Crown Shyness
Learning something about leaves and our own leanings…
I was looking up while walking through the deep woods recently. And, seeing the sugar maples and black oaks stretching up for precious, life-giving sunlight, a thought occurred to me:
It’s a little like the kid who doesn’t want her peas and carrots to touch on her dinner plate. Or maybe it’s nature’s version of the old phrase, “fences make good neighbors.” Or perhaps it’s not like either of those things.
What it definitely is (as you must now be wondering) is crown shyness, the beautiful phenomenon (as pictured) that has tree canopies growing right up to each other without intermingling. The theories about why trees do this are varied with the most likely scientific explanation pointing to the concept of "reciprocal pruning."
From Wikipedia:
Trees in windy areas suffer physical damage as they collide with each other during winds; the abrasions and collisions induce a crown shyness response. Studies suggest that lateral branch growth is largely uninfluenced by neighbours until disturbed by mechanical abrasion.
Mechanical abrasion. That’s a great term.
Say it with me: mechanical abrasion. Ooooh, so tactical.
This concept of mechanical abrasion, which tumbles so effortlessly out of the larger world of crown shyness, got me thinking about a couple of biblical ideas. (You’re shocked, I know…)
First, it pointed me to Proverbs 27:17:
As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.
We need each other to be better. And just as a honing steel sharpens my chef’s knife, the mechanical abrasion between two trees works to prune each of them.
With whom am I close enough to mix branches? Who can prune me simply by their proximity? I’m convinced we should all have people in our lives like this - close enough to know us and even spur some healthy pruning.
In this way, this closeness is an asset. A way to stay strong, stay pruned, stay healthy.
But crown shyness also reminded me of another text. In this one, 1 Timothy 3:1-3, closeness was held as a threat and something to be wary of:
The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. 2 Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3 not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.
Speaking to the aspiring church leader (pastors/elders), the wisdom of the Scripture mentions that he should be “the husband of one wife.” And while this seems like a relatively obvious concept (unless you’re super into some cult that’s promoting polygamy these days), the reality is that so many people struggle to hold to it. And look…our flesh is weak and mistakes are made. So this is not some attempt to inflict shame upon someone for past indiscretions. I’m more talking about men and women who have a spouse and seek faithfulness today…but whose lack of relational crown shyness has them, um, colliding with the canopies of other trees.
In the digital age, it’s only too easy to let one’s branches intermingle with the mere idea of another. It seems harmless at first. But it always leads to the same place. Physical touch is no longer required for hearts to wander off into the arms (or Instagram photos) of another. And where hearts go, bodies usually follow. While I’m clearly overstretching the metaphor, it only takes a little bit of intermingling of branches (whether in some private, pornographic fantasy or in sliding into the DMs of a real person down the street) before painful mechanical abrasions show up.
Friends, digital indiscretions still lead to real-life consequences. I have seen it all too often…
So, while in the former sense, I said we could all use a little mechanical abrasion. In this second way of thinking, perhaps we all need a little crown shyness, a hesitation from getting too close to the branches and trees next door. We need to show a little bit of proactive caution before we let our canopy become intertwined with another. And, to borrow from the Proverbs, maybe we need others who are close enough to us to know (and tell us - forcefully if required) when we are drifting a little too close to another.
Ironically, we desperately need to invite one kind of closeness to keep us from slowly growing into the other kind of closeness. We need crown shyness. And we need to walk in the woods more. And maybe we should look up on occasion. Almost like this creation we’re meandering through carries whispers of ancient wisdom.
