October 18: Exposed Roots

NEWS ALERT! We interrupt our normal program journeying as disciples through the Acts of the Apostles to bring you the following reflection thoughts. Please stay tuned following this alert for your regularly scheduled program (okay so I’m never really regular with our little devotional reflections, you needn’t remind me).
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Last Friday I was having a new television service installed and for a while had the television turned on to a station I wasn’t paying any attention to as the installer was trying to figure out a problem with the phones. When he left the room I allowed my attention to turn to the television show that had come on, Ask This Old House. It is a program about restoring old homes and it was near the end of the program and there was a landscape specialist looking at the yard of the house. He got really animated and frustrated as he showed us trees that had developed what he called “Mulch Volcanoes”.

“Mulch Volcanoes”, he explained, are what happen when every season some grounds crew (or naïve homeowner) comes out and just dumps a fresh load of mulch around a tree and moves on. The mound of mulch rises up the trunk of the tree and begins to suffocate it. Similarly this sometimes just happens when a tree is planted too deep in the ground. The problem is this: even roots need to breathe. Trees have what is called a root flare, where the roots begin to branch out from the trunk and spread out into the soil. This root flare is supposed to be partly exposed to the air to allow them to breathe. (For information and visual aids: http://www.dirtdoctor.com/organic/garden/view_question/id/484/ ). A healthy tree has a nicely exposed base where the roots start to spread out into the ground.

When we allow these roots to be buried they will actually send out secondary root systems to travel up towards the top of the soil in order to get air, and these secondary root systems will actually suffocate and kill a tree. In the case of the television show I was watching it was actually too late to save many of the trees in the yard. They had strangled the life out of themselves.

At this point I went back to what I was doing helping the installer get out of my house as quickly as possible… and I thought I had learned a bit of trivia that was intriguing but not overly important in my life. (Out of laziness all of my trees have nicely exposed root flare!)

Then on Sunday morning as I was sifting thoughts through my mind it hit me – hit me in a moment of prophetic vision similar to Ezekiel being shown the river flowing from the temple to give life to the world (Ezekiel 47, the text Katie preached so powerfully – and prophetically – from on Sunday).

How many of us have covered up our root flare? How many of us have been scared to let our roots be exposed? How many of us are strangling the life out of ourselves?

Our faith has roots, and is our roots.

Our faith has a story from which we come, from which we are living, and towards which we are headed. Our lives are anchored and rooted… or we hope they are, in soil that is some mixture of our families, our culture, our vocation, our own sense of moral agency… a whole mix of things really. Our lives are also rooted in our faith – scriptural narratives, religious tradition and our own experience of the living Christ. And these roots are watered by the river of the Holy Spirit that is ever flowing, ever deepening, ever expanding to bring life to the world.

But if we continually insist on covering up our roots – for well meaning reasons even – then we are strangling ourselves and we are risking not being fruitful… maybe even spiritual and emotional death.

As a community of disciples we need to help one another gingerly and carefully unearth our “root flare”. We need to encourage each other be vulnerable enough to expose the soil in which we are rooted. We need to breathe in, and breathe out, our life giving faith - sharing what it is we have seen and heard.

It is risky work. It is healing work. It is participating in God’s transformative mission.

What reasons do find yourself giving for “covering up” your roots?

Who do you trust to help you unearth the rich and deep roots of your faith and life?

How might you help others to find such healing in their lives?

Revealing God,
You came to us to show us the roots of who you are – in the flesh. Help us to live similarly exposed lives. Remind us to constantly breath in, and out, your life giving Spirit.
Amen.