You are a Tree with Joy Marie Clarkson | EP: 385

I am so incredibly excited to sit down with Joy Clarkson in this week’s episode. Joy wears many hats – from being a research associate in theology and literature at King’s College London to serving as the Books and Culture Editor for Plough Quarterly. 

Completing her Ph.D. in theology at the University of Saint Andrews, she’s also the face behind the popular podcast Speaking with Joy and the author of several books, including her latest release, You Are a Tree, which we chat about today.

This conversation was so rich, and it was such a delight to unpack some of the powerful metaphors found in scripture together. I hope you join us as we learn more about the inspiration behind Joy’s new book and talk about how God uses imagery and nature to help us better understand ourselves, our relationships, and the mysteries of life. 

7:06 – Joy 101

• Living in Scottland and teaching theology in London
• Joy’s books and podcast
• Joy’s love for tea, music, and baking

13:03 – The Origin Story for Joy’s book

• Frequently relocating as a child
• Joy’s lifelong connection with trees
• Living in one place for 27 months
• Exploring trees in Scripture  

18:50 – Nature’s Lessons

• The profound metaphors found in nature
• God’s intentional creation
• The 7 metaphors explored in Joy’s book 

26:44 – Metaphors of Mystery

• God’s intentional design woven into creation
• Embracing childlike wonder to see God’s presence and intentionality 
• Using metaphors as tools to describe the mysterious aspects of creation

40:59 – Final Takeaways

• Unpacking “love is a disease”
• The metaphors of trees and travel
• Connecting with Joy

FEATURED QUOTES

“Scripture itself… it’s not just a rulebook…doesn’t give us a bunch of abstract, philosophical truths about God- it draws on our experiences of the natural world, and our experiences of light and height and depth, to help us understand ourselves and our relationship with God.”

“I think metaphors kind of keep us open to the many facets of things and the mystery of being alive.”

“We are created to belong in this world, and to have a relationship [with] it and to find meaning in it.”

“To be in the world and to flourish we do need to have roots, we do need to be like a tree and stay in one place. But even the best tree human life is still a temporary life and we still have this sense of belonging for a home that isn’t here.”

Learn more about Joy:

https://joyclarkson.substack.com/about

Check out You Are a Tree:

Check out Aggressively Happy:

Speaking with Joy podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/speaking-with-joy/id1310614879

Joy on social media:

https://www.instagram.com/joynessthebrave/?hl=en

https://www.facebook.com/p/Joy-Clarkson-100063508753020/

https://twitter.com/joynessthebrave?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Connect with me: 

Preorder my book: 

About Can I Laugh On Your Shoulder?

Can I Laugh On Your Shoulder? Podcast is a weekly podcast where we have honest conversations about faith, business, life, and everything in between. Hosted by speaker and author, Molly Stillman, her mission is to make you laugh, cry, and laugh till you cry. She wants to create a community of people who are unafraid to be themselves and have honest conversations about the things that matter most. Her vision is to create a safe space for people to explore their faith and share their stories and gifts with the world.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Molly Stillman (00:01.122)
Joy, I have to confess, I have had this circled on my calendar, ever, well, whenever it got scheduled. I don’t know. Every day is kind of running together right now. But I remember when your book and your, you kind of first came across my desk, I was like, yes, I want to have her on the show. And my confession is, because your concept, your book, is like,

Joy Clarkson (00:09.393)
I’m sorry.

Molly Stillman (00:29.306)
If I could write, so my book that comes out March is a memoir. If I could write a book like what you wrote, that’s what I would want to write, because I am obsessed with trees lately. And I got on a, this is like I said, this is my confession. And then we’re going to get into your introduction. But I was like, I just have to tell you this. So I don’t it was probably a little over a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago. So I live on a farm and we have.

you know, some of it’s cleared, but we have also are surrounded by trees. There’s trees everywhere. And so ever since we moved here and I go walking through the trees, I’ve just become, maybe it’s in old age and by old age, you know, only thirties, um, that I have, I just, I notice birds and I notice trees and I notice things like that. And, um, there behind our house, there’s this creek.

Joy Clarkson (01:03.213)
Mm.

Joy Clarkson (01:08.977)
Mm.

Joy Clarkson (01:20.185)
Hmm.

Molly Stillman (01:27.686)
And, um, there is a bunch of trees that, you know, over the years, especially when you live on land where there’s just trees everywhere, you know, storms happen and trees fall over. And there are a couple of trees in particular, these massive trees that are connected to, um, you know, kind of their root system is right there at our Creek and some storms knocked them over years and years and years ago. And what’s so cool about them. And, um, I actually ended up.

Joy Clarkson (01:49.608)
Mm.

Molly Stillman (01:57.346)
doing a sermon on this at my church through Jeremiah seven, the chapter 17, where it’s like, you know, a tree planted by water, uh, who sends its roots out by the stream. And what’s cool about these trees is, you know, they were knocked over in a storm, but enough of their root system was still connected to the creek and to the ground that these new trees have sprouted out massive trunk. And, um, I will, when this episode goes live, I’ll put a picture of it on social media because it’s, it’s

Joy Clarkson (02:02.287)
Hmm

Joy Clarkson (02:18.853)
Hmm.

