But then again, Christmas is strongly involved with today's book. It's another child's picture book, the second since we started this feature last summer. And to me, it is a classic.
The Tale of Three Trees, as retold by Christian writer Angela Elwell Hunt, was first published in 1989 by Lion Publishing of Illinois. I believe it is still in print. Hunt says that the author of this tale is unknown; I'd never heard it before I read this book, and a brief look around the Internet tends to take me back to this book. I did see another version of it on the Bible.org site, not as well written and without Tim Jonke's terrific illustrations.
So is it a real folktale, or just something concocted in modern days? Beats me. I'm no folklorist. But it's a great Christian fable.
In brief, this is the story of three trees that have big dreams. One is dazzled by the beauty of the stars, and wants to be a great treasure chest; one wants to be a mighty sailing ship and cross the world on the business of kings; one wants to remain where he is and grow so tall that people look up at him and think of heaven.
Well, things don't usually work out the way we hope.
All three trees are cut down. The first tree goes to a carpenter's shop, but instead of being used to make a treasure chest, he is made into a hay box for a stable. The indignity!
But then (and pardon me for the bad stitch on the spread):
You can probably guess how things turn out for the other trees.
Hunt does a lovely job with the story, and Jonke's rich and evocative illustrations pair perfectly with it. I'd recommend it to anyone, but especially families with children getting a Christian education; they can learn about their faith, but they can also learn lessons that are so seldom seen in children's books these days, like hope and humility.
The book touches on a number of things -- rudiments of the life of Jesus, but also dreams being fulfilled when we least expect it and not in the way we'd hoped. I once knew a priest who worked in a college; he liked to tell the kids that we head on out with our Plan A (like Jesus's triumphant entry into Jerusalem) and we wind up running into Plan B (the Crucifixion) but we can be amazed by the way things turn out with Plan C (the Resurrection). Plans A and B are what men work, but Plan C is God's work.
Any Christian knows stories like that, of people with a plan for life that comes to nothing until after they fail, and then it's nothing like what they expect. This is seen in many of the great saints, like the bloodthirsty soldier and duelist, Íñigo, injured by a cannonball, converted to a real faith, and transforming Europe as St. Ignatius of Loyola. My old buddy G.K. Chesterton wrote about the similar transformation of St. Francis of Assisi, a spoiled, lavish youth, fanboy of troubadours and jongleurs, who went off to become an adventurous hero and wound up nearly dying in captivity.
Francis, at the time or somewhere about the time when he disappeared into the prison or the dark cavern, underwent a reversal of a certain psychological kind; which was really like the reversal of a complete somersault, in that by coming full circle it came back, or apparently came back, to the same normal posture. It is necessary to use the grotesque simile of an acrobatic antic, because there is hardly any other figure that will make the fact clear. But in the inward sense it was a profound spiritual revolution. The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again; in that sense he was almost as different as if he were dead, as if he were a ghost or a blessed spirit. And the effects of this on his attitude towards the actual world were really as extravagant as any parallel can make them. He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands.
It's not that much of a stretch to see the same happening -- thwarted plans leading to miraculous lives -- in so many unknown "little S" saints around us, or even, fictionally, in a little tree. Things fall apart; God can put them together. That's what He came here to do.
Thanks for reading, and I wish you a most happy Christmas on this Christmas Day.
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