The Tree of Life and its Fruit

 In the small piazza near the Chiesa dei Cappuccini S. Severino, high and overlooking the panoramic valley, stands a bronze sculpture by Andrea Roggi titled, “Tree of Life”.  It is a subject by which artists are frequently intrigued; by which faithful are perennially haunted, and to which eternally drawn.  I know nothing of the artist, nor how the sculpture was prompted and finally settled into this location.  But whether simply purchased and installed, or inspired by this particular setting, it evocatively integrates the agricultural region stretching out around us, and the airy expanse of the hillside view.

 

In fact, the sculpture is more air than bronze – an open circle into which passersby love to poke their head, or through which to be photographed.  But if some might be offended by the playful interaction, I suspect the artist might smile at his successful execution as viewers are quite literally drawn into the art.

 

Held aloft on a pedestal perhaps 5-feet tall, the earth is an open globe with a tree rising from its upmost surface toward the heavens.  The tree’s roots dangle into the interior of the world.  But as evocative as are the descending roots, it is the tree, itself, that captivates – the trunk formed by two human bodies glorying in each other while stretching toward Divinity.  In his artist’s statement, Roggi writes:

 

In the Tree of Life, the embraced male and female figures create a bridge between the Earth, 

where the olive tree grows, and the other part of the world, the vault of heaven. 

Like tree branches aiming for the sky, striving to reach the greatest heights, 

we try to strike a balance between a part of ourselves that is rooted in the ground 

and a greater part yearning for the sky: 

part of us is in the ground, but most of us is above the sky.

 

I’ve been captivated by the art ever since passing by it on our first evening here in Spello – the openly beckoning globe, the dangling roots, the exuberant tree; the perfect harmony with the olive groves cascading throughout the hillsides. And that enchanting discernment of the bridge where earth and heaven conjoin.  It is both sensual and inspiring.

 

Various cultures have scratched around on such linkages.  Indigenous peoples have routinely called attention to sacred places – holy places – where Creator and creation come into contact.  Celtic people have given us the notion of “thin places” where the membrane between heaven and earth becomes diaphanous enough to see into the other side.  All recalling us to the intimate proximity of eternity with the quotidian.

 

“The embraced male and female figures…rooted in the ground and a greater part yearning for the sky.”

 

All that said, it is easy to feel like the two have little contact these days, heaven and earth.  Whatever it is in which our roots are dangling, it doesn’t seem very nourishing – or grounding.  Whatever it is toward which our arms our reaching, it doesn’t appear to be very salvific.  And as for embracing one another, well, there isn’t enough of that on which to comment.  We have traded loving for condemnation, exchanged embracing for killing, muffled exuberant reaching with stultifying embitterment.  We have become as estranged from each other as have heaven and earth.  At least earth from heaven.  Easter’s recent “Alleluias” remind us that the gardener still and determinedly toils among us, with saving determination.

 

Perhaps part of the problem is supposing that one approach – one aspect – is adequate. Could it be, however, that the artist is on to something with the inclusion of all three:

 

Rootedness in the earth.

Exuberant embrace of each other.

Celebratory reaching toward heaven.

 

Love of creation, love of each other, an insatiable ache for God.  

 

It will not, after all, go well for us without any one of the three. 

 

All three.

All three.

All three.