Molly Stillman (02:27.454)
remarkable. I mean, it’s this massive, I mean, just enormous, you know, hundred year old tree that fell over. But now, I mean, it’s three solid like branches that turned into new trees that shoot, you know, 75 feet up in the air. And it’s such a beautiful picture of, you know, what, you know, so many people probably on the surface thought that tree was dead, but no.

Joy Clarkson (02:34.053)
Hmm.

Joy Clarkson (02:54.577)
Mm.

Molly Stillman (02:55.506)
its root system was still connected to the source of living water. Now new trees have sprouted. And anyway, so that sent me down this whole rabbit hole of like tree metaphors in the Bible. And then I went and listened to that whole Bible project series on the trees. Anyway. And so then when I saw your book and this is the longest introduction ever, you have been set.

Joy Clarkson (03:00.229)
Hmm.

Joy Clarkson (03:18.257)
I’m gonna go get some water.

Molly Stillman (03:19.526)
But this is how excited I am is I just went down this entire rabbit hole and I have a couple friends who also I sent down the rabbit hole and so I’ve just been so excited about this and I’m so excited that you haven’t even introduced you so joy. Welcome to the show. And thank you for being here and give us the joy 101 because I’m so pumped and amped right now and it’s nine o’clock in the morning when we’re recording this. So here we are.

Joy Clarkson (03:42.509)
Well, I think that might be my favorite introduction yet because I also love trees and it’s just such a, it’s such a beautiful, like I think one of the things and then I’ll actually give the introduction to myself that I loved as I started thinking about trees is they’re just very resilient and they manage to persist and thrive in places that it doesn’t seem like they can. And that to me is a great reminder that

Molly Stillman (03:47.198)
You’re just flattering.

Molly Stillman (03:53.758)
Love it. We’re here for it.

Molly Stillman (04:02.796)
Amen.

Joy Clarkson (04:08.837)
we as human beings can persist and thrive when we’re connected to that source of nourishment. And that, you know, throughout the book, one of the things to talk about is kind of the difference, like not describing humans as machines, because when a machine gets broken, it’s kind of just broken at some level. Like you can replace some parts, but trees have this resilient capacity, this ability to revive, and if they fail one season, there is always another season. And so.

Molly Stillman (04:14.018)
Amen.

Joy Clarkson (04:38.509)
I love that about trees and I love that about human beings, especially when we’re connected to the source.

Molly Stillman (04:43.09)
Exactly. You know, I think of like machines, you know, uh, the famous scene in office space when the printer goes bad and all of the guys are just like, we’re done with this printer. And so they take baseball bats and stuff to it and destroy it. I’m like, yeah, that’s what happens when a machine dies, but not a tree. And we can go on about this forever. This is what we’re going to talk about. So joy, give us a new one. I love this so much.

Joy Clarkson (04:49.748)
Mm.

Joy Clarkson (04:56.689)
I’m gonna go.

Joy Clarkson (05:06.757)
So my name is Joy Clarkson and Joy Marie on the book, which has ties to my other book. But I work at King’s College London. I teach theology on their course for Christianity and the arts, and I’ve written You Are a Tree, which is coming out soon, and another book called Aggressively Happy. And I also host a podcast called Speaking with Joy.

And I confusingly live in Scotland, even though I teach in London. So that’s kind of, I guess, a fun fact about me.

Molly Stillman (05:38.302)
Okay, so how can I just ask like the logistics of that? Like do you, I am interested in logistics joy.

Joy Clarkson (05:40.59)
Ahem.

Joy Clarkson (05:47.245)
Yes. Well, so the logistics, there’s like the reason, which is basically that I work in London, but London is just outrageously expensive. So it’s actually cheaper for me to live in Scotland and commute than to live there, to live in London.

Molly Stillman (05:59.486)
Okay, so what’s your commute situation?

Joy Clarkson (06:02.617)
So then the other thing is that I should say that I work in London, but when I teach, I teach once a week and I don’t teach all year. So a lot of the time I’m just doing research and various other things and I can do that from wherever. So when I travel down, it’s like a five hour train ride, which is a long train ride. I’ve been known to do the insane thing of going in the morning and then coming back at night, but I usually will go in and stay for like two days and then come back. Stay with friends or things like that.

Molly Stillman (06:31.499)
So do you do this once a week?

Joy Clarkson (06:33.905)
I did when I was teaching. When I’m not teaching, it’s like this term I’m not teaching. And so I go in like once every three weeks probably.

Molly Stillman (06:42.674)
That is kind of both intense and magical. And I don’t, this is fabulous. It’s so funny, because as I sit here at my desk watching my goats and geese outside my window, I just cannot fathom a Scottish train ride into London. Like, it’s just such a fancy, it’s such a fancy life, but also so fun. So anyway, I love that. That’s so fun. Okay.

Joy Clarkson (06:49.55)
No.

Joy Clarkson (06:57.414)
Hehehe

Joy Clarkson (07:11.265)
Let me assure you, it’s not too fancy. Like I amused myself with the fact that last terms, you know, I think we have 10 weeks, so I went down 10 times. And only two of those did I not have either a cancel or delayed element of my travel. So.

