Bones and Branches

by Chavon Barry

When I was eight, I found a gutted white Volkswagen Beetle deep in the forest. It must have driven off the logging road above, shot down the ravine and hit the old-growth Cedar tree at the bottom. Like Nancy Drew, I studied the scarred bark sure there was a mystery to solve and bones to find.
​
I rummaged through the car’s glove compartment, back seat, and trunk searching for clues. I dug holes in the surrounding soil and followed imagined leads to waterfalls, hidden culverts and crooked, gnarled driftwood skeletons.

Scribbles and sketches filled the pages of my notebook but without hard evidence the narrative fell flat.
​

I recently read about a nineteenth-century fossil hunter named Mary Anning. At thirteen-years-old, she unearthed Jurassic fossils in the cliffs along the English Channel. No one had ever seen creatures like this before. History and science needed to be rewritten. Mary’s poverty, the lack of credit she received, and her simple tools didn’t stop her. She’d hunt for bones her whole life.

I relate to Mary and her desire to know the truth.

My stomach twisted as I stared at the bone sculpture in Dachau concentration camp’s entrance. I’d studied the Holocaust before but standing on the ground where it began was different.

So was walking the halls of Anne Frank’s secret annex. The place she hid from the Nazis for twenty-four months with her family, the Van Pels and Fritz Pfeffer. I moved silently through the museum and allowed my textbooks to wrap themselves in skin. Excerpts of Anne’s diary were posted throughout.

They told Anne’s human story of fights with her mother, sister and the other household members. Of ordinary study sessions, self-doubt and fiery anger. Of love and of dreams about a post-war world.

Her humanity drew me in. And I wanted a different ending. What if? What if she wasn’t betrayed? What if she survived the camps?

As a writer, and especially as one who often writes about Jesus, I like stories with wrapped corners and tied string. I want good to win.

Like Mary and Anne, I’ve dreamed big dreams only to find bones I didn’t know what to do with. I’ve tried to make sense of the senseless. And I’ve had to grow up without all the answers.

So I look again at Jesus and reevaluate my simple narratives.

I relearn that Jesus was betrayed for a few coins by one of his closest friends. That sweat, tears and blood filled his prayers. And that a crowd would cry, “Crucify.” His bones would hang on a cut tree. His disciples would have no real answers for days after his death and his family would be overcome with grief. Bones are a significant part of Jesus’s story.

Something else I learned is that Isaiah named Jesus the Branch. The One who would rise out of the stump of Jesse and bear fruit. Growth out of what seems an end. I like this metaphor. God enters our human story — into a specific lineage at a specific time. He wears flesh and bones and shows us how to live in a world that is sometimes overwhelmingly dark.

Anne will never see freedom. She won’t walk her streets again or attend school. Belson-Bergen concentration camp will be her final stop.

I read more of her diary.

It’s hard to believe that she’d still claim good prevails and beauty is greater than misery. Is it true that no one need wait a single moment to make the world better?

And then I see the small window in the attic. Such a limited space to find hope and yet Anne does — in a chestnut tree’s annual cycle, in the glistening dew of the morning, in a patch of blue sky, and in the silver swoop of seagulls.

It’s beautiful.

Her father, the annex’s sole survivor, thought so too. He invited millions to read Anne’s words and established this museum. Her story, her strength, and her humanity live on.

Decades later, the Anne Frank House will keep the dying chestnut tree alive by germinating the nuts and planting saplings around the world. Hope is powerful.

I’ve spent considerable time digging up the bones in my own story, hands in the dirt, knees pressed into the ground. And it is here that I’ve learned to see the tree that saved me. To notice its scars but also its strength.

I typed a paper for my History of the Weimar Republic class. The night was calm. I thought I’d finish, enjoy a bowl of berry crisp and the flicker of candlelight, but chaos arrived with a BANG.

Wood cracked, tires spun and an engine roared. I braced myself and squinted as headlights shone directly through the window and into my eyes. Police sirens followed.

I stepped outside. My heart raced. A truck had crashed through the fence, flew down the yard and folded into the tree two-meters in front of my writing window. The engine ran and the vehicle’s open door suggested the driver did too.

I returned to the house, locked the deadbolt and lay on the couch.

What would have happened if not for that tree?

I didn’t read any spiritual significance into the accident at the time but looking back it speaks to me — to the parts of my story that are out of my control.

The dark tumbled in when I wasn’t ready for it. I needed an author and a pen stronger than me to hold onto. I needed a God who was close. Flesh and bones close.

And then I think of the cross. I think about the ways I know He saved me. Reached in and pulled me out of despair. The details though personal are just as bold as that night with the tree, the truck and the window.

I know Jesus lives, not only in a book, but in the complicated pages of my life. In a fossil hunter’s search for truth. In a Jewish girl’s annex window view.

Hope isn’t a wistful wish. It’s planted in the chaos. It births in the ashes. And I’ve learned even the barest winter’s branch blooms in Spring.

Read more of Chavon’s essays at: www.chavonbarry@weebly.com