Part 1 of 3: Thank You

Pastor Anthony preaching on “Thank You.” Scripture focus is Psalm 111. Preached on August 8, 2021.

This is the first sermon of a three-part series on: “Words Have Power.”

Copyright 2021 by Rev. Anthony J. Tang and Desert Mission United Methodist Church.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? This has been a question asked by philosophers and scientists going back to at least the 1800’s if not the 1700’s. It’s a trick question of sorts because there are different ways of perceiving what is being asked. The person asking the question might be asking whether it’s possible to know if something exists if there isn’t an observer. Or, the asker might be making a point about the definition of the word, “sound.”

You see, a tree that falls in the forest causes the air around it to alternate between high and low pressure. When that high and low pressure hits an eardrum, it causes the eardrum to vibrate sending electrical signals to nerve centers in our brains. Only when those nerve centers are activated is sound perceived. Otherwise, it’s just vibration. So, according to the technical definition of the word, “sound,” the answer is, “No, no tree makes a sound if it falls and there’s no one to hear it.”

Or, is this simply a human-centric egotistical viewpoint? An anthropocentric viewpoint, meaning, is this just another example of people thinking that people are the center of the universe? Or is this an example of “ear-drum bias?” We no longer believe that the earth is the center of the universe with the moon and sun and stars rotating around us as a fixed point, yet, do we believe that sound is only sound when heard by people?

More to my point, we know that vibrations are passed through the air all around the world with or without people. We believe that only eardrums can interpret sound and humans have used that ability to communicate through words. But can there be sound without eardrums?

What about members of the deaf community who may not have functional use of their ear drums, but who will attend rock concerts interpreted into American Sign Language and who use their whole bodies to feel and experience the vibration of the music?

What about bugs that may not have ear drums? There are plenty of bugs that create sounds and therefore others who receive those sounds, but may not have ear drums as we have.

And, what about plants? Can plants receive sounds without ears? Can plants know that another plant has fallen in the woods?

In 2009, the Royal Horticultural Society did a months long experiment and found that plants did grow better when talked to, particularly by women’s voices. (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/5602419/Womens-voices-make-plants-grow-faster-finds-Royal-Horticultural-Society.html)

In November of 2004, the MythBuster’s television show experimented with several different greenhouses of plants playing different recordings in each of them except for the control greenhouse that had silence and found that the greenhouses with voices or music did better than the silent greenhouse. (https://mythresults.com//episode23)

Suzanne Simard is a Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia and the author of Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. (https://suzannesimard.com/finding-the-mother-tree-book/) She had a theory that the trees of a forest could talk with each other, communicate, and even collaborate. Most people thought she was crazy, so it was difficult for her to get funding. Eventually, though, she was able to conduct experiments using radioactive carbon 14 carbon dioxide gas as a way to label that specific carbon dioxide, like putting a tracer on it. She covered a small birch tree in a plastic bag and used syringes to insert the radioactive material into the bags and waited an hour, partly to make sure the grizzly bear in the area left and partly so that there would be enough time for the plant to absorb the radioactive carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, turn it into sugars, and send it down into the roots.  She wanted to see if this plant would shuttle those resources from its own roots into the roots of a neighbors that needed help. With her Geiger counter, she was able to confirm that the tree had, in fact, absorbed the labeled carbon dioxide. Then, she went over to a fir tree (a different species, mind you) that she had covered, thereby blocking it from sunlight and it too had evidence of the radioactive carbon dioxide which it could have only gotten from the first tree, through the underground network. Furthermore, she went to a cedar plant that had not been blocked from the sunlight, and the Geiger counter was silent, meaning that the cedar didn’t need any resources, so there was no need for the birch tree to send it anything. Through a series of experiments, she was able to discover that the different trees were in two-way communication and the sharing of resources based on what resources each tree needed in different seasons or conditions. More than that, she found that older trees would send extra nutrients to tree saplings. She found that trees were able to recognize their own offspring and send them extra nutrients. And, older, dying trees were able to send information and defense mechanisms to younger trees prior to their own deaths, thereby giving them a better chance at surviving future stresses. As wild and crazy as this all sounds, every one of her claims has been verified by her research and experiments. (https://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne_simard_how_trees_talk_to_each_other#t-458464)

It seems to me that when a tree falls in the forest and no person is there to hear it, every other plant around is there to receive its sounds, its messages, and its words.

