The live oaks that grow along the coasts of the American southeast send a taproot deep into the earth and radiate branching roots outward, helping the trees survive the hurricanes that roar in from the water.
The roots of a tallgrass prairie sink low beneath the ground in a tangled mass. Up to three quarters of the plant is under the surface, ready to send up new growth after a herd of bison passes by and grazes everything down to the soil.
The canopied and stilt-like roots of mangroves help to manage the shifting tides and surging saltwater, absorbing nutrients from both the water and the air while keeping out the salt that would poison the tree.
Milkweed plants overwinter in their taproots, retreating to the darkness of the soil and storing up energy for spring’s new beginning.
In deserts, some plants send deep root systems far into the ground to find hidden pockets of water, and by doing that they can survive for decades. Other plants ride the booms and busts of the rare rains, rooting only long enough to flower and produce a seed to be ready for the next quick storm.
The roots of each plant tell the story of that plant’s survival. Some plants have persisted through the eons by spreading their roots wide, and others by sending them deep. Some plants have adapted to frequent rains or standing water; other plants might wait years to feel a drop fall, and the shape of their roots tell the story of their patience. Plants grow roots to anchor on gusty peaks and in sandy dunes, to cling to turbulent riverbanks, to fetch every nutrient nearby for making fruit, and to wait out long winters. There are as many root systems as there are ecosystems, as many roots as there are climates and biomes. The roots of seagrass would be useless in the tundra, and the taproot of a fir tree would go nowhere in a gulf coast dune.
The entirety of the Psalms begins with one word, in the first line of Psalm 1: Happy. The word in Hebrew is ‘ashre, and it can be translated “blessed” or “fortunate” or “happy” or even “fate.” The word is used more in the Psalms than it is in the rest of the Hebrew Bible combined, and its pride of place at the beginning of the Psalter sets the tone for the whole collection. “Happy (‘ashre) are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked,” it reads, who do not “take the path that sinners tread or sit in the seat of the scoffers.” To describe the nature of this happiness, the Psalmist talks about planting and rootedness. Happy people “are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in season, and their leaves do not wither.” A passage from Jeremiah 17 uses a different word (barak, “blessed”), and the prophet is even more forthright about the blessings of rootedness. “They shall be like a tree planted by water,” Jeremiah writes, echoing Psalm 1, “sending out its roots by the steam. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.”
It might be surprising to imagine the anxiety of a plant. As humans we are seized with all kinds of anxieties: financial, relational, existential, political. We are anxious about our jobs and our children, about our homes and our parents, about our governments and about the weather and the stock market and about our favorite sports teams. Humans have anxiety about our anxiety, wondering whether we have a normal kind of anxiety or something more sinister, and we can even make ourselves anxious by noticing that we are not, at the moment, very anxious. What am I missing? Not all people are equally anxious, and not every anxiety shows up the same way, but we probably all know several varieties of anxiety with more than a passing intimacy.
The anxieties of plants are told in their roots. Those desert plants that sink their roots deep into the sands, sending out feelers in search of any trace of water—they remember scarcity. Gnarled and sprawling roots of bristlecone pines remember ferocious mountaintop winds, and they cling to the earth with hopes of standing against winter gusts for thousands of years. A fruit tree, like the ones described by Jeremiah and the Psalmist, is anxious for the next generation, scrounging resources to make fruits delicious enough that the seeds will be carried along the journeys of animals.
It's common for us to praise rootedness. “Stay rooted,” folks will say, or “you have to be rooted in what matters most.” We use roots as a metaphor for stability and groundedness—as a way of talking about remembering who we are. Less often do we talk about roots the way a plant might talk about them, as a response to trauma, a memory of loss, or an expression of hope. The way our roots unfurl has something to do with the challenges the world gives us; our roots always tell the story of survival, both in the past and in the future. Roots remember what it takes to make it through.
“‘Ashre, happy,” the Psalmist writes, describing what flourishing is. For this particular Psalmist, happiness can be found in avoiding all kinds of negatives—not following the advice of the wicked, not taking sinners’ paths, not sitting in the seat of scoffers. This Psalmists’ roots are like the mangrove’s roots, keeping out the salt that kills while letting in all the good things. For others of us, though, ‘ashre might look different. Happiness might look like finding the right place to grow, or developing a tolerance for heat or cold or wind or the trampling hooves of grazing bison. Happiness might be less about avoiding negativity and more about challenging it directly, or happiness might lie in our ability to know the right conditions for thriving.