Molly Stillman (07:20.521)
Yeah.

Molly Stillman (07:27.318)
Oh, yeah, that would be not fun. That would be, I don’t, yeah. Okay. I don’t, I don’t necessarily envy that, but you know, a train through the Scottish countryside does also sound pretty like postcard-esque. Um, okay. So you have a podcast, you live in Scotland, but you teach in London, uh, you, and you’re as, when this airs, your book will be out a week. So congratulations. Um, happy week after your book, book birthday. Um,

Joy Clarkson (07:36.963)
It is pretty idyllic.

Joy Clarkson (07:41.817)
I’m sorry.

Joy Clarkson (07:52.507)
Thank you.

Molly Stillman (07:56.466)
So, but outside of what you do, tell us about who you are. Like tell us about your life. What do you love to do for fun? Who do you live with? You know, all the fun stuff.

Joy Clarkson (08:00.472)
Mm.

Joy Clarkson (08:08.485)
What do I like to do for fun? Well, I feel like the go-to thing I always say, which is kind of unoriginal, is I really like tea and various forms of caffeine, though I’ve had to get more creative because the older I get, the more sensitive I am to caffeine. So I now have kind of an elaborate collection of non-caffeinated teas. I deeply love music. That’s something that I think there were periods in my life where I thought about being a musician, but now I am just an amateur in the true sense of the word, which is just that I love it.

And one of the fun things about doing my book launch is that I have asked a few musicians I really like to be on my podcast because I thought, why not? Musicians do metaphors, just a lot about what the book is about. So I love music. Um, I, uh, I am very, I very much love my friends and my family and trying to think, Oh, I also love baking. Um, I love baking actually more than I love eating what I bake, which is kind of weird, but nice for everybody else in my life.

Molly Stillman (08:47.502)
Yes.

Joy Clarkson (09:06.481)
Um, cause I love, I love the like baking is fun. Cause it’s almost like a science and it’s also kind of magic. Cause you, you add ingredients. I’m sure there’s a metaphor in this, but you, you add ingredients and, um, something, you know, like when you make bread, making bread is the coolest thing. You put everything in it’s small and then it just grows. It’s a crazy. Um, but I, so I like actually making it and the satisfaction of like producing a nice thing, but I actually like savory things better than sweet, even though I usually cook sweet. So.

Molly Stillman (09:06.678)
Love it.

Molly Stillman (09:26.896)
Yeah.

Joy Clarkson (09:35.329)
One of my favorite things in the world is to bake something and then just pester all of my friends, bringing them cinnamon rolls or whatever manifestation of my baking impulses happen to be produced that week.

Molly Stillman (09:51.071)
I love it. Um, I, so it’s funny. I love to cook and I always said my sister is a baker. In fact, she owns a bakery. And, um, so I always kind of joked that I didn’t get the baking gene, but then when you move to a farm and you start a home said, just, it’s inevitable that you’re going to get into like sourdough and baking. And so the last year or so.

I finally, I feel like I’ve cracked the sourdough code because for some reason it felt like this albatross for me for a very long time where I just like couldn’t, I had probably four or five starters that I killed and I couldn’t figure out how to get sourdough going. And then a friend of mine gave me some of her starter and she was like, we are gonna tackle this together. You are gonna figure it out.

Joy Clarkson (10:25.921)
Mmm.

Molly Stillman (10:41.982)
And now I’m a maniac. All I do is, and I set out this goal this year, Joy, where I’m gonna buy no bread products from the store. I’m gonna only make everything from scratch. And so last year I started perfecting things that I buy a lot of, so like sandwich bread, tortillas, things like that, buns. And so that has been my goal this year, and so far, we’re only in February, but so far.

Joy Clarkson (10:46.873)
Hehehehe

Joy Clarkson (10:53.878)
Wow.

Joy Clarkson (11:01.486)
Wow.

Molly Stillman (11:09.522)
I have not purchased any bread products from the store. So we’re, I’m, I’m working on it. Anyway, I love it. Okay. Um, so clearly we should get into why, why you’re here and, and your book, you are a tree. So let’s start with the genesis of this book. So where did, you know, were you like me walking amongst trees one day and found a broken down tree was like, I should write a book about this or where did the genesis of this whole idea

come from, I’m just, I’m really curious to know.

Joy Clarkson (11:43.549)
I think at least the genesis of the book, I tell a story in the beginning. My genesis of the book is actually a little bit slightly sadder or a little more plaintiff, which was, I think, so I’ve always loved trees. And actually this kind of goes with it. My family moved a lot when I was a kid. And something that I kind of, I didn’t consciously do this, but something that I.

I did, everywhere we went was I would pick a favorite tree and I would kind of imagine myself to have like a friendship with that tree. So that was just like as a child, something that I did. And I think as an adult, I also to like kind of get to know wherever I lived, and I’ve lived in lots of different places, I would try to get to know what trees were in the area and what birds were in the trees. Cause that was kind of like a way to make myself at home and whatever place that I was. But that connects to the genesis of this book.

