This Fence

What’s the story with this fence?

I saw this fence as Scout and I were out hiking last Friday morning.  I didn’t follow the fence to its end but it didn’t look like it went very far down the hill but it definitely ended where you see it in the photo.  Again, what’s the story with this fence?  It is not separating property as the whole area there is part of Long Branch Farm.  It isn’t enclosing anything.  It’s just there.  There is, I am sure, a story behind it that likely goes back from before Long Branch became a part of the Cincinnati Nature Center.  Was it a fence that separated two properties?  Did the two owners like each other or were they glad to be separated by this fence?

We humans can put up fences and walls but nature has ways of getting around them.  Just this morning I was reading a book about the writings of Howard Thurman (often referred to as the spiritual father of Martin Luther King, Jr).  As writer Lerita Coleman Brown reflects on Thurman’s writings about nature, she quotes him and what he learned from trees.

“I needed the strength of that tree, and, like it, I would hold my ground. . . . I cultivated a unique relationship with the tree. . . . I could sit, my back against the trunk, and feel the same peace that would come to me in my bed at night. I could reach down in the quiet places of my spirit, take out my bruises and my joys, unfold them, and talk about them. I could talk aloud to the oak tree and know that it understood.”¹

Brown continues as she reflects how Thurman would have resonated with what science has continued to discover about the wisdom of trees.

Thurman’s sense that his old oak tree understood him—that it had a consciousness, of sorts, by which it could console and embrace him is now verified by scientific research. Botanists tell us that trees communicate, especially with each other, through an intricate intertwined root system, chemicals, electrical impulses, and scent. If an animal begins to chew on their leaves, they can warn other trees of a threat nearby. They also emit certain pheromones to attract beneficial predators to eat bugs or insects that are damaging to them.

Remarkably, trees also form communities. “Mother trees” feed food and water to younger seedlings and protect them. In some areas, the children of older trees continue to feed the stumps of their parents to keep them alive. Trees know how essential each tree is to their livelihood, so they live as interdependent networks to care for each other. Planned forests, or those often planted for commercial purposes, demonstrate the effects of disruption. Researchers find that seedlings who lack parent trees to care for them don’t live as long as trees who live in families, where nutrients and wisdom are passed from one generation to the next. I think Thurman would have been pleased to learn of this research, as he had intuited something similar. Trees remind us, as Thurman did, of the interconnectedness of everything.²

We humans can build these fences and these walls and yet the trees and plants that grow up around them continue to communicate, care, and nurture one another across, around, and below what we build.  But not just trees and plants, but even us humans often do the same - finding ways to connect with others around, over, and beneath the walls and fences we erect.

It was just 6 days past the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel when I saw this fence.  On the way over to Long Branch, I listened to a podcast  that was an interview with an Israeli survivor from one of the Kibbutz attacks.   It was a brutal listen but I felt it to be a necessary one because it helped to make the story real and not just the reporting we see on news websites.  After finishing the podcast on the way and I hiked with Scout, the war between Israel and Hamas was heavy on my heart and in my prayers.

And then this fence and all the questions around it.

And the walls that we have erected between peoples and nations.

I grieve so deeply for the horrors inflicted upon one another.  I grieve for the innocents in Israel whose lives were taken and whose lives have been forever scarred by the attacks.  I grieve for the Palestinians who are caught in the crossfire as Israel has responded to the terrorist attacks and the war has widened.  This isn’t a commentary on who is right and who is wrong in this but simply a lament but also a hope of what humans can do even as we are divided.

Yesterday, I read two reflections from Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (

Life is a Sacred Text

) who writes  beautiful and powerful reflections on substack.  The first was entitled “a lot of things are true ” (which I highly recommend you read in full - all 20 points).  She followed it up with another entitled “a peacemaking lens ” (also highly recommended reading) where she shared about a project that was started 12 years ago (that unfortunately I don’t think is still happening) called The Blood Project where Israelis and Palestinians donated “to a mutual blood bank, with the slogan, ‘Could you hurt someone who has your blood running through their veins?’”  She shared a video telling the story of the initiative.

The video is well worth 8 minutes of your time.  While I don’t think the initiative is still going, as I watched it and saw people laying in beds next to each other with the same color blood being drawn, I noticed that no walls were between Israeli and Palestinian or between Jew and Muslim.  They were there as human beings seeking to move beyond the walls that divided then and still divide today.

Again, this reflection isn’t about whether Israel has a right to respond to what took place (they do) or whether Hamas was justified in the atrocities they committed (they weren’t) but a lament over where we find ourselves in our world today but also recognizing hope of what humans can do in moving beyond the fences and walls.

Rabbi Ruttenberg ends her “a lot of things are true” reflection with this...entitled “Prayer of the Mothers” which was originally written by Rabbi Tamar Elad Appelbaum and Sheikha Ibtisam Mahamid and then translated by Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie

God of Life
Who heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds
May it be your will to hear the prayer of mothers.
For you did not create us to kill each other
Nor to live in fear, anger or hatred in your world
But rather you have created us so we can grant permission to one another
to sanctify Your name of Life, your name of Peace in this world.
For these things I weep, my eye, my eye runs down with water
For our children crying at nights,
For parents holding their children with despair and darkness in their hearts
For a gate that is closing and who will open it while day has not yet dawned.
And with my tears and prayers which I pray
And with the tears of all women who deeply feel the pain of these difficult days I raise my hands to you
please God have mercy on us
Hear our voice that we shall not despair
That we shall see life in each other,
That we shall have mercy for each other,
That we shall have pity on each other,
That we shall hope for each other
And we shall write our lives in the book of Life
For your sake God of Life
Let us choose Life.
For you are Peace, your world is Peace and all that is yours is Peace
And so shall be your will and let us say Amen.

May we take wisdom from the trees that surround us and from the wisdom of elders such as Howard Thurman and Rabbi Ruttenberg to sink our roots down deep into this world, to find creative and merciful and life-giving ways to go around, over, and beneath these fences that we have built and find new ways forward.

1. Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart, p 9

2. Lerita Brown Coleman, What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman, p49