It’s ostensibly based on a reading of a verse in Song of Songs: “As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I had it sung at my ordination, and I make groups of people sing it whenever possible: It’s sung mostly in English churches, or at lessons and carols services at Christmas. I love the song “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree.” It’s not widely known, but it’s wonderful. I’ve spent time with the tree image, thinking about what trees are, and I have a nascent spiritual practice of tree gazing, where I regularly stare at a magnolia in my yard as a practice of attentiveness.
I’m especially interested in two from Hosea: there God is likened to dew, and to a tree. Lauren Winner: In the scriptures there are a lot of animal and nature images for God-water and rock and so on.
I imagine there were some images you found that didn’t make it in. Mary Kenagy Mitchell for Image: Your new book is about overlooked images of God in the Bible. The chapter excerpted in issue 84 is about bread. I asked Winner about her new book, her love of history, her punctuation, and the politics of writing about the Bible. Winner’s book, Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God (HarperOne), explores a single biblical image of God through a mix of exegesis, cultural history, and personal essay. This post originally appeared as a web-exclusive feature accompanying Image issue 84.Įach chapter of Lauren F.
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