The Forest That Teaches Us to Love

In 1997, ecologist Suzanne Simard published a discovery in Nature that changed how we understand forests. Beneath the soil of British Columbia's old-growth woods, she found that trees are connected through vast underground fungal networks — what scientists now call the "Wood Wide Web." Through these threadlike connections, trees share carbon, water, and nutrients with one another.

But here is what stopped Simard in her tracks: the largest, oldest trees — she called them "mother trees" — were actively nurturing the youngest and most vulnerable seedlings around them. They sent extra carbon to saplings struggling in the shade. They recognized their own kin and gave them preferential care. And when a mother tree was dying, she released a final surge of her stored carbon into the network — a last act of giving that would feed the forest long after she was gone.

When I read about Simard's mother trees, I cannot help but hear the echo of Scripture. "Greater love has no one than this," Jesus said, "to lay down one's life for one's friends." The love of God is not passive or distant. It is a love that reaches toward us through hidden channels we cannot see, a love that nourishes us when we are too weak to sustain ourselves, a love that pours itself out completely so that others might flourish.

The next time you walk through a forest, remember: even the trees bear witness. Beneath what we can see, love is always at work.