I, the book is, is it’s about being a tree, but it’s also about metaphors and how the kind of metaphors we use to describe our lives shape the way we understand ourselves and how we live. And the story that starts the book was in a way kind of the story that started me thinking about this, which was a few years ago. So I live in Scotland. I did my PhD in Scotland and briefly moved away. And then I moved back.

the book starts when I was moving away. And at that point I had been kind of pretty much in school with a break in between a couple of years, but consistently for almost 10 years. And all of those 10 years, I moved once a year. And so I’d kind of gotten quite used to that. But then the last two years of my PhD, I lived in one house for 27 months and it was the longest I’d ever lived anywhere since I was 17. And even before then, I had actually,

my family had moved a lot. So if you talked to my mom, she would say, oh, we moved 16 times and six times internationally, which always left people kind of slightly bemused, trying to do the math on that. But so I just had this experience of moving a lot. So being able to stay in one place for 27 months was just a really, something I didn’t realize consciously during the period of it, but it was really important to me. So,

Joy Clarkson (14:02.561)
After I finished my PhD, I got another job out of the country and I had been taking care of this little potted plant while I was finishing my PhD. And I was trying to decide what to do with the potted plant because, you know, I was moving and, um, but I’d kind of taken care of it, but it was also not the most attractive potted plant because it was kind of like getting too big for its pot. And so I thought, I don’t know if it’s really like a nice thing for me to give this to someone because it’s like not a super nice plant.

So I was sitting on the little stoop of my flat and my flat was in this like literally 600 year old building. And in the, there was like a little courtyard outside the building. Sorry, this is a very long and rambly story. But there were these pear trees that had supposedly been grafted from medieval pear trees. They were kind of like very special to the area. And I had this moment of just feeling of looking at a little potted plant and looking at the pear trees.

and feeling kind of jealous of the pear trees. They had been there for so long. They had what they needed. They were fruitful. They belonged with the other trees all around them. And I looked at the potted plant and I thought, I’m a potted plant. I’m this little kind of scraggly thing that has been growing, but it’s really too big for the container that it’s in. And I have these needs for things like bigger space to put down my roots and to be able to

be nourished by sources in the ground and by other trees, because one of the other things about trees is that they nourish each other. And I thought, if I don’t plant soon, I’m just gonna get scragglier and scragglier, like this little potted plant I have. But then I had this moment of kind of like terror, because I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to plant a potted plant, but sometimes they just don’t take because their roots aren’t ready for it. And I had this moment of like, what if…

what if I just can’t be planted? What if I’m not able to be rooted? And having that metaphor kind of drop into my mind gave me words for this kind of discomfort and pain I’d been experiencing, but it also gave me a way to think about what I needed and what kind of thing it was to flourish as a human being. And so

Joy Clarkson (16:23.785)
I then kind of subsequently started looking into the metaphor of trees as people in scripture, and it’s everywhere. You know, you mentioned the Jeremiah passage, which is referencing Psalm 1. But we also see that in the Gospels when Jesus talks about us staying in the vine and bearing fruit and that good things bear good fruit. And it’s this long metaphor. And so I sat with that metaphor and thought about it and researched it, and I researched

some of the actual science of trees and the way that they communicate with each other and grow. And it just became for me a very, to use metaphor, describe metaphor, a fruitful metaphor for thinking about some of the kind of pains and sicknesses of the modern world and what we need as human beings to flourish and how we can become rooted even when that’s not an easy thing to do in our world. And that led me to think also more generally about kind of metaphors and how they shape our lives.

That was, that’s the origin story.

Molly Stillman (17:26.598)
I love all of that. And it’s so interesting, too, just, again, the timing of all of this. And so are you a word of the year person or a New Year’s Resolution person?

Joy Clarkson (17:39.549)
Okay, I’m gonna tell you a weird thing. I’m not a word of the year person, but I always keep a journal and I always name the journals. And so in a way, that is my way of having a word of the year.

Molly Stillman (17:48.995)
Okay, I love that. So I’m not a New Year’s resolution person, but I am a Word of the Year person. And my Word of the Year, two years ago, was rooted. And then my Word of the Year last year was growth. And then my Word of the Year this year is flourish. And so like, that’s, it’s again, it kind of all stemmed from like that whole…

Joy Clarkson (18:01.966)
Hmm

Joy Clarkson (18:05.574)
Hmm.

Joy Clarkson (18:09.374)
Hmm.

Molly Stillman (18:13.198)
Um, walking in the woods and seeing that tree and, and just being like, I want to be like that tree and I want to be rooted. I want to have like really strong roots. And the other thing too, and, um, this is, um, another thing I know that you talk about in your book is the story of, um, of, uh, cherry trees too. And what’s interesting is I didn’t know this, um, until again, moving to a farm and planting fruit trees and, um,

Joy Clarkson (18:19.494)
Mmm.

Molly Stillman (18:40.618)
you know, we did all this research and cherry trees in particular, you know, I’m sure you know this, but you know, they, uh, they have to be planted. When you plant a cherry tree, it has to be like the dead of winter and cherry trees need, um, I can’t remember off the top of my head, um, the exact amount of time, but cherry trees need a certain amount of time in cold months. They just need to be really cold for awhile.

