Religious arboretum

In "Religion of Trees" today, students gave reports on trees appearing in various religious settings. Topics included the Hungarian story of the sky-high tree, the significance of the red cedar to indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, trees in Mongolian shamanism, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis, trees in the Q'uran, trees in Jainism, religious dimensions of the Chipko movement, oak trees in pre-Christian Europe, sandalwood and zelkova in Korean folk religion, the kabbalistic tree of life, the Buddhist Bodhi tree, and a refuge tree of Tibetan Kagyu Buddhism. 

That sounds a little grander than it was: generally our ambitions were rather greater than our research and presentation skills. But the very variety and unevenness of the presentations helped us appreciate the many ways in which trees can matter, whether as ensouled or soulless, ladders to another world or walking sticks, symbols of the afterlife or of earthly clinging, sources of healing or opportunities for care, characters in folk tales or sites of spiritual enlightenment, balm for wounds or among of the torments of the damned, abstractions or even mistranslations. We're ready to hear what the trees have to say.