I have long been fascinated by the vision of the Tree of Life in the Apocalypse of John. What a tree, a magical tree, that not only bends far over a crystal river, but grows on either side of the river, with twelve varieties of fruit, and leaves for the healing of the nations.

One of my fondest memories from childhood is that of moving to Hamilton, Montana. My father had left the farm to become a colporteur. I don't remember the trip to Hamilton, but I have vivid memories as a four-and-a-half-year-old child of the place to where we moved. It was high on the side of a mountain, just below the forest line. My father had purchased an old farm, on which he and his father set out to build our new home. In the front of the house was a granite boulder, taller than my head and larger than five Thanksgiving tables. Even more fascinating was the stream that ran down the mountain and through our future yard. Along the stream were apple and pear trees-old gnarled trees that were more wild than tame. The pears were not like store-bought pears that are yellow and juicy, but hard, green pears that made you sit up and take notice when you ate them. Each evening a grouse would beat its wings, playing a mating song.

In a word, the tree in John's Apocalypse always recalls in my mind this magical place of my childhood.

In the passing of time, some of the magic of the Tree of Life, like the memories of my Hamilton home, has dimmed. I know that multiple varieties of fruit can be grafted in the same stock. And I know that leaves provide oxygen and remove pollutants from the air. I also know that the leaves of certain trees like the Eucalyptus and Yew have medicinal properties. I still puzzle at times as I did as a child why we would ever need medicinal leaves in paradise, but perhaps that is just the point of the Apocalypse. In paradise there is an antidote for every ailment. Nothing accursed is in this perfect land.

This past quarter the magic of my childhood experience of the Tree of Life was renewed in art classes I am taking. In these classes I have come to realize that leaves possess healing properties that go far beyond their filtration of our air or their pharmaceutical properties. Leaves, I have come to realize, are medicine for the soul.

I discovered the magical, medicinal properties of leaves from Martha Mason, who not only teaches her students at Walla Walla College how to design, draw, and paint, but who ministers to them through her classroom prayers, her fresh baked, Friday bread, her skipping and dancing for joy in classes, and most importantly through her devotion to leaves. I may be exaggerating, but it seems that at least a third of her projects have something to do with leaves. Leaves for Martha are little notes given by God to tell us how much he loves us-she tells us such things all the time in class.

This makes sense. If you stop and think about leaves for only a moment, your spirit will be lifted. Pictures come to mind of the first leaves of spring, of picnics at the park in the shade of old giant trees, of walking home from school in the fall kicking leaves, or of jumping into a pile of leaves. The list goes on, of traveling East to see whole mountains of turning leaves, of smelling the smoke of burning leaves, of collecting leaves for gifts, bulletin boards, or art projects for school. Leaves cheer our spirits.

Martha takes the magic of leaves a step farther by turning the study of them into a form of meditation. Surprisingly, although I have learned a great deal in my education as a theologian on how to read complex texts such as the Bible, I had never been taught how to decipher leaves before I took classes from Martha. After taking her classes, this seems odd to me, given that as an Adventist I believe and support a holistic view of life. If nature really is God's second book, then we should be as skilled interpreting tablets of leaves, grasses, birds, animals of the field, mountains, streams, skies and the like, as in reading texts of Scripture. Jesus certainly was. Learning to interpret leaves has provided me a critical tool for my reading of all other texts. By attending carefully to leaves, I have gained a healthy suspicion of anything that is not as eloquent and richly textured as a leaf.

Here are Martha's rules for meditating on leaves as I have deciphered them.

1. First, set aside at least an hour a week to carefully observe leaves. Leaves are easy to overlook, just because they are so abundant all around us. In this way they are like the people who surround us. In one of our classes Martha showed a video of an artist named Romare Beardon, who told the story of being propositioned by a very ugly prostitute. Her asking price was only a couple of dollars. Each time the artist declined, she lowered her price, until in the end, in desperation for human contact and food, she begged Beardon to take her home. Beardon felt sorry for the woman and told her she lacked the qualities requisite for success as a prostitute, and suggested that perhaps his mother could find her a more successful occupation, which she did. But that was not the end of the story. One day when Beardon lost all his inspiration for art, this ugly woman came to him and told him that when he could see her beauty and paint it, then he would become a success as an artist-which in fact proved true. Finding the transcendent in the ordinary, the beautiful in the plain, is the first lesson of seeing that Martha teaches in drawing.

1. The second rule for discovering the healing magic of leaves is to view things without our preconceived ideas of them. In drawing, this means giving up our names for things. When we name things, we assume that we know what they are, so we fail to pay close attention to the things themselves. When we draw, we draw on our databank of stems, veins, and maple leaf shapes and so produce the most amateurish- looking leaves. On the other hand, to view a leaf without names is to visually wander over an infinite landscape of curves, shadows, lines, shapes, and patterns, all colored in an unnamable variety of hues, tones, and values.

Choose a leaf. Look at the leaf first with both eyes, and then with one eye. Look at the leaf close to your eye, then at an arm's length from you. View the leaf through squinted eyes. Feel the shape of the leave with your eyes closed. Feel its ridges, its twists and turns, its texture. If you take time to explore a leaf with care you will lose yourself in an amazingly intricate world of eloquent design.

This lesson of putting aside our assigned names things to truly see them holds as well in religion as in art. God is ultimately beyond all names. At best religious language serves as a gloss for that which is best referenced by awe and silence. We will never escape our need for words, but we do well to remember that our words are as easily fashioned into idols as any shape of wood or stone. Attempting to draw the simplest leaf reveals how splendid and beyond name and category are even God's lowliest works. Having studied leaves, I am modest in speaking of God.

3. The third rule Martha gives for seeing leaves is perhaps the most difficult, but is certainly the most rewarding. Trace slowly with a pencil or pen every twist and turn, rise and fall, bump and curve of a leaf. Stick to drawing the leaf for at least fifteen minutes. Now I expect that many readers will say they cannot draw a stick figure, so how can they possibly draw the smallest detail of a leaf?

The task is not really as difficult as it seems. Imagine a plate of glass between you and the leaf. A child could trace the leaf onto the glass. Drawing onto a sheet of paper is not that much different. One simply traces the outline of the leaf onto a paper set a bit to the side of the leaf. Like a mechanical link between one's eye and hand, one's hand simply follows one's eye. The difficulty we face in drawing is that most of us take a quick look at an object, and then stare at our paper trying to remember what we saw. The problem with this strategy is that most objects are far too complex to remember. A single leaf has millions of bits of information. The secret of drawing is keeping our eyes on the object we are drawing.

To reinforce the need to keep one's eye on the object one is drawing, Martha requires repeated "blind studies" where students are not allowed to look at all at the paper on which they are drawing. Inevitably such drawings bear little resemblance, at least at first, to what the student is drawing. It takes time to develop eye-hand coordination. But what blind drawings lack in realism they more than supply in amazingly intricate lines of fascinating complexity and beauty. After some time of blind drawings, Martha allows students to check their progress every once and a while on their paper to make corrections-but she repeats like a mantra that the only way to draw accurately is to keep one's eye on the object one is drawing. The religious lesson here is obvious. In religion as in art, success comes with paying attention to the object of study. We have been told this all our lives. Practicing drawing a leaf by Martha's rules will teach you why.

Take a challenge and spend time meditation on a leaf this week. It may not cure all of your ailments, but it will lift your spirit. Even earthly leaves can heal. And, oh yes, I would love to see your drawings.