The Turning

“It’s a book about two trees,” my student piped up in response to my query to my Classic Literature class about their first impressions of Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions, that fabled fourth-century creation described as the first autobiography of the Western world.

“It’s a book about two trees,” she repeated. At first, I was taken aback by her unusual response. But in fact she had nailed it—two trees: The pear tree from which boy Augustine recklessly stole fruit simply because he could and the tree under which he heard a command to pick up the scriptures and resolved his agonized tension over embracing the Christian faith. We can use the terms superbia (pride) and humilitas (humility) to describe the two poles of Augustine’s soul-life as he achingly narrated the turning, the reorientation of his entire life from self- to God-directedness. This hard-won moment of turning under the second tree may have seemed sudden for Augustine, but it ushered in a lifetime of deep probing into the mysteries of life and the ultimate mystery that is God. A life of turning again and again.

On the cusp of our Lenten journey, we find ourselves in a garden with the first man and woman, beneath a tree of knowledge of good and evil with tempting forbidden fruit. We might question some of the conclusions past Christians have drawn from this passage about ideal gender relations. Yet, taken as an insight into our shared human propensity for self-referential superbia, this tale of garden and tree rings true.

Further, at the end of our forty-day Lenten journey, we will find ourselves under a second tree. A cross-shaped tree on Calvary, a tree of life. In between will be our time of turning once again with growing humilitas in this season for reorientating our lives toward the source of life.