for the trees, for the planting of the trees, for caring for our planet’s natural resources in these specific ways.

I will always look up to my dad for planting the Uncle Jerry Tree, and for all the family members that came to our celebration. In their hearts, they knew that the memorial was not for an uncle we’ve never met, but rather to appeal to the sweet, lighthearted, childish insight that nature can be representative and even healing of death. Nature is how we make sense of these human tragedies so that in the end, we can grow closer to the patterns and quality of trees, for example. We can intimately recognize the capacity for beauty that each season holds.

Sometimes I still think about the cards and letters for Uncle Jerry, buried beneath the tree, roots growing into the paper, the fibers of its existence decaying into earth. We’ve since moved from my brick townhouse, into another home, and the tree belongs to someone else now. In fact, it’s just a dogwood tree. One that sways to the rhythms of the season. One that rains pink petals in the spring, grows bare limbs in the winter.

Read other articles by Claire Doll

The steward of the hope-filled trees

McKenna Snow
MSMU Class of 2023

For the longest time, trees in the wintertime were one of my least favorite sights. In taking a drive through the mountains, there was little variety to behold through the window. The landscape was a grey-brown, like the land had fallen asleep, and for a great distance all the eye could really notice was the empty limbs. The tree trunks were devoid of squirrels playing, signaling that there is a great hush over all the natural world.

It took me a long time to learn how to appreciate the winter, and the empty trees. I didn’t want to forever blame my more annoyed winter moods on the grey trees (which really was a temptation for me), but I wasn’t sure how to go about reconciling their barrenness with their goodness even in the wintertime.

What helped me see the empty trees differently was attending Mass during Lent last year in the glass chapel at the national grotto (which I can walk to from the Mount). Attending Mass in this chapel is especially beautiful because of the window-walls that have a cover of trees outside them, since the chapel sits on the mountainside. The difficult part of this interior design, however, is that in the winter, the outside view is that sight I struggle with—the barrenness, the grey.

But during Lent, I noticed that the interior of the chapel actually matched quite well with its exterior; there were few flowers, if any, and getting into the later weeks of Lent the statues and images were all covered with purple cloth. All the beauty of the chapel, hidden.

I am inclined to think that outside of these penitential seasons, beauty within a chapel is extremely helpful for lifting our hearts and minds in prayer. But here at this quiet, daily Mass with a few scattered people in the pews, I encountered encouragement in the spiritual wilderness of Lent in a very tangible way. There was a moment when barrenness and fruitfulness collided. It was time to receive the Eucharist, and I was walking down the center of the chapel, trying to pray. There was a sister singing the communion hymn alone, and since it was a weekday Mass, there were no instruments. I listened to her sing, saw the covered statues, and the empty trees outside.

But then I believed. I wasn’t there for the glamor of what exterior sights could offer. I was there for Jesus, hidden and yet fully present in the Eucharist. I was there to receive Him, to deepen my relationship with Him, and to receive the abundant graces He was there to offer me. As this moment of faith washed over me, the desert wasn’t so dry. Though I was miles out in the spiritual desert of Lent, and far into winter, both offered an environment to encounter the God of hope, and to see His creation in a new way.

Now, I think that human beings are unique in that we are both body and soul, which means that we have both physical and spiritual needs. So here was the wonderfulness of God in light of this reality: He was meeting me there, in the emptiness, to fill my spiritual needs, but He was also meeting me there to help heal my physical needs and my relationship with His creation. I began to understand the barrenness of those trees better after that. They are a signpost of hope, of waiting for the springtime that is to come. They convey a deeper reality about the interconnectedness of all nature and human life. They are signs of the resilience and brilliance of nature, which knows how to survive in even the harshest Maryland winters. How incredible these trees are, and how they should inspire us to live! In our seasons of sleeping and of grey, there is still life and hope. But, trees are not only symbolic signs, but real and essential aspects of the environment that continually offer hope to our air, the seasons to come, and to all the creatures. Thus, trees offer hope not only to the future of our physical world; through their testimony of surviving the winter through God’s care, they offer hope to those journeying through the spiritual life.

And from these thoughts about the trees, I have come to learn that God is a holistic healer. He sees the whole human person and calls us to love Him with our whole heart, mind, body, and soul. That means that we can, and must, love Him through loving His creation, especially in the physical world all around us.

That is why I argue that Arbor Day is a great extension of the response to love God with our whole self. We are not just spiritual beings, but body and soul inhabiting this earth God gave us. Arbor Day is celebrated by planting new trees, so as to help the environment and to better our world. So I ask myself: so what if trees are grey half of the year? I have encountered their importance year-round, and know for certain that even in winter, we need them. Trees are crucial for the environment’s health, as well as for our own; it is only fitting that we respond to caring for the environment by giving back more trees than we have taken away for our human needs. The use of trees can be a regenerative relationship if it is regulated properly, and if the local community enthusiastically pitches in to giving back.

When I was little, my mom taught me to pick up trash when I could because "littering doesn’t take care of God’s world." She taught me on this small level to be a good steward of the earth, and to see that even the little efforts make differences in caring for it. I believe that caring for the earth through not only removing trash but adding trees is much more holistic approach to caring for the earth. Let us not only remove that which would poison the natural world, but let us contribute intentionally to its flourishing, acknowledging the crucial role trees play in ecosystems. We are the stewards of this earth; and we can impact the earth’s health deeply, even if it is through the planting of a single tree.

Read other articles by McKenna Snow

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