Joy Clarkson asks and answers, 'How would our lives be different if we compared ourselves to a tree, flourishing with each season, instead of a machine, needing to recharge?’

Our lives are filled with metaphors comparing humans to machines – we need to recharge, we don’t have the bandwidth, we process new things. Writer and podcast host Joy Marie Clarkson wonders how our lives would change if we viewed ourselves less like machines and more as trees. Struggling with rootlessness, Clarkson once likened herself to a potted plant, but after spending a year watching a cherry tree outside her bedroom window, she realized she was more like a tree, ever-changing with the season, doing the beneficial work of growing and flowering.

In You Are a Tree: And Other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought, And Prayer, Clarkson examines seven ancient metaphors and what readers can learn from paying attention to how we use words and imagery to describe our lives. Through Clarkson’s beautifully written essays, she readies readers to recognize impersonal, industrial ways of talking about themselves and embrace being a human fully designed by God, living more attentively and meaningfully.

“This is a book about paying attention—to our experiences, and to the words we use to describe them,” writes Clarkson. “Metaphors matter because they allow us to give a voice to profound experiences and concepts that evade us, because giving voice to those things is satisfying, clarifying, honoring, and humane, and because the metaphors we choose and use direct our actions, our orientation in the world.”

Each of the metaphors: people are trees, wisdom is light, safety is a tower, love is a sickness, change is birth, sadness is heavy and life is a journey, are derived from the Christian and Hebrew Scriptures. Clarkson invites readers to engage with the Bible in a poetic, literary register and discover a deeper meaning to the words that swirl around us every day.