Joy Clarkson (18:53.221)
Hmm.

Joy Clarkson (19:05.937)
Hmm.

Molly Stillman (19:10.198)
And that’s why you don’t see cherry trees, you know, in Florida. Like it’s just, you can’t grow a cherry tree in Florida. Um, just like you can’t grow an orange tree in North Carolina. Like it’s like trees have to have, you know, right, uh, you know, temperatures and all this. Yeah. Um, and so, uh, but you know, so the cherry trees have to have this, you know, really, really cold, um, extended period of time. You have to plant them in the dead of winter.

Joy Clarkson (19:14.309)
Hmm.

Joy Clarkson (19:21.173)
Mm.

Joy Clarkson (19:25.281)
environment. Yeah.

Molly Stillman (19:38.934)
because the cherry tree needs to be able to almost feel like it’s dying. And in order to, for it to feel like it’s dying, then what happens is then those roots have to strengthen and go deeper into the ground. But if it doesn’t have enough cold months, or if you plant it in like the spring or the summer, and it doesn’t have that shock to its system,

Joy Clarkson (19:46.501)
Hmm.

Joy Clarkson (19:55.087)
Mm.

Joy Clarkson (20:05.19)
Hmm.

Molly Stillman (20:05.922)
roots end up being really shallow and then you don’t get as much good fruit. And so it might, it’s not that it will die if you plant it in the spring or the summer, but if you want the best fruit, if you want the most flavorful cherries, if you want an abundant harvest rather than just a bunch of leaves, you have to actually plant it so that the tree feels like it’s dying and strengthens that root system and then it’s the sugars and there’s like, you know, the whole science and I’m

Joy Clarkson (20:20.113)
Hmm.

Joy Clarkson (20:29.349)
Hmm.

Molly Stillman (20:34.338)
giving basic, very basic information here. But yeah, I think it’s part of that whole, I just love when you see those metaphors in nature and you realize God was so intentional in his creation to represent all those things, or to show us visually his creation and his intention for things and how he created us to be.

Joy Clarkson (20:49.637)
Hmm.

Joy Clarkson (20:58.979)
Mm.

Molly Stillman (21:04.126)
And I think, and I think you talk about this too is, um, you know, trees are the second most referenced thing in the Bible after the kingdom of heaven. Um, or actually I think after humans, it might be humans and then trees and then the kingdom of heaven, but it’s like, so it’s like, okay, so God’s clearly telling us, um, and so you use a kind of framework throughout your book where you talk about seven metaphors directly from script.

Joy Clarkson (21:12.769)
Mm.

Joy Clarkson (21:15.831)
Yeah.

Joy Clarkson (21:31.877)
Hmm.

Molly Stillman (21:33.146)
Um, obviously love the number seven perfection completion. Um, so, but tell us about these seven metaphors and like, why was this intentional or was this something as you began to research kind of got uncovered?

Joy Clarkson (21:49.057)
Yeah, so I love everything you said. And I think one of the kind of ideas behind the book is that, like you said, God has put these images and this meaning in the world that we can see to give us language for often the thing, our experiences and our changes in ourselves that we can’t always see. And that scripture itself, you know, it’s not just a rule book. It doesn’t just tell us a bunch of things to do. It doesn’t give us a bunch of abstract philosophical

truths about God, it often draws on our experiences of the natural world and our experiences of light and height and depth to help us understand ourselves and our relationship with God. So the metaphors in the book are people are trees, wisdom is light. I loved doing that one, and that’s all through Scripture. And I could say more about any of these. Safety is a castle.

Um, love is a disease. That’s an interesting one. Um, creation is birth. Sadness is heavy and life is a journey. And all of these, um, we’re just really special for me to get to kind of meditate on and, and think about where we find them in scripture and then also see kind of the echoes and the ripples of the way that these images have been.

Molly Stillman (23:03.478)
Mm.

Joy Clarkson (23:17.705)
engaged in literature and in art. But in all of them, I kind of found myself paying more attention to the normal things I experience in life, like light coming up in the morning or the experience of weightiness or heaviness. And I found myself paying attention to those things and seeing how just kind of burdened they are with meaning and how much are just experiences of the ordinary

tangible, visible experiences of life can reveal to us about ourselves and God and the world. And as to the number seven, it is the number of perfection. I will confess it wasn’t too deep in that I think what it came down to was I did have other metaphors I could have done, but I kind of whittled it down to the ones that felt like they had the most meat to write about.

And I also realized that each one of them, I was like, oh, I’ll do like little short meditations. There’ll be like a thousand words and I’ll do 20 of them. And then I did, people are trees and wisdom is light. And I was like, I will not be doing 20 because it’s, there’s so much there to write about with each one of these metaphors that I actually need more words. So that was the other reason that it was seven.

Molly Stillman (24:32.222)
I love it. Okay, there are a couple of those that I want to unpack. And we don’t even need to unpack this one, but I will not give names to protect privacy. But I would be curious. So the creation is birth one. So this, I had the privilege and honor this.

