A Tree Grows

Last night, I finally finished A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.  I say finally because I have been reading this book since mid-December.  When this semester began, I slipped the volume in a space alongside the other four books I am reading and abandoned it for several weeks.  I finally returned to it last weekend and, over the course of the week, spent spare moments reading a paragraph, a chapter, fifty pages. 

If you have not read this book, I would say that you must.  I generally allow some time before I determine whether a book has truly impacted my life, but in this case, I can honestly say that the story of the Nolans has sunk deep into my mind.  It is a story of poverty and its cycles, addiction, brokenness; more importantly, it is a story of family, hope, and resilience.  Smith's descriptions of poverty in Brooklyn in the early 1900s remain relevant and poignant even today.  She adeptly demonstrates the work ethic, determination, and struggle of the poor, revealing how the world devalues inherently valuable human beings based on their socioeconomic status.  Brilliantly, she does this through the eyes of a child who, through no fault of her own, is born into poverty and who necessarily sacrifices education and freedom so that her family can eat.

The book begins and ends with the description of the tree growing in Brooklyn.

The one tree in Francie's yard was neither a pine nor a hemlock.  It had pointed leaves which grew along green switches which radiated from the bough and made a tree which looked like a lot of opened green umbrellas.  Some people called it the Tree of Heaven.  No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky.  It grew in boarded up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and it was the only tree that grew of of cement.  It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts.

You took a walk on a Sunday afternoon and came to a nice neighborhood, very refined.  You saw a small one of these trees through the iron gate leading to someone's yard and you knew that soon that section of Brooklyn would get to be a tenement district.  The tree knew.  It came there first.  Afterwards, poor foreigners seeped in and the quiet old brownstone houses were hacked up into flats, feather beds were pushed out of the window sills to air and the Tree of Heaven flourished.  That was the kind of tree it was.  It liked poor people.

That was the kind of tree in Francie's yard.

We are reminded of this tree's presence throughout the book, and, in the final sentences, its significance as a symbol of hope, determination, and resiliency is reiterated and reinforced:

She looked down into the yard.  The tree whose leaf umbrellas had curled around, under and over her fire escape had been cut down because the housewives complained that wash on the lines got entangled in its branches.  The landlord had sent two men and they had chopped it down.

But the tree hadn't died...it hadn't died.

 A new tree had grown from the stump and its trunk had grown along the ground until it reached a place where there were not wash lines above it.  Then it had started to grow toward the sky again.

...But this tree in the yard -- this tree that men chopped down...this tree that they build a bonfire around, trying to burn up its stump -- this tree lived!

It lived! And nothing could destroy it.

About a year ago, I was reading in Job and encountered these verses: 

For there is hope for a tree 
 if it be cut down, that it will sprout again,
 and that  its shoots will not cease. 
Though its root grow old in the earth, 
and its stump die in the soil, 
yet at the scent of water it will bud
and put out branches like a young plant.
 But a man dies and is laid low; 
man breathes his last, and where is he?

These words, found in the midst of many disheartening observations and laments, were particularly piercing to me.  How often I have approached my own life with this kind of bleak, despairing perspective.  In the midst of struggle, loss, uncertainty, and loneliness, it certainly feels as though I am being cut down.  Need we remember how the slow process of dragging a saw back and forth against a tree's rough bark, gashing its lifeline, until it falls?  Yet, the tree does not know that its seeds will spread, or that its roots may give life to yet another tree.  In the same way, we cannot know what life our suffering will bring.

One of my favorite songs is "The Sun and the Moon" by mewithoutyou.  With the words from Job resounding in my mind, I understood these lines for the first time:

Daniel broke the king's decree,
Peter stepped from the ship to the sea
there was hope for Job like a cut down tree,
I hope that there's such hope for me

 There was hope for Job, even as there is hope for a cut down tree; there was hope for Francie, even as there was hope for a tree that had been hacked down and burned.  The tree lived.  And nothing could destroy it.

Friends, a Tree of Heaven grows near each of us.  Even in the most uninhabitable spaces, beauty springs forth.  Hope stretches its branches, allowing each of us to rest in its cool shade, even if for a moment.  It is this beauty and this hope that gives each of us the strength to continue.  It is a tree that grows in the midst of poverty, addiction, hunger, violence, and despair; it flourishes in these spaces, even without water, sun, and pure air.

Much more could be said, yet perhaps I have already said too much.  Look around you, see the beauty seeping out from concrete corners and spilling forth from broken people.  It is there.  Nothing can destroy it.