Both Jeremiah and Psalm 1 talk about plants out of place—what happens when the adaptations of a plant and its roots are badly suited for the environment in which it finds itself. Jeremiah speaks of shrubs in the desert, in “parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land,” and Psalm 1 imagines the withering of a plant that dries up and blows away in the wind. You know this story if you have ever forgotten to water a houseplant, or if you have ever planted the wrong varietal in your garden. Roots, even if they are adapted for hardship, are not adapted for every hardship. In coastal marshland on the gulf coast and the eastern seaboard, rising seas bring saltwater to freshwater forests, leaving “ghost forests” behind. The aspens in my yard wither and discolor in late summer, their leaves crisping in the heat, because they are adapted for higher and cooler elevations. Sugar maples are moving north, but not quickly enough to outrun a warming planet. Their vascular systems, from their roots to the tips of their branches, are adapted to store energy through long winters and send it surging upward in late springs. The roots don’t know what to do without the cold and the snow.
Not many of us are planted right now in the places we can thrive. Many of us—most, probably—are feeling the strain of an environment that is strange, toxic, dangerous, chaotic, or changing too fast for us to keep up. I’m thinking about politics, of course, and the absurdist chaos that reigns in Washington, but it’s not only that. Thirty years ago encyclopedias were still the fastest way to find information and cable television was the easiest way to find entertainment; now we can all know anything at any time by consulting some silicon slabs in our pockets, and we can watch any video at any time, for hours on end. We are not adapted for that. We are beings adapted for foraging and hunting, and we can all buy unlimited empty calories at any corner store. We evolved as bipeds, and most of us sit all day. Our ancestors followed the rhythms of the sun and the moon, and our lives are ruled by clocks and light bulbs. Our roots, however deep they might go, are maladapted to the world in which we find ourselves.
As both Jeremiah and the Psalmist recognize, place is essential to flourishing. We can only thrive when our circumstances match our capacities. We will never flourish as water lilies in deserts or prairie grasses in forest coves. Even when we are well-adapted to old anxieties, new ones will quickly overwhelm us. “Happy are those…like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, whose leaves do not wither,” the Psalmist writes, which is a way of stating the obvious and also a profound truth. Those trees that flourish by streams would not do as well elsewhere, and a desert plant’s roots would rot in the wet earth by a river. We do best when we can live in the place where we are designed to thrive.
That might sound inspiring, but it’s also frustrating, because places and spaces of thriving are not always available to us. We cannot always—or even usually—control the whole of our environments. We are not all planted by streams, and not all of us are capable of transplanting ourselves there. We make do where we are. I find a sense of relief in the realization that our struggles might not be due to some personal failing or lack of effort, but instead that our lack of flourishing might be because we are meant for different circumstances. But we still have to live in these circumstances.
What then? Although they don’t call them that, the Psalmist suggests spiritual practices. “Their delight is in the law of the Lord,” Psalm 1 says, “and on his law they meditate day and night.” Meditation might sound like a modern thing, but it’s an ancient adaptation, one that our ancestors from many different traditions developed as a way to cope with difficult circumstances. There are other spiritual practices too—many others that can help us flourish in difficult places or create streamsides for us to sink our roots into. Prayer, living and eating in community, moving our bodies, finding connection with other people, advocating for others, journaling, practicing mindfulness, finding ways to experience the natural world, cultivating gratitude—these are just some of the many practices that can help us thrive in difficult places and times. There are others, some known only to the individuals who have devised them—little adaptations that help us through another day.
Cultivating spiritual practices is not so different from what a plant does when it sends its roots out sideways or down deep or into the silt of a salt marsh. Spiritual practices connect us to the resources we need and they anchor us to something solid. Like trees planted by a stream of water that send their roots toward a source of life, we can learn which way life can be found, and stretch ourselves in that direction. That’s a good idea in the good times, when the rains are falling and the water is flowing, but in the hard times it can mean salvation. Spiritual practices can save us “in the year of drought,” when we find ourselves “in an uninhabited salt land,” as many of us often do. Send down the right kinds of roots, and in the right place, and in those hard times and in times of plenty as well your roots will have plenty to draw on.