Walking Among the Trees: Our Faith, Our Forest
For the first 20 years that our family has attended St. Peter’s I never really investigated the roughly 5 acres of forest that surround our church. I thought it was impressive, but just took it for granted. After all, trees are everywhere in Arlington County, and this was just another great example, albeit it a unique one. It's only when we formed the Creation Care study group that I decided to focus on the trees and forest because very little had been done to identify or promote our forest. It stood as a wonderful natural resource just living peacefully around us. We now have, since 2025, a children’s playground that extends out into the forest. The same year gave us a nature trail - an easy curving walk of about 110 yards among many mature beautiful deciduous and conifer trees, including our champion loblolly pine. Notable trees include red maple, kousa dogwood and deodar cedar, all recognized by Arlington County.
One cannot help but draw on the association between the biblical world of Jesus of Nazareth, his forbears, and our own unique forest.
There are no less than 73 different plants, shrubs and trees mentioned in the Bible, from Acacia (the Ark of the Covenant in Exodus) to Wormwood (Revelation). Some of the most prominent are the Cedars of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) used to build the first temple in Jerusalem as well as the olive and fig tree used by Jesus in parables.
Jesus related to the natural world as something he knew intimately, taught from, and treated with respect. The Gospels present him praying in deserts, mountains, gardens and other open places and using birds, lilies, seeds, trees, storms, and vineyards as central images in his teaching. He appears to be fully immersed in the landscapes of Galilean Judea, and not detached from them. He described spending time in lonely places for prayer, moving through rural settings and being present near the sea of Galilee and on mountains.
The miracles also show a close relationship with nature stories such as the calming of the storm, walking on water, feeding crowds all which connect Jesus to the sea, weather and the provision of food from the land.
Olives are still grown and harvested in Palestine. It is a main source of income as well as integral to the daily diet. Palestinian farmers sleep under the groves for two weeks before harvest, when the entire family joins in the manual picking. Olive trees do not produce prime fruit until they are 30 years old. Many of the trees still producing in Palestine today are a thousand years old.
We are bound to ask: how can our forest help us in our spiritual lives? First of all, think of the health benefits.
Whether you're walking on the new nature trail or traversing through the forest on your own you may not realize it, but you are practicing something known as forest bathing, or Shinrin-yoku - the Japanese practice of immersing yourself in the natural environment of forests. Far from a strenuous hike, it focuses on slowly absorbing the forest atmosphere through all five senses.
As an intentional practice, forest bathing offers a variety of proven physical and mental health benefits including boosting our immune system. The trees release antimicrobial compounds called phytoncides, and other chemicals that are released by the trees filling our nostrils and lungs in a therapeutic way.. The Cleveland Clinic says that inhaling these chemicals can increase the activity and abundance of natural killer (NK) cells in the body, which fight viruses and tumors.
The new nature trail will lead you through a unique tour of some of our notable trees. Alongside the trail are fern clusters which appear when the weather is cool. They will eventually die back during our hot summer only to return again each spring. Take a moment to admire the soaring and leaning black oak reaching for sunlight in competition with red oaks and tulip trees. The point is not to hurry through the forest. Let’s take a short vacation from ruminating about the issues in our lives and take time to stop, look and listen, and you will find something that you would have missed had you hurried through.
Doug Marshall, parishioner