Joy Clarkson (24:53.553)
Hmm.

Molly Stillman (25:01.042)
I was asked by a friend to photograph her home birth. And that was like always a bucket list. I realize that’s really weird. I am not a professional photographer, but I have done photography for like 20 years. And so like I will shoot friends and family, and I will, you know, seniors, things like that. But my friend, I’ve always wanted to photograph a home birth and be present for it. And so my friend asked me to photograph her home birth. And I was of course like…

Joy Clarkson (25:05.841)
Wow.

Molly Stillman (25:28.858)
so humbled and honored because like, I mean, it’s the most vulnerable thing in the world and also most magical thing. And, you know, we’re all adults, TMI, but after birth, which is most beautiful, it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Just I was like, I kept telling her, I was like, you are an absolute rock star, like just the most bad-a woman I’ve ever seen in my life. And it was just such a cool experience in general too, to be able to see like

Joy Clarkson (25:33.415)
Mm.

Molly Stillman (25:59.006)
it’s like her just instinct kicked in. It was like her body was like, yup, this is what I’m supposed to do. And it was just, I am woman, hear me roar. And it was amazing. After it was all said and done, she had to, after the baby comes out, and then what comes after that is the placenta. And I had never seen a placenta, because when I had C-sections, so I didn’t get to take a look at my placenta. And I realized that for some people, they were like, where are you going with this? Trust me.

Joy Clarkson (26:04.667)
Hmm.

Joy Clarkson (26:26.65)
I’m sorry.

Molly Stillman (26:28.566)
Trust the process, everyone. Although if you listened to this podcast for a long time, you know how to trust my process. So the placenta comes out and she gave birth in the water and the placenta was out and they put it in like a bowl because they wanted to keep the placenta attached to the baby for a little while. They wanted to delay the cord cutting. And I was like, I wanna see the placenta, so I come over.

Joy Clarkson (26:30.789)
Hehehe

Molly Stillman (26:57.15)
And I go to photograph it. And as I was looking at it, I was like, Oh my gosh, the placenta has a tree on it. If you’ve never, if you feel like listening to this and you’re listening to this and you’re just curious, Google image, what a placenta looks like and tell me that is not a root system all over the placenta. And I just, it immediately, I got sent to like the imagery in the garden of Eden and like.

Joy Clarkson (27:06.085)
Hmm

Joy Clarkson (27:16.55)
Hmm.

Joy Clarkson (27:25.157)
Hmm.

Molly Stillman (27:26.662)
at creation, what is there with Adam and Eve is a tree. And I’m like, it looks like the tree of life on a placenta. And I just, I was just like, it’s just not an accident. It’s just not an accident. And I’m like, think about this thing that has been giving life and growing this child for nine months, this miracle, is like this thing that looks like a freaking tree. I just thought it was so.

Joy Clarkson (27:31.345)
Mm.

Mm.

Joy Clarkson (27:38.253)
Hmm.

Joy Clarkson (27:46.811)
Hmm.

Joy Clarkson (27:53.515)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Stillman (27:55.222)
And, um, anyway, so I don’t know if that is even like related to like what you really expound on in your book under creation is life, um, or creation is birth, but that’s like the whole thing that I, I remember going to that. And I was like, that is exactly what I pictured. I was like, it looks like the tree of life and this just can’t be an accident. And it’s just those little things that make me say, how can you deny that God exists? Like how do you look at that and think like, nah.

Joy Clarkson (28:16.133)
Hmm.

Molly Stillman (28:24.002)
There ain’t no God. Like, I just, it’s not an accident. Anyway, so that’s my quick little placenta story that no one knew I was going to tell on this episode.

Joy Clarkson (28:32.681)
Well, I will confess that I did not write about placenta in the book, but I will say, and this is kind of more riffing on things from the book, but even something I was talking about somebody on my podcast was even the way that a human body, like if you look at the veins and human body, it totally looks like a tree. And there was this idea, and here I’ll get a little

Molly Stillman (28:36.886)
I didn’t think you did, did I?

Molly Stillman (28:50.41)
Yes! Totally. A heart.

Molly Stillman (28:59.268)
I love it.

Joy Clarkson (29:02.605)
like modernity, there is this idea that human beings for little microcosms. So you think about a, a Cosm is like a Cosmos, right? So they, there was this idea that human beings were this tiny version of the whole world. So if there were trees in the world, you would see trees and human beings. And if there were, if there were rocks in the world, you would see rocks in our bones. If there were, you know,

rivers you would see in our blood, like this kind of sense that everything that’s out there in the world, God put in the human person because we’re there to watch out for it. So we’re these little microcosms of this macrocosm that is the world, that there’s this relationship between the creation and then, and us who are in the image of the creator. And that for that reason, the idea was that, well, if you looked at human being, you would understand something about creation. And if you looked at creation, you would understand something about

human beings and God, like there was this kind of integrity and this meaning written into it. And if you combine that with ideas too of so much as scripture talks about the world being spoken into existence, right? That there’s this, that God is the one, it’s created through the power of his mouth. And so there’s this sense of the whole world is kind of this poetic, meaningful, disclosive place that

Molly Stillman (30:13.174)
Yeah.

