Learning to Sway with the Trees

I made it back to the Cache Valley Unitarian Universalist congregation today after missing the last two weeks. Third visit total. Still figuring out whether this community is a fit, but I keep showing up even if I miss a week or two.

I'm learning that there's no sin if I don't make it one week as long as I pause and take note of my reasons for doing so.

I met someone new: an electrical engineer from California who came to Utah for USU and ended up staying. We talked briefly, the way people do when they're both testing whether they want to invest in a deeper connection.

But what stayed with me from today wasn't the social interactions. It was the topic: animism.

What Animism Actually Means

The presentation defined animism as the understanding that humans and plants interact. That the land and earth aren't inanimate objects but contain their own elements of personhood.

This is the second lecture I've attended at CVUU where the core message was: stop seeing the natural world as backdrop. Stop treating it as resource. Start recognizing it as something.

Something with agency. Something with presence. Something worthy of relationship, not just extraction.

This is a major shift from the framework I was raised in.

The Colonialist Mentality I Inherited

Mormon theology has a complicated relationship with the earth. On one hand, there's stewardship language. We're supposed to care for God's creations. On the other hand, the earth exists for us. It's a resource given by God for human use.

Dominion, not partnership.

Extraction, not reciprocity.

The earth is inanimate matter arranged by divine decree to serve human needs. It has no inherent value beyond its utility to us.

This is the colonial mindset: the land exists to be conquered, controlled, utilized. Trees are lumber. Water is irrigation. Soil is farmland. Everything has value only insofar as it serves human purposes.

It's almost like religion is a reflection of the culture it arises in rather than something revealed.

I absorbed that framework without questioning it. Of course the earth was a resource. What else would it be?

The Meditation

During the presentation, we did a one-minute meditation.

I found myself thinking about a tree I'd visited recently. Or maybe "visited" is the wrong word. A tree I'd noticed.

I was walking my neighborhood, along the back side of Sam's Club on 200 West. There are several trees lining the sidewalk. I've walked past these trees numerous times. I remember another morning during the winter when they were covered in frost in the darkness and looked like they were glowing. On this more recent day, I reached out and touched one. Maybe two. I can't say what made me choose those particular trees.

I noticed the moss on their bark. The texture under my fingers. The way they'd recently lost their leaves. Standing bare, exposed, waiting for spring.

And I remember thanking them. Out loud or just in my head, I'm not sure. But I thanked them for the work they'd done over the summer. For growing their leaves. For contributing to the cleansing of the air.

It felt a little ridiculous at the time. Thanking a tree like it could hear me. Like it mattered whether I acknowledged its existence or not.

But during that one-minute meditation, sitting in a Unitarian church listening to a lecture about animism, I wondered: what if it does matter?

The Scene from Phenomenon

The meditation reminded me of a scene from the movie Phenomenon, starring John Travolta.

His character is feeling frantic. His thoughts racing through his brain faster than he can process them. He's in his garden, trying to work, but the mental chaos is overwhelming.

So he gets down on his hands and knees and uses his fingers to turn the earth. Soil under his fingernails. Dirt between his hands.

And then he stops. He notices the trees.

Something in him calms.

He begins to sway. Gently. Back and forth. Moving with the trees as they move with the wind.

Almost like a child being rocked by a loving parent.

I've Done This

I've stopped mid-walk, looked at trees, and tried to move with them.

To sway gently in the breeze rather than frantically trying to make my life what I think it should be.

To let the rhythm of the natural world slow down the racing thoughts.

To remember that I'm part of something larger, older, slower than my fleeting cares and worries.

It's not prayer. Not in any religious sense. I'm not asking for intervention or guidance from a deity who orchestrated the trees into being.

It's more like... acknowledgment. Recognition. A moment of saying "I see you, and you're here, and we're both part of this."

Do I Believe in Literal Personhood?

Honestly? I don't know.

I'm not sure I believe trees have consciousness in the way humans do. I'm not sure they experience or think or feel in ways that would qualify as "personhood" by most definitions.

But I'm also not sure it matters.