I have noticed that in my refrigerator, there are times when my green onions will continue to stretch, trying to grow out from the constraints of the rubber bands that hold them together. I have noticed that if I put my celery or lettuce in water, the plants will firm up as they absorb the water into their cells. Potatoes removed from the ground and had all of their roots and stems cut off can still sprout new growth.

This has given me a different understanding of life and death. I used to wonder when exactly is the point when a body transitions from life to death, but more and more as I observe life around me, I no longer think that there is one moment of death for a multi-cellular life form. Plants don’t necessarily die at the moment we harvest them.

Perhaps some of you are thinking to yourself right now, “Come on, Pastor Anthony, I just want to go home and eat lunch. Why do I have to think about my food being alive?!?!”

And I am not here to create guilt. I’m not talking about what foods we should or should not be eating, what foods we should or should not be buying, nor how we should or shouldn’t be cooking our foods. I am not interested in any of that, but what I am interested in is recognizing the life that our food lives and the sacrifice that is made in order for us to eat.

The transfer of living material from one body to another is what happens every time we eat. When we eat a piece of meat, a vegetable, a fruit, a fungus or whatever, we are also transferring resources from one living organism into another, namely us. I believe this is the way life is supposed to function. To eat is to receive a living gift, a sacrifice, made so that we would use that life to create good.

There is no way to live without being the recipient of a sacrifice, and for this, we are to give thanks. That’s the exchange. Every time we eat, we thank God for the gift we have been given and we thank our food for the sacrifice it makes so that we may live.

In a physical way, that thanksgiving is expressed with the words, “Thank you.” Our vocal cords vibrate from the words, creating vibrations in the air, which are directed towards the food we eat so that both our bodies and that which we are about to consume may both be moved by the vibration of gratitude and gratitude is the vibration of health and of life.

Spiritually, every time our bodies move in the vibration of gratitude, then we are aligned with the voice of God.

Remember in Genesis chapter 1, the voice of God swept over the waters of chaos, bringing order and life. Words have power. Remember in the Gospel of John chapter 1, we are told that in the beginning was the Word (that we know of as Jesus Christ) and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Words have power.

And in Psalm 111, we hear the poet singing praise and thanksgiving to God for wonderful deeds, for food, and for faithfulness. In gratitude, the poet is resonating with God’s voice.

Resonance refers to the reinforcement of a vibration by the synchronous vibration of a neighboring object. For example, if you take two tuning forks set to the same pitch and hit one with a hammer to start it vibrating, the other nearby tuning fork of the same pitch will also start vibrating at the same frequency. Keep them both close enough together and the vibration of both tuning forks will reinforce each other until eventually, they fade away. That’s resonance.

As God has created the universe, gratitude and thanksgiving vibrated out through the universe and that is the state we were created to be in. We were created to be thankful and grateful.

And I will confess, I’m terrible at thank you cards. I’m not very good at writing correspondence. I do my best to communicate appreciation for others, which goes to remind me that gratitude is not a permanent state or a characteristic, but it’s a journey that calls us to move closer to the ways of gratitude. When I struggle with this practice of gratitude, I often think that I’m struggling to do something that’s not natural to me, when I actually have it in reverse. The normal state of life is not to be ungrateful, but the normal state of life, of what God created for us, is to resonate gratitude.

So, what we’re doing when give thanks to God, and we give thanks for our food…

And consider… if gratitude is this important to our food, consider how important it is for our loved ones and neighbors.

The key to gratitude is not to try to create something that isn’t there, but to allow ourselves to vibrate to the resonance of God. So God speaks that word of creation over the chaos and it was very good. And Jesus Christ is the Word that brings us salvation. That vibration of gratitude already exists, that’s the natural state, that’s the place we want to be in for the world. It’s about aligning ourselves with God’s gratitude.

This won’t make us a superhero. This won’t give us superpowers. But what it will do, is help us to be who God created us to be.

God spoke words of gratitude, and every time we lift up thanksgiving and praise, we are a part of God’s ongoing acts of creation and life.