I’ve been turning something over in my mind lately, like a diamond in the light, trying to see something. Something about life and story and speaking into and out of both of them. In the midst of this my mind turned to something else: something about the difference between Ents and Trees. Consider the words of Treebeard from The Two Towers:

There are Ents and Ents, you know; or there are Ents and things that look like Ents but ain’t, as you might say . . . Some of us are still true Ents, and lively enough in our fashion, but many are growing sleepy, going tree-ish, as you might say. Most of the trees are just trees, of course; but many are half-awake. Some are quite wide awake, and a few are, well, ah, well getting Entish. That is going on all the time . . . Some of my kin look just like trees now, and need something great to rouse them; and they speak only in whispers. But some of my trees are limb-lithe, and many can talk to me. Elves began it, of course, waking trees up and teaching them to speak and learning their tree-talk. . . . It was the Elves that cured us of dumbness long ago, and that was a great gift that cannot be forgotten. . .

Speaking, the saying of things, is a gift, something you can learn and something you can lose. And while Tolkien didn’t write stories as allegories, you can definitely hear an echo of truth. As I think over life and story and speaking, I draw this conclusion: either we are trees who learn to speak like Ents or we are Ents who lose our voices and become dumb like trees. I’m not sure about you, but I would prefer being one who speaks and is spoken to, not one dumb (in the old sense of the word) and unresponsive.

I must confess to a certain loss of speech over these last few months. Evidence of that can be found all through this blog, where I’ve been content to deal more with the story of others than with my own, which is both slippery slope and shallow soil, a practice of the voice with limited range. I think it’s time to try a little harder, to rouse myself a little more, to the saying of more and better things. I’d like to be more Ent than Tree. Maybe you feel the same way, too.