Those Who Mourn

by Catherine Rider

In a forest, when a tree dies and remains standing, we call that a snag. There are many reasons that it might be still standing even though it is not alive – lightning strike, old age, disease or pestilence. Whatever the cause of death, these trees are an integral part of the forest. Their presence is usually very notable, with a stark contrast between a healthy tree covered in green leaves with long, full branches and the snag that is often white or dark, with few branches left, or branches that have broken off from literal dead weight. 

At first glance, they look like they don’t belong; they seem lifeless and barren, like a blight in the landscape. When I lead hikes or groups through the forest, one of the questions I am most asked is “why are those trees still there? Why don’t they just cut them down?” For a long time, it was thought that they should be cut down to reduce risk (and “unsightliness”). 

Photo courtesy of Catherine Rider

It wasn’t until the late 1970s that researchers* began to understand that these trees change the dynamics of a forest in many surprising ways. They can remain standing for a decade or more, depending on the species, the tree’s size, the weather, climate, and the geographic location. As the heartwood in the center of the tree starts to slowly break down, all sorts of critters begin to use it. Fungi and insects are some of the first inhabitants, creating a smorgasbord of delectable treats for certain birds – many woodpeckers, for instance, who create cavities in the softened trunk. 

When the birds move on, the cavity remains, providing safety and security for owls, bats, squirrels, raccoons, and even snakes and lizards. As time passes, the plants around it thrive as the combination of deadwood fodder for insects and habitat for insectivorous animals functions to limit the spread of insect infestations. The contained threat of insects to living plants consequently means they are healthier and less susceptible to disease. In North America, it is estimated that there are more than 1000 species that rely on these dead trees to provide what they need to thrive. Eventually over time, these trees do naturally fall or crumble, and when they do, they become “nurse logs” – the site of  seedlings, berries, mushrooms and more. 

Photo courtesy of Catherine Rider

And that just scratches the surface of snag ecology. A snag is not just a dead tree, it is an entire ecosystem. 

This mirrors our spiritual life. 

Romans 8:28 tells us that all things work for good and in the trenches, that is so hard to believe and even harder to understand. John Paul II addressed this in Salvifici Dolores, noting that suffering is contained within the “mystery of Redemption.”  We were not created for death and sin, we were created for virtue and life. We were not created for suffering and pain, we were created for joy and hope. Even after sin and death entered the world, it did not get the last word. 

Suffering, like the snag, can leave the space for virtue and joy to grow, if we let it. Too often, whether the spiritual snag is one that we have created through our own choices or one where we have simply had to pick up our cross, we would rather ignore it or eliminate it and cut down the snag. We see it as useless and ugly. But doing that not only prolongs the suffering, it opens up risk of spiritual pestilence and disease – despair, doubt, and disobedience.  

In his new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV wrote, 

Everything that appears as a “limit” — incapacity, illness, old age, suffering, vulnerability — tends to be seen primarily as a defect to be corrected, rather than as a reality through which our humanity matures and opens itself to relationship. And yet we must remember that humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them. The light of faith offers a perspective on reality that helps us recognize what we call the “contingency” of the things of this world. While it is right to strive to alleviate the suffering that marks human life, it is also wise to acknowledge our fundamental finitude, knowing that “religious experience, and in particular Christian faith, propose that we live, without oversimplification, this ambivalence between human greatness and limitation, interpreting it in the light of our original and fundamental relationship with God.”

Snags look like they do not belong because…well,  they do not belong. They are the contingency. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that God reveals Himself to us through Sacred Scripture and through creation. Paul wrote “Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made.”  Snags teach us that even in suffering and death, the work of hope and life can be found; that the things that once were too heavy and too much to bear can now fill the very specific needs of our community in life-giving ways. 

“As a result of Christ’s salvific work, man exists on earth with the hope of eternal life and holiness. And even though the victory over sin and death achieved by Christ in his Cross and Resurrection does not abolish temporal suffering from human life, nor free from suffering the whole historical dimension of human existence, it nevertheless throws a new light upon this dimension and upon every suffering: the light of salvation.” -Salvifici Dolores 

*I use the term “researchers” here, as much of the Indigenous wisdom gained from centuries of working with nature was ignored in the scientific study of ecology. Snags are held in the highest regard among Indigenous communities, some even consider them to be sacred. 

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