Rooted in the Conversation

Four years at the UCA Honors College flew past--are now past. Every year the college sends off its graduates with a gift to remind students to "stay in the conversation," that is, to remain engaged with fellow alumni and professors. Students in the past were given a paper weight, but my class of 2012 was given a pine tree. The planting of the tree was the beginning of a cyclical ceremony, for watching the tree grow would revive old memories but in a season freshly colored by the growth of thoughts and imagination.

My Dad and I, along with my little sisters Ella and Anna, planted the tree in front of the house--a sunny spot in front of the house, nestled in the view from the front porch. Through the years, I can imagine that I will mark its growth as I swing softly back and forth on porch. Maybe I will think about Environmental Alliance, and how we were funded by SGA to plant trees in the barren ground of Bear Village. Of course, I now think of my Knitwise group and a night of yarn bombing trees and light fixtures alike in Simon Park at Conway, demonstrating how the human creation changes the surface of the world we experience.

Ella Grace, now six, told me that she would water the the tree this summer. And so the tree found a name, after its caretaker, but appropriate to its history-- Tree of Grace. The tree represents  time of my life that was largely a gift, partly because my college degree was paid for by the honors college. It was also a gift of change and growth-- learning new knowledge, leaping with faith into strange ideas, imagining new ways of life both human and more than human, and acting out ideas in service learning. This pine is not only a memorial of the blessings of those four years, for it is the gift of life itself. The action of planting a tree is a gift of the honors college, for it unites the class of 2012 in an act of creation that changes the very surface of the earth.We will join the pines in the holy cycle of breath that occurs in the exchange between plant photosynthesis and human respiration.  The wind, heavy with the scent of pine, fills me with awe of the graceful mystery engulfing the Honors college, my family, the trees, and my own past seasons.