Lux In Tenebris Lucet: Tuesday, December 20

Day 23 of our 28-day Advent journey of mini-dispatches to give you pause and light.

Flora, including lace lichen and purple paddle cactus (i.e. prickly pear) in Big Sur, California. Summer 2022.

"A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

"So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness."
—Herman Hesse from Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte

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"Then God planted a garden in Eden, in the east. He put the Man he had just made in it. God made all kinds of trees grow from the ground, trees beautiful to look at and good to eat. The Tree-of-Life was in the middle of the garden, also the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil."
—Genesis 2:8–9 (MSG)

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Earlier essays on Advent:

• With Eyes to See

• Advent and Looking for Light

• ADVENT 2022 SERIES

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