Ask the Trees
A Review of
Discovering the Spiritual Wisdom of Trees
Beth Norcross and Leah Rampy
Hardcover: Broadleaf Books, 2025
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Reviewed by Marilyn Matevia
Although trees have deep spiritual significance and meaning in most of the world’s religions, the rich symbols and teachings have been largely forgotten or deliberately pruned from modern western religious and philosophical traditions. Indeed, the phrase “tree hugger” remains a favorite way to dismiss or denigrate environmental advocates and activists.
In their beautiful new book, Discovering the Spiritual Wisdom of Trees, Beth Norcross and Leah Rampy combine ecological and spiritual insights from and about trees to cultivate an ecospirituality rooted in this ancient and essential wisdom. And it is one that fully embraces tree hugging.
The authors are ideal guides for this work. Norcross is founder of the pioneering Center for Spirituality in Nature and has a background in both forestry and theological studies. Rampy is a retreat leader and founder of Church of the Wild Two Rivers, and recently authored Earth and Soul: Reconnecting amid Climate Chaos. Discovering the Spiritual Wisdom of Trees grew out of a six-week online course they co-developed. Each chapter of the book weaves together personal experience, science, and spiritual reflection (though both authors have been trained in Christian theology, the spirituality they work toward here is – it seems – deliberately nondenominational), and concludes with a hands-on spiritual practice that brings the reflections even more “down to earth.”
Norcross and Rampy co-author the first chapter, in which they explain how their individual fatigue and frustration with traditional approaches to both conservation and spirituality led them each into this work. The remaining chapters are individually authored and reflect each writer’s unique passions and expertise.
In chapter 2, for example, Rampy explores the necessity of a “soul journey” she calls “cracking open.” This is a process of “allowing our hard exteriors to soften” (7) so that we are more attentive and receptive to the spiritual wisdom of trees. She describes her own journey and sources of inspiration, and acknowledges the sometimes difficult and countercultural nature of the work. The spiritual practice at the end of the chapter describes some gentle first steps in cracking open.
Norcross takes the next three chapters, which introduce readers to the basic anatomy, physiology, and ecology of trees. We learn to think about the personal histories of trees, as well as their social location as part of a forest network and broader ecosystem. We learn how trees depend on – but also protect and contribute to soil and water cycles and systems. Norcross helps us see that learning these intricacies “is an essential way to get to know (trees) more intimately – to truly see them, better understand them, engage with them, and learn from each of them as a spiritual teacher” (23).
Rampy takes the next three chapters, on the ecological and spiritual necessity of light AND darkness, the life-saving essence of collaborative networks and community, and the importance of acknowledging loss and grief. She describes how trees use darkness and dormancy for restoration and growth, how they share chemical defenses with other trees through their leaves and nutrients through their elaborately interconnected roots, and how isolated trees are more susceptible to disease and injury. “Forests show us by example that separation is an illusion” (105). Over the centuries in the US, there has been significant loss of tree cover and diversity, through disease and deforestation. Allowing and acknowledging our grief over the loss, Rampy says, is another opportunity for spiritual growth. She quotes Belden Lane: “The threat to natural wilderness forces us into the inner wilderness of the human psyche where wonder, grief, and longing are storming within us as well. Every experience in the natural world invites us to a corresponding work of the soul” (115).
The authors alternate the remaining chapters, on resilience and healing, gratitude and reciprocity, and renewal and hope. Norcross points out that a “new and different kind of resilience” (136) is required for these climate-altered times, one that is “adaptive, persistent, collaborative, and accepting.” She shows how trees model the kinds of tools and strategies that allow not just survival, but actual mutual thriving in the face of change. Rampy calls attention to the power of language in shifting our perspective from one of “taking” and “using” what we want from nature, to one of “receiving” its gifts. The experience and expression of gratitude is itself healing. “As we sense more fully the gifts of trees, we see greater abundance and less scarcity, notice the potential for collaboration instead of competition, and sense how oneness exposes the myth of separation. This is spiritual wisdom to light our way” (150). The world, she says, is “waiting for our gifts, eager for us to participate more fully in the cycle of reciprocity and mutual thriving” (162). Norcross closes the book with a reflection on renewal and hope. She notes that in every class, retreat, or program she and Rampy lead, someone asks, “Do you have hope?” Norcross finds it in the ecological cycles of death and rebirth, or – we might say – eternal life: the ways forests recover from fires, the way dying trees and decaying logs give shelter and nutrients to other life forms… “We live on a planet that is oriented toward life. Hope beckons us to look with clear eyes at the disruption around us, acknowledge that change will be our constant companion, and at the same time participate in renewal based on our gifts and our calling” (171).
Discovering the Spiritual Wisdom of Trees is both informative and inspirational. If you are new to the idea of ecospirituality, it will guide the first steps of your soul journey. If you are someone who teaches or encourages ecospirituality, it will fill you with ideas. Either way, the book is a gift.
Marilyn Matevia
Marilyn Matevia is pastor of Celebration Lutheran Church in Chardon, Ohio, co-facilitator of the Creation Care Affinity Group of the Northeastern Ohio Synod, and coordinator of Holy Hikes-Northeast Ohio. She occasionally teaches Christian Ethics, and Religion and Ecology at the college and seminary level.
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