Joy Clarkson (30:25.209)
that we can see and that the connections that you see between a tree and a placenta and a human being aren’t accidental because we are created to belong in this world and to have a relationship to it and define meaning in it. And that the metaphors we reach for aren’t just useful because, oh well, it might be nice to talk about people as trees, but because God has really invested the world with this meaning and the more we pay attention to it, the more we have that kind of response that you were saying of wonder and of worship.

Molly Stillman (30:51.999)
us.

Joy Clarkson (30:54.745)
And I will say one other funny thing, and I put this in the introduction, but so there’s this thing called a bestiary, which was when these medieval monks would like try to create an encyclopedia of beasts. And they’re really interesting, they’re illustrated, and the general outline is they’ll be like, well, this is a panther, this is where it lives, this is what it does. And like a lot of the information is like, clearly they had never actually seen a panther, because it’ll be like, you know.

Molly Stillman (31:22.031)
Yeah.

Joy Clarkson (31:22.405)
The Panther is multicolored and has sweet breath that all of the animals are drawn to. And you’re like, I don’t think that’s what Panthers are, but you know, whatever. But then almost every entry closes with, but the true Panther is our Lord Jesus Christ. And then it goes on to kind of, which sounds funny, you have to read it, but they’re kind of, their worldview was that everywhere you looked in creation, there was some.

It drew its nature from God. And so there was something you could see that was true about God and every creature and everything in creation. And the reason I tell that story is that when I was writing the book and I was talking about each one of these metaphors, I kept on finding myself being like, and the true light that is wisdom is our Lord Jesus Christ, because there is this sense that if you kind of, which, you know, it feels like if you, if you dig deep enough into any of these metaphors in our scripture, there’s this sense that God is kind of under them. So it felt like there used to be this.

Molly Stillman (32:08.705)
Yeah

Joy Clarkson (32:19.681)
story where it’s like, you know, when you’re in Sunday school and the teacher says, oh, you know, what’s brown and fuzzy and like, how’s acorns and trees? And the kid says, well, it sounds like a squirrel, but I’m going to go with Jesus because the answer is usually Jesus. But that’s what I felt like when I was writing the book was just how many of these metaphors in scripture or just in the world that we find. If you dig down beneath them, you find this, that God is there kind of infusing it with meaning and, and yeah.

Molly Stillman (32:27.438)
Right.

Molly Stillman (32:47.902)
Oh, I love that. Okay, girl, you have permission to get nerdy on here any day because I love getting nerdy and I think being nerdy can be fun. Yes, yes, I completely agree. And I think that when we open our eyes, when we allow ourselves to, maybe this thought hasn’t even really occurred to me till I’m about to say it.

Joy Clarkson (32:54.661)
Hehehe

Joy Clarkson (33:01.057)
Me too.

Molly Stillman (33:16.174)
So forgive me if it’s not polished, because I’m word-bombing it. You know, I love how Jesus talks about, you know, like the kingdom of heaven, you know, belongs to such as these, like some talk about, like, unless you are like a little child, you know, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And I think part of that, you know, so many people ask, there’s like always debate. I’m like, well, what does he mean by that? Like, what does he mean by that? Like, do we? And the reality is, is I think part of it is like, I look at my kids,

Joy Clarkson (33:31.357)
Mm.

Joy Clarkson (33:41.432)
Hmm.

Molly Stillman (33:46.334)
And just that childlike wonder about life that they have. And every little thing is magical. And especially when they were little, I mean, my kids would always come back in the house from playing outside with their quote unquote treasures. And it was always just like broken leaves and rocks and acorns and just I would.

Joy Clarkson (34:04.98)
Hehehe

Molly Stillman (34:10.634)
pull clothes out of the dryer and it would just be like so much, you know, paraphernalia from nature. And, but it was like all of it was so exciting. And every time we would go on a walk around the neighborhood, I mean, especially when my kids were, you know, toddlers, I mean, it was like the longest walk possible because they had to stop and they had to look at every roly poly and every worm. And, and, and I learned so much about slowing down and patience.

Joy Clarkson (34:33.265)
Hehehe

Molly Stillman (34:39.17)
from them at that time. But I think too, it all speaks to this, having just wonder and awe of the universe and of creation and of God. And kids too, like they ask questions, when they’re confused about something or they wanna know about something. But then at the end of the day, you can give them an answer or you can say, I don’t know, we can figure it out together. And they’ll just be like, okay, like they just.

Joy Clarkson (34:46.416)
Mm.

Joy Clarkson (35:05.402)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Molly Stillman (35:08.49)
you know, whereas like once you get to be an adult and you’re like, but why, but why? So like right now in my chronological Bible reading, like where I am right now, I’m in Exodus, you know, and actually today’s passage was the Passover and like the age old question for people that read that story, they, you know, it says, and God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. And there’s that question of like, well, what, what? Or, or, and, and Pharaoh’s heart was hardened just as God had said. Um, and

Joy Clarkson (35:14.029)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Stillman (35:37.978)
So it’s like, wait, why did God harden Pharaoh’s heart? Like could Pharaoh have chosen to have his heart softened? Like, you know, or did God from the beginning, like plan for this to happen? And it’s just like that question that the reality is, is we don’t know the answer to the side of heaven and, um, we’re not supposed to, and they’re supposed to be an element of mystery and awe and wonder. And, um, and that’s what, you know, when you’re a kid, that that’s how it is. And I think.

