Trees and Tolerance

Trees and tolerance, for me, evokes mental images of redwood giants, silent sentinels that have stood the test of time, weathered observers throughout all remembered history whose only commentary is whispered in its branches. But more recently some different sentinels for tolerance, eleven chestnut tree saplings from the seeds of the tree that grew outside the building in which Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis, are being planted in the US. The tree whose branches Anne could see from the attic and wrote about in her diary, a classic literary reminder of the cost of intolerance highlighted by one of the most horrific events in human history, the holocaust, has died of natural causes despite efforts to save it. But this one tree lives on through its seeds that were harvested and nurtured. Now the saplings are going out to places all over the world to be planted as reminders of the importance of nurturing tolerance in a world that sometimes focuses on stark displays of hatred. If hate is a learned behavior, then we must work harder to teach love and where better to begin and continue than by teaching, learning, and embracing, tolerance. On February 23, 1944 Anne Frank wrote, Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs, from my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind. As long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts I cannot be unhappy.

Reading these words of hope, knowing the end of the story, what better choice than this chestnut tree for a present day reminder and symbol of tolerance?