On a chosen stretch of ground in the sacred palm hammock natural area adjacent to the main campus, where we removed by hand labor a thicket of Brazilian pepper (Schinus terebinthifolius) ten years old, and were told the ground would be left barren and steril, this live oak (Quercus virginiana) has sprouted to defy the dour predictions of our nay-saying leaders. Live oak, living oak, life. The live oak does not lose its leaves in the fall like its cousins to the north. The leaves grow thick and dark green, the better to ward off the powerful rays of summer sun, thick almost succulent, rounded rather than the usual lobed oak shape, and curved slightly under, to protect the lighter colored underside from harsh reflected light. They only lose the last generation, a browning tumbling mass, when the new one is in place, in mid-March. Mature, the live oak towers and spreads across an expanse of space the size of a small home. Its arm-like branches, thick as an iron-worker's bicep, its spreading trunk, cupped almost like a human hand. The live oak, when allowed to grow into maturity, creates a welcoming space, a place reminscent of our deepest pastoral dreams, peaceful, shaded, cool, open. But that is future. Today, these three leaves represent hope. Other eyes, perhaps, would not even have noticed their presence, or perhaps would have confused them with some other plant, or trammeled this sprout with their eyes cast horizontal, not even knowing what marvelous miracle had just fallen crushed under their feet. When I noticed this sprout last week, I was moved almost to tears, overjoyed at the fact that this little piece of earth would say oak, where I had labored to open it up several months before. We are taught in these modernist days to ignore all the signs and only watch the bottom line, to treat each phenomenon as randomly unconnected to the others, to ignore superstition and laugh at belief and only trust in that which can be measured. We are lost these days, unable to notice the joy that a sprouting oak represents. This great conspiracy of ignorance, casting itself as cold hard reason, denies us our birth right and removes us from knowing the real things to be known. Our lives do matter, every step makes a difference, our purpose here is to live a life as life was made to be lived. This oak promises me the hope that such a path is a righteous one. It promises that the future is brighter than the present, that we can wish for better days and work toward them steadily. This little oak, this expression of earth and air and water and soil and seed, has proven something that all of the science in the world will never disprove. This oak is the earth saying thank you, and I will nurture its growth to say, you are quite welcome.And still the charade unfolds in our nation's capitol; lying men and only half-lying opponents battle out a future that none of us would choose. Who among us has sent young people to their death? Who among us would manufacture weapons designed to tear through flesh with an efficieny that defines evil? Who among us has cultivated hate and distrust and an unwillingness to see all life as worthy of living? Who perpetuates the hierarchy or believes in leadership as necessary? Who profits from the death of others, and robs and cheats and steals so that their barricades can be built higher and their walls made thicker and their world more insular? What has happened to the great project of humanity? Why have we conceded to the forces of death? What is this wish for instability and violence other than a last gasp by desperate men whose time has finally come? The wise words of Henry Thoreau are useful to us now in these dark days of ongoing deception. We must not fight the market and its lying minions, we must transcend it. "Cultivate poverty like a garden herb. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Thing do not change; we change." And so pursue that sprouting oak, find the earth again telling you what is right and true and why there is hope for the future after all. Do not concede another inch. Sprout in the soils they have told you are poisoned and flourish for the sake of us all.
