The God I Found in the Trees

what my baba told me and why it still feels true

Where I Go to Meet the Divine
A personal reflection for those who find God in green things

You go to church to see God.
I find divinity in the trees.

This line has been sitting with me lately. Quietly. Heavily. Comfortably, even. Like a truth that’s always been there, waiting for me to say it out loud.

This is a personal story, yes, but not just mine. I know others out there feel this too. So here it is.

Not long ago, I heard I’d come up in conversation. Someone asked, “Why doesn’t Agy come to church?” I don’t think it was asked maliciously, probably more from curiosity than anything else. Still, maybe there was a little judgment in there too. And that’s fine.

But the question stayed with me.

I let it sit. I let it breathe. I didn’t rush to explain myself away. I just asked my own soul, gently: Why don’t I?

And the answer was quiet but sure.

I wasn’t raised in religion. My parents had their own complicated relationship with faith, and instead of forcing it on us, they let us find our own path. I’m endlessly grateful for that choice. It meant I grew up free to ask questions, to stay curious, to wonder, not just about the world, but about what might exist beyond it. It meant I didn’t learn to fear mystery or doubt. I didn’t grow up thinking plant spirits were demons. I grew up knowing they were teachers.

I remember asking my grandma—Baba, who still reads these little essays of mine (hi, Baba!)—where God was. I must’ve been maybe six or seven. It was probably a Sunday, and my friend couldn’t come out to play because they were at church. So I asked her, not with any grand spiritual hunger, but just kid-level frustration: Where is God, anyway?

We were in the backyard. She looked up through the trees, the sun cutting through the branches.

“He’s in the trees,” she said.

Now, little me took that very literally. I immediately imagined a man physically stuck in a tree and got weirdly concerned about his comfort. But Baba clarified: “He’s in the trees, in the leaves, in the wind. He’s everywhere. He’s always with you.”

And that stuck.

It still does.

When I was five, my grandfather died. It was sudden, a surgical complication. My parents were out of town. Baba was staying with us. I remember the moment she got the call. I remember standing in my parents’ bedroom, staring out the big windows.

I ran to those windows and yelled at the stars. I told them off. I begged them to bring him back. I blamed them for taking him.

And Baba didn’t tell me to stop. She didn’t say the stars couldn’t hear me or that I was being ridiculous.

She got down next to me. And she yelled too.

...The stars got an earful that night.

A couple years later, I was in the backyard with a neighborhood friend, and she picked a flower. Just reached out and plucked it like it meant nothing. And I lost it. Like something cracked open inside of me. I told her she couldn’t do that, that it hurt.

Her mom told my mom I was being mean.

Baba was there. She took my side.

Of course she did.

Because to me, picking that flower felt like tearing a piece of something sacred out of the earth. It felt violent, not playful. She hadn’t just picked a flower—she had pulled something holy without even noticing.

I wasn’t raised in a temple, but I was raised in reverence. I was raised to see spirit in the natural world. To listen when the wind moves through branches. To sit with the soil. To ask the plants what they need.

And that sense of sacredness never left me, even when it didn’t quite fit the mold.

I remember being in ninth grade, sitting in religion class at the Catholic high school I had just transferred into. I was new to private school ways, still adjusting. A few days in, we were handed a Bible quiz—something I definitely wasn’t expecting. One question asked, “Name ways that God shows himself.”

It was clear they wanted examples from scripture, specific verses, maybe a burning bush or a booming voice from the clouds. But that wasn’t the God I knew.

So I wrote:

God shows himself through the sun beaming down through the break in the clouds.
God shows himself through the rustle of the leaves as the wind breezes through them.
He shows himself through their dance.
God shows himself through the colors of the flowers in the springtime, showing us life after a long, hard winter.

I failed the quiz.

But my teacher left me a note next to that answer:
“This is beautiful—not quite what I was looking for.”

And I think about that sometimes.
Because it was beautiful.
It just didn’t belong in the right box.
But it belonged to me.

I may have grown up in a suburb, but my soul was raised in the wild.
My sense of the sacred? It was rooted in nature.
Still is.

So, if you’re wondering why I don’t go to church… the truth is, I do.
It just doesn’t have walls. It has roots.
It has birdsong and green things and wind that doesn’t ask anything of me but to pay attention.

And I do.

Photo by Janus Clemmensen on Unsplash

---

A Note on This New Section: Where the Plants Speak

This post marks the beginning of a new space I’ve been quietly tending. It has taken root inside me for a long time, but only recently asked to be spoken aloud.

Where the Plants Speak will be a home for the raw and rooted side of me, the part that doesn’t always move through logic or science, but through feeling. Through memory. Through the ways nature has shaped my spirit long before I had words for it.

For a long time, the structured, “logical” part of me—the scientist, the teacher, the one trained to explain and define—has taken the lead. That part isn’t going anywhere. You’ll still find my usual posts here: the educational deep-dives, the herbal medicine guides, the grounded research.

But this section is different.

It’s where I’ll share the quieter things. The truths that live in my bones. The parts of my soul that speak in the language of leaf and stone, grief and wind. I’ve always felt this connection, but I’m learning to honor it more. To listen to it. To write from it.

I needed to give this part of me a home.
A place to land.
A place to feel safe.
This is that place.

Thank you for walking into the woods with me. If something here stirred something in you, I’d love to know. Feel free to leave a comment, share this post, or simply carry it with you into your own quiet places.

There’s room for both the science and the spirit.
And here, both are welcome.

-Agy | The Buffalo Herbalist