The Compassion Tree

“The canyon is burning. Evacuating now. Please send prayers,” wrote a friend over text during the start of the LA fires. 

Los Angeles is my home, and the LA fires destroyed over 10,000 of them. They also burned up almost 100,000 acres of land, ruining the homes of the coastal live oak and palm, raccoon and coyote, milkweed and manzanita.  

I was in Colorado when the fires hit. So, like many, I watched on a screen, hoping, praying, holding my breath. One video in particular struck me. The video was from Altadena, and it showed a bare street, a heavy canopy of jet-black clouds, and a lone oak tree. The tree was on fire. The camera angled closer: The very center of the tree was burning, but nowhere else. Red flames raged in the middle of this tree as if their breast was a hearth. The visual was mesmerizing and impossible. How could the heart incinerate while the body survived? Their burning heart opened mine, and I started to weep.  

If you look at photos of the neighborhoods now, you will indeed see the phenomenon of the trees. The human homes are piles of ash, but the trees rise. Yes, the land has been poisoned by environmental toxins that will take decades to heal. And yet, amidst this decay stand the trees. They surge upward, thousands of them. They are the collective.  

As an environmental psychologist and a follower of the mystic path, I know that the unbearable grief of ecological loss laced with human pain holds entry points to the univocity of being, if we can pay attention. Shortly after the fires, I led an eco-grief circle for those affected. We honored the entanglement of the human and more-than-human lives. My friend who evacuated the canyon shared tenderly about her favorite tree in Altadena. She visited them regularly and sought refuge under their branches. She had named this creature “the compassion tree.” Through tears, she asked: “Did the compassion tree suffer? Are they alive?” 

A week later, she sent me a message: The compassion tree was wounded, but they stood. Their heart had been split open down the middle by the intensity of the flames.  

I contemplated whether the compassion tree’s heart had broken for their human and more-than-human kin. I imagined placing a hand on their thick oaken skin. I could feel their form drooping toward the soil. Perhaps their scarred body had become a wider aperture to love from. Isn’t a broken heart the widest landscape of all?  

My friend’s request for prayers reminded me of Simone Weil, the mystic and radical from the 1940s, who famously wrote that “absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” [1] Simone lived in a time of great division during the rise of Nazi Germany. How could attention, as prayer, be useful? Yet it is exactly in times of political and social upheaval, unmitigated climate change, and uncertainty that our attention becomes a precise tool of love. My friend’s attention, her presence with the tree, is what oriented her toward compassion. In that reciprocity of relationship, love flowed. Maybe we do not give prayers, but, like the trees, become prayers.  

Two months after the fires, Los Angeles is on the cusp of spring. When I notice, slow down, and see the trees, I am witness to their endurance and compassionate creativity. The arboreal courage of tree prayer continues to offer beauty and shade, clean our air, and greet us with greening leaves. They seem to sweep the wreckage of the disaster into their boughs and continue growing toward the light.  

As a climate psychologist, I am sober about the realities of climate change. But we, too, can stand like trees. We, too, can pray with our bodies through the attention we bestow. And like the compassion tree, we can risk loving so fully that we are broken right open.  

May our loving be prayers in motion toward justice, goodness, and mercy—an echo, a song, a simple symphony to remind us that where our attention is, there too is our heart.  

[1] Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr (Routledge, 2002), 117. 

Lindsay Branham, PhD is an environmental psychologist, eco-doula, author, and graduate of the CAC’s Living School. You can find her Substack for ecological wisdom and contemplative spirituality at lindsaybranham.substack.com. 

The Center for Action and Contemplation’s mission is to introduce Christian contemplative wisdom and practices that support transformation and inspire loving action. In this issue of the Mendicant, we are honored to share with you articles from five members of CAC’s community about what loving action looks like in their lives. Download a PDF of this issue.