What do Trees have to do with Peace?

JULY & AUGUST

The entire planet is heating up right now. Global warming is playing havoc with weather patterns, which in turn affects all plant and animal life. Our emotions are fired up and disagreements are reaching a boiling point, as is evidenced by the ever-increasing and escalating geo-religious-political-economic conflicts around the globe.

Time out!

Now is the time to turn our attention to positive solutions and focus our thoughts and actions creating peace. Peace of Mind. Peace of Heart. Peace on Earth. There is a chance for peace.

An African woman, Dr. Wangari Maathai, was 2004’s Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. Her story…

Thirty years ago, in the country of Kenya,

90% of the forest had been chopped down.

Without trees to hold the topsoil in place,

the land became like a desert.

When the women and girls would go in search

of firewood in order to prepare the meals,

they would have to spend hours and hours

looking for what few branches remained.

A woman named Wangari

watched all of this happening.

She decided that there must be a way

to take better care of the land and

take better care of the women and girls.

So she planted a tree.

And then she planted another.

She wanted to plant thousands of trees,

but she realized that it would take a very

long time if she was the only one doing it.

So she taught the women who were looking

for firewood to plant trees, and they were paid

a small amount for each sapling they grew.

Soon she organized women all over the country

to plant trees, and a movement took hold. It was

called the Green Belt Movement, and with each

passing year, more and more trees covered the land.

But something else was happening

as the women planted those trees.

Something else besides those trees was taking root.

The women began to have confidence in themselves.

They began to see that they could make a difference.

They began to see that they were capable of many

things, and that they were equal to the men.

They began to recognize that they were deserving

of being treated with respect and dignity.

Changes like these were threatening to some.

The president of the country didn’t like any of this.

So police were sent to intimidate and beat Wangari

for planting trees, and for planting ideas of equality

and democracy in people’s heads, especially in

women’s.

She was accused of “subversion” and arrested many

times.

Once, while Wangari was trying to plant trees, she

was

clubbed by guards hired by developers who wanted

the lands cleared. She was hospitalized with head

injuries.

But she survived, and it only made her realize that

she

was on the right path.

For almost thirty years, she was threatened

physically,

and she was often made fun of in the press. But she

didn’t flinch. She only had to look in the eyes of

her

three children, and in the eyes of the thousands of

women and girls who were blossoming right along

with the trees, and she found the strength to

continue.

And that is how it came to be that 30 million trees

have been planted in Africa, one tree at a time.

The landscapes–both the external one of the land

and the internal one of the people–have been

transformed.

In 2002, the people of Kenya held a democratic

election, and the president who opposed Wangari and

her Green Belt Movement is no longer in office.

And Wangari is now Kenya’s

Assistant Minister for the Environment.

She is 65 years old,

and this year she planted one more tree

in celebration and thanksgiving

for being given a very great honor: