Zaytuna Institute & Academy

In this, a great American poem, Joyce Kilmer captures the beauty, majesty, and awe to be found in one of God’s most intriguing creatures, the tree. One thing that intrigued Kilmer, and possibly all others who would take time to reflect on that marvelous creation, is the tree’s constant and intimate communion with God. As he states, “A tree that looks at God all day, and lifts her leafy arms to pray.”

Before such a powerfully reverent creation, Kilmer can only sense his own inadequacy and weakness. We humans can produce wonderful, eloquent poetry, but what is a poem, which emerges from our frail quills; compared to the timeless wisdom embodied in a tree, a simple yet infinitely complex creation wrought the marvelous Hand of God.

Many of us here at Zaytuna have been awed by our own tree, the Zaytuna Ruku tree, that aging pine seemingly bowed by the travails of time into a reverent prayer position. That graceful bowing made her shade, her invigorating aroma, and for a legion of youthful climbers, her tempting branches, all the more accessible. Some of the greatest contemporary scholars of Islam have sat beneath her shade. Sacred knowledge has been conveyed under her vigilant watch. And from the safety of the refuge she represented, many have paused to watch as the winter rain gently caressed the green grass unfolding before her.

However, the reverent, bowing tree had not yet completed her life’s work, she had a final call to answer. God says in the Qur’an, The stars and the trees prostrate [unto Him]. Al-Qur’an 55:6 Observers of the Zaytuna Ruku tree over the years noticed that she was inching ever closer to her own prostration. Therefore, it should have come as no surprise when on a fateful, rainy winter night, she completed her devotion, prostrating totally to her Lord. Her majestic head nestled firmly upon the ground, her massive trunk oriented towards the prayer direction, her toes, partially uprooted curved beneath her. Her life’s work done, she is now gone.

Like Kilmer, whose mortality was highlighted by his tree, whose majesty served to alert him to the reality of an All-Powerful God, for many of us our tree served a similar purpose. Kilmer would die shortly after penning his poem, gunned down in the killing fields of France during the insanity of the First World War, having barely passed his twenty-second birthday. I am sure that the passing of our tree reminds many of us of our own mortality. There is no permanence in this lower abode. Perhaps it is not coincidental that the very chapter that mentions the prostration of the trees, also reminds us, All that is on the earth will perish. Al-Qur’an 55:26 Reminders of this fact surround us. However, who amongst us will take heed?
Have you not seen how God sets forth a parable? A good word is like a good tree whose roots are firm and whose branches reach heaven. It gives its fruit during every season, by leave of its Lord. And God sets forth parables to people that they may remember. Al-Qur’an 14: 24-25

Imam Zaid Shakir
03/02/2005

In 1998, Zaytuna Institute moved onto the property at 631 Jackson Street inheriting a rugged lot with piles of trash and a noticeably leaning Rolling Pine tree that was sickly and nearing its demise.

Not long after the prayer and study of sacred knowledge began on the new property, that peculiar tree had been revived and was now standing strong, its branches flourishing with growth.
Over time, as it stretched itself outward, offering more and more shade, its lean became unmistakably akin to the ruku position of the Muslim prayer. It became known as the “Ruku Tree”.
After years and many months of progressively bowing lower and lower, in February of 2005, on a stormy and windy night it, as all Rolling Pine trees eventually do, fell prostrate on the Zaytuna lawn.
Shortly after, it was removed, the wood kept for creative use. A new tree will be planted soon, insha'Allah.