I was a multi-tasking student in my twenties. I worked at least three jobs each week, bicycling between venues: teaching RE at a girls’ college, researching bioethics at the St Vincent’s Bioethics Centre and alternatively pulling beers or popping champagne bottles at the Arts Centre for opera buffs and others.

Studying theology part-time was my reprieve from the manic juggling. I remember a particularly engrossing Carmelite lecturer posing to the class: “Where would we be without the Resurrection?”

This prompted me to reflect upon my British or Irish ancestors. Little thought bubbles of parish vicarages, hedge schools and monastic scriptoriums all burst without the greatest revolution of all – Christ’s Resurrection.

In the class I unwittingly blurted out loud: “Well, I would be a Druid – I suppose!”

The bemused lecturer stopped in his tracks, and the class all looked around. He said in his rough vernacular: “Well, you would say that, Duffy!”

I replied, “Well, all we would have are trees – oak trees to venerate!”
No Cross or Paschal Mystery, but the trees as sort of forerunners of the Redeemer’s Tree of Life.

Trees even today persist as a bridge between our original blessing of Eden and the good that we perceive, the shade we rest under, the shelter we hunger for and the wisdom we aspire to.

Who can blame the Druids for venerating those ancient sentinels, the giant oak trees?

The great American farmer and ecologist poet Wendell Berry writes of trees being somehow remnants “of the blessed and the blessing trees”.

What a world away from our bustling town planners who call trees in their diagrams “street furniture” – literally a world away.

The French-Canadian author Matthieu Pageau writes, like his famous brother icon-writer Jonathan, on the importance of symbolism and the role of narrative in our Western culture via the typology of biblical interpretation. In his fascinating 2018 book The Language of Creation: Cosmic Symbolism in Genesis, he explores the obstacles to supernatural and spiritual meaning in contemporary post-secular society by returning to the roots of Biblical revelation in a symbolic cosmology.

Matthieu contends that the Biblical cosmology rests not on a helio(sun)-centric or geo(earth)-centric worldview, but on a “dendrocentric” one – that is a living, fractal and tree-centred cosmology.

This was something well understood by the members of the earlier Inklings who were such lovers and custodians of earth and trees.

J.R.R. Tolkien made his extensive mythology for today hinge upon the light and understanding of the primeval glowing trees of creation: Telperion and Laurelin. He populates his tales with tree characters and signs, from the Mallorns to the White Tree of Gondor to the Ents and many more.

C.S. Lewis wrote a striking poem called The Future of Forestry in which he imagines a “homeless” land that was a modernist England – treeless. So much of what we have done to trees we have also done to wound ourselves, so writes Lewis:

When the concrete spreads and the town conquers
The country’s heart; when contraceptive
Tarmac’s laid where farm has faded.

Lewis writes in this same poem that the mystery of trees is that they remind us of our lost bearings about our place in creation, because trees:

Came growing creatures of lower nature
Able to live and die, though neither
Beast nor man, and around them wreathing
Excellent clothing, breathing sunlight.

In light of the “original blessing” of trees, it is delightful that our talented young team devised a new logo for the Thomas More Centre – an established tree with deep and vigorous roots and expansive branches. Each branch seems to ignite into flame-like leaves.

It captures our organisational mission and our long legacy – our roots in the soil of Christian vision, realism and social teaching. The living trunk and branches represent our unified sources and our desire to form an organic network of local groups, communities and families.

It is our bold hope to transform the contemporary ecosystem into one of uncommon humanity, imaginative wisdom and real hope.

The TMC Interviews

Don’t forget to browse through the personal, inspirational and lively interviews hosted by TMC organiser Mark Makowiecki with some notable figures both on the Australian and international scene.

Mark has a gift for researching intricately and then bringing out the personalities of these well-known subjects, and for exploring the deep issues that matter to them.

Meet people including Dr Gavin Ashenden, Dale Ahlquist, Dr Larry Chapp, Professor Tracey Rowland, Monica Doumit and many more.

If you browse through the TMC website you will find these interviews in both YouTube and podcast versions.

Not to be missed is the recent invigorating interview with the Perth-based writer and historian Dr Philippa Martyr. Somehow she is able to inject a relatable humour into her careful research about the present state of the Church in Australia.

In this interview Mark and Philippa traverse questions about Philippa’s latest book, the liturgy, vocational discernment, Catholic education and some radical proposals for a vigorous and refreshing charity. Please follow these links for more.

You can meet Dr Philippa Martyr in Melbourne on Saturday, March 22, 2025 at 2pm for a 2.30pm start at Fidelity Books, 443 North Road, Ormond – please RSVP to shop@fidelitybooks.com.au. Or, join in an evening with Philippa also on March 22 at 7pm at St Peter’s Parish Centre, 583 Toorak Road, Toorak, Victoria.

Anna Krohn
Executive Director
Thomas More Centre