This Christmas I made a tree out of an old tree branch from the rubbish in our yard. There is a new fence now and to make a connection with the old discarded trees I chose a branch with long spindly branches. I pruned it and trimmed it and made it so it would fit in the house and in a pot of white stones. Then I chose an old bible that was falling apart as the covering, as the pages that would “contextualise” the tree. The bible was ripped and torn and I wrapped and glued page after page of Genesis and Luke and Micah around the branches. I would never rip the bible that I used to use as a one time preacher or the one my father had that is full of underscores and where I found a small page of drawn cartoons he did for me while we sat in church when I was about 9 months old. But somehow I could tear this other one that someone else had put together as their contribution to the “spreading of the word.” And this “contextualised tree” and the torn book became a metaphor for my imagination. When we keep the words that are precious to us or that are truth for us in a stuck state, in a covered library of museum pieces that are used to bludgeon or defend idealogoies then we miss the life that is in and around and always emerging from them.
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