Because whether or not the tree experiences my gratitude, I experience something when I offer it.

When I stop and touch bark and notice moss and thank a tree for its work, I'm doing something important: I'm putting myself in relationship with the world that formed me.

I am, quite literally, stardust. Carbon and oxygen and nitrogen forged in the cores of dying stars, scattered across space, eventually coalescing into a solar system, a planet, an atmosphere, an ecosystem that could support life.

Trees and I share that history. We're both arrangements of stardust that learned to organize itself in increasingly complex ways. They do it through photosynthesis and cellular respiration. I do it through neurons and consciousness.

But we're both here because billions of years of cosmic and biological processes made us possible.

Does the tree know that? Does it matter?

Or is the point simply that I know it. And that knowing is half the battle and changes how I move through the world?

Working With, Not Against

The lecture asked us to reconsider our relationship with the earth. To move away from the colonial mindset of extraction and toward something more reciprocal.

Working with the earth instead of against it.

I don't have to believe in literal animism-in trees as conscious beings with agency and personhood—to recognize that this shift matters.

Because even if trees aren't people, they're not nothing.

They're living systems that evolved over millions of years. They're part of an interconnected ecosystem that I depend on for oxygen, food, climate stability, beauty.

They're anchors in a world that moves too fast. They're reminders that growth takes time. They're evidence that stillness and seasonal cycles and patience are not just virtues but biological realities.

And maybe that's enough.

Maybe I don't need trees to be conscious of me for me to be conscious of them.

Maybe the relationship doesn't require reciprocity to be meaningful.

Maybe it's enough to stop, touch bark, notice moss, and say thank you. Not because the tree will hear me, but because I need to practice gratitude for the things that keep me alive.

What This Changes

If I take animism seriously, even metaphorically, even as a thought experiment, what changes?

I stop seeing the natural world as backdrop to my life and start seeing it as context.

I stop treating resources as infinite and start recognizing them as finite, fragile, worthy of protection.

I stop rushing through my neighborhood and start noticing: the trees losing their leaves, the moss on their bark, the way they sway in the wind.

I stop believing that the only things with value are things that think and feel the way I do.

And maybe most importantly: I stop seeing myself as separate from the natural world and start recognizing that I'm part of it.

Not special. Not chosen. Not made in the image of a god who stands outside creation.

Just one more arrangement of stardust, trying to make sense of being alive.

Swaying with the Trees

I don't know if I'll become an animist in any formal sense.

I don't know if I'll start talking to trees regularly or building altars to the land or adopting indigenous spiritual practices that aren't mine to claim.

But I know this: the next time I'm walking my neighborhood and I see those trees along 200 West, I'll stop.

I'll reach out and touch the bark.

I'll notice the moss.

I'll thank them for their work.

And if the wind picks up, I'll try to sway with them. Just for a moment. Just long enough to remember that I don't have to move through the world frantically, trying to force my life into some predetermined shape.

I can move with the rhythm of things older and slower and more patient than my anxieties.

I can be still.

I can be present.

I can be part of this, rather than trying to control it.

That feels like enough of a shift to matter.

Son of Stardust, Swaying with Trees

The more I write, the more I realize that "Son of Stardust" isn't just a new name that I've adopted. It's a way of understanding my place in the universe.

I'm not above the natural world, looking down at it from some elevated spiritual position.

I'm not separate from it, observing it as an outsider.

I'm in it. Made of it. Entirely dependent on it.

The trees and I share ancestors. Not in a metaphorical sense, but in a literal one. We both evolved from single-celled organisms that learned to harness energy and replicate. We diverged billions of years ago, but we're still cousins. Still family.

So when I stop and sway with the trees, I'm not communing with something other. I'm recognizing something familiar.

Something that's been here longer than I have and will be here longer than I will.

Something that doesn't need my gratitude to survive, but that I need to thank anyway. Because gratitude is how I stay grounded.

How I remember that I'm not the center of anything.

Just one very, very small part of an ancient, ongoing, unfinished story.

And that's enough.

That's more than enough.

That's everything.