​​Process Theology for People
Who Talk To Trees

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Why People Talk to Trees (A Sample)
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• Because trees are beautiful.
• Because sometimes no one else is listening.
• Because even if others are listening, trees listen in a unique and wonderful way.
• Because trees don’t interrupt.
• Because something about their stillness feels trustworthy.
• Because I grew up with one in the backyard, and it feels like home.
• Because grief needs somewhere to go, and branches seem strong enough to hold it.
• Because joy wants to be shared, and leaves make good dancing partners.
• Because I'm lonely.
• Because trees are older than I am and seem to know something I've forgotten.
• Because words spoken aloud, even to bark or limb, help me hear my heart.
• Because I believe—or hope—that the universe is listening, and a tree is part of that listening.
• Because I find God in trees even though I'm not sure what I believe.
• ​Because trees are good prayer partners, especially when I don't have words.
• Because trees help me feel connected to everything else.
  

Why It Can Be a Little Embarrassing
​to Admit You Talk to Trees
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• Because it sounds childish.
• Because some people say that the whole world is just a collection of objects without subjectivity, and talking to trees can seem strange..
• Because the culture teaches us to value logic over intuition.
• Because I’ve been taught that only humans (or maybe pets) are worthy of conversation.
• Because some people assume that if something doesn’t speak back in words, it can’t really hear.​
• Because I don’t always have a theology—or a shared language—that affirms it.

How Process Theology
Supports Talking to Trees
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Process theology, shaped by the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, offers a quiet affirmation for those of us who sometimes find ourselves speaking to trees.

It encourages us to learn from the more-than-human world—to receive wisdom that is not our own. It invites us to respect elders who are older than we are: not only human elders, but ancient beings like trees, rivers, stones, and mountains. It reminds us to be still, to listen for guidance, and to recognize that wisdom may come in forms quieter than speech.

It teaches that subjectivity is not limited to humans or animals. Rather, it is found everywhere. Every actual entity, no matter how small, is either a subject in its own right or part of something that is. Trees, even if they are not conscious in a human sense, are made up of living cells—each with some degree of feeling, some way of responding to what is around them.

In this view, trees are not just background scenery or raw material. They are beings with their own kind of inwardness, their own way of participating in the unfolding of the world. It affirms that every entity has value from its own perspective—not just from what it can do for others.Trees have perspectives of their own.

It encourages us to respect difference. Each tree is different, even as part of a species or type. Each tree grows in its own way, shaped by its own soil, light, winds, and time.
Each tree is unique. To love one is not to love all in the same way—but to honor the individuality of each.

It teaches that God is “inside” each creature, moment by moment, as a fresh possibility—a gentle lure—for flourishing. God is inside me in this sense, too. Being with a healthy tree is a way of sharing in that flourishing—a kind of holy communion.

It reminds us that God is not a distant ruler, standing apart from the world, but a companion within it—present in every moment, feeling with every creature.
It invites us to sit still and listen to the other: other people, to be sure, and also other living beings—including trees - and to participate in God's empathy, God's Deep Listening, in our own listening.

And finally, it encourages us to trust our intuitions. To listen with our whole selves. To believe that when we speak to a tree, something more than silence might be happening.
In this light, talking to trees isn’t foolish. It’s a form of attention. A kind of prayer. A way of being in the world that honors mystery, presence, and relationship.

Praying with Trees
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Praying with trees is not about asking for things or speaking words out loud—though it can include those. It is more about presence, participation, and offering.

In process theology, every living being contributes to God’s ongoing life. Trees, too, moment by moment, are giving themselves to God—not in conscious devotion, perhaps, but simply by being fully what they are. Their life becomes part of God’s life through what Whitehead calls the consequent nature of God—the side of God that receives, feels, remembers, and cherishes every experience.

To pray with a tree, then, is to join it in its giving. It is to enter a shared act of devotion—not necessarily in words, but in stillness, attention, breath, and trust. The prayer doesn’t need to be in words. It is a kind of co-giving: the tree gives its life, its presence, its rootedness; we give our own presence in return—our gratitude, our sorrow, our awe.

Together, we participate in the divine life that holds and honors it all.
And in the very act of co-giving, we can also receive—creative energy from the tree itself, a kind of nourishment that is healing and wholemaking  This energy—rooted in the tree's aliveness—can be felt as a quiet grace moving through us.

It is not unlike the love-energy of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, it can be understood as one way of receiving the Holy Spirit: through the life-energy of the tree.

To pray with a tree is to lean into a different kind of communion—one without doctrine, one without performance. Just two beings—one human, one arboreal—offering themselves to something deeper and richer: something divine.