The parson, with his Bible and his little book, walked through the yard on the cool spring day, choosing his favorite tree and relaxing in its shade. Sitting down, he opened his Bible and began to read.
Overhead, the fruit hanging from the tree’s branches looked down, reading over his shoulder. But the tree pulled back, so that the fruit could not see. “Be still, my children,” the tree said to its fruit, “and pay no attention. For love is gone, we have killed love. There’s no such thing as love.”
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This is the generation of that tree, and how it came to be planted in that place. The mother tree, her roots digging deep, was cut down by the soldiers. And her fruit fell to the ground, crying—for she had been a good mother. Before their eyes, the mother-tree was chopped down, and hewn into boards, and assembled together in the shape of a cross.
“Why cut down our mother?” the fruit asked. But the soldiers did not answer. The wooden beams that had been their mother was laid on the shoulders of a Man, and the fruit watched Him die. They were young, and did not understand, but this they knew—their mother was gone. And deep within, they understood that love was dying. Thus, their love for their mother faded—or so they thought. But love was not dead, and would rise again; and their love for their mother ruled the secret places in their hearts.
So the fruit rotted, and their seeds took root in the soil and sprung up, becoming new trees. And as they bore fruit, they would tell their children, “Love is gone, we have killed love. There’s no such thing as love.”
Those fruit were picked, and eaten, and those seeds planted. And when they grew into trees, they remembered what their parents had told them, saying to their own fruit:
“Love is gone, we have killed love. There’s no such thing as love.”
So it went on, the trees teaching their fruit this phrase, and being passed on from seed to seed. As time passed further on, the fruit would ask the trees more questions, but the trees could not answer, for they did not know. They could only repeat what they had been told when they were fruit themselves, and the reasons of how and why were lost to that line of trees.
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The trees would be cut down, and new trees would grow in their places, and the number of years passed grew. Empires died that the trees outlived, passing on their knowledge and stories to their fruit. The fruit of that line was desirable, pleasing to the eyes and good for food, and so the fruit was picked and sold in the market places, the seeds spreading. The line of those trees spread across Europa, separated by time and distance but bound by wood and chlorophyll and roots—half-remembered fever dreams of an ancient and loved mother-tree that even now the great-great-great-great-great-descendants of her fruit mourned.
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It so happened that eventually, a merchant passed by where several of the trees had taken root, and picked the fruit and sold it. The fruit was bought by a captain who was setting in order everything for his party’s expedition. They needed supplies—food, water, raiment—and thus the fruit crossed the ocean and into the
There was a little girl who was hungry, and her father gave her fruit. She ate it, and planted the seed in a secret place in the field that only she knew.
And that was how that tree came to be there, and the parson would come every day with his Bible and his little book and study under the tree.
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The tree would lean back, pulling its fruit away, but every day the parson would come—doing his devotions, praying, reading aloud, writing his sermons. And the fruit heard it. They heard it all.
But what would trees know of shed blood and incarnated flesh?
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