Joy Clarkson (35:53.114)
Mm.

Molly Stillman (36:05.33)
I say all of that to say like with what you’re talking about, you know, as you kind of began to uncover these metaphors and as you look at things like creation and birth and everything in creation, just being a direct representative of God, like, of course we’re not supposed to understand it all. We’re not supposed to have it figured out, but the more that we open our eyes to that curiosity and that childlike, childlike awe.

Joy Clarkson (36:24.133)
Hmm

Joy Clarkson (36:31.898)
Hmm

Molly Stillman (36:35.11)
we just see God in it. But when we, when we harden ourselves to like, um, seeing it all as machines, seeing ourselves as machines, seeing the world as how can we, um, use it for our benefit? Um, that is when I think we begin to push God out of it. Um, I don’t know, I just, all of this is just occurring to me. So I guess.

Joy Clarkson (36:39.729)
Mmm.

Hmm.

Joy Clarkson (36:49.031)
Mm-hmm.

Joy Clarkson (36:55.244)
Mm.

Joy Clarkson (36:59.761)
That’s great. Well, I want to say something too about metaphors. So in all of the chapters, they’re all titled like wisdom is light, but there’s always a parenthetical statement says wisdom is not light. And the reason I did that, and this connects to what you were saying, is that a part of metaphors is that you’re using one thing to talk about another thing. And usually the reason you do that is because the thing you’re trying to describe, you can’t quite put into the words. It’s mysterious.

And so you use a metaphor, you talk about light or about trees because it helps you grasp something in the thing itself. But I think that the thing that’s great about metaphors is that we also know that I am not actually a tree, I am a human being. And so by using that metaphor, I illuminate a whole bunch of things about what it is to be a human being. But I know precisely because I’m using the metaphor that I haven’t grasped everything about being a human being.

that there’s still mystery in the thing I’m describing, that I might need another metaphor or another image because these things that we’re describing are mysterious and the kind of knowledge that we can have about them is kind of partial. And so we were thankful for it. And I think it’s interesting that scripture does that, right? Scripture doesn’t go, this is what a human being is, X, Y, Z. It’s made of these many, it says that we’re trees, that we’re made in the image of God. It gives us all of these kinds of

Molly Stillman (38:03.597)
Right.

Joy Clarkson (38:25.693)
open-ended ways of revealing the truth of something, not because we can’t grasp truth, but because the truth of these mysteries, of wisdom, of human beings, is more than can be captured in words. And so in a funny way, I think that metaphors can help us maintain that kind of childlike openness and curiosity, because when we use them, we know we’re not capturing the entirety of what a human being is, or what wisdom is, or what safety is. Because I think that’s the habit of adults. We kind of want to…

Molly Stillman (38:51.763)
Right.

Joy Clarkson (38:55.513)
have an answer, write it down, and that’s the deal done, but, and move on. But I think metaphors kind of keep us open to the many facets of things and the mystery of being alive.

Molly Stillman (38:59.114)
and move on.

Molly Stillman (39:10.618)
Yeah, I mean, and that’s how God’s Word is. I mean, you can read a passage a thousand times and find something new and interesting in it and it just uncover the depths of and the beauty and richness of Scripture. Obviously, there are so many of your metaphors that I would love to unpack. This is for everybody. You’re also at home probably, curious. So you should just go buy a

Joy Clarkson (39:28.366)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Stillman (39:39.758)
Um, uh, but I, the one that in particular, as you said it, I was like, okay, we need to talk about this and that is love is a disease. Um, I just, I, help me out here. Talk, talk to me about this. Love is a disease. Cause that is like immediately you just kind of go, a disease is not good. So what w why that?

Joy Clarkson (39:40.685)
Hehehe

Joy Clarkson (40:03.185)
So part of that, with that chapter, I used that title, but I wanted to kind of look at the different metaphors that we use for love in general. And a lot of the metaphors that we use for love, just kind of like, this is set aside from scripture, although there are also examples in scripture. But a lot of the metaphors we use for love, especially for romantic love, either describe it as a disease, a madness, or something, or like a battle, something unfortunate that happens to you. So think about, you say someone’s lovesick,

Molly Stillman (40:17.378)
Right.

Joy Clarkson (40:33.249)
you say he’s crazy for her, you’re crazy in love, and or even I was thinking about this, this is a very like, you know, pop song. I think it was Katy Perry who had the song, Catch Feelings, right? The idea that you like, you can catch, like you’re catching a cold, feelings for someone. And you know, and scripture has this language too, where it talks about being heartsick or things like that. There’s this sense of love being something that kind of

Molly Stillman (40:35.534)
crazy in love, mad in love.

Joy Clarkson (41:03.077)
happens to you. We also use lots of language of battle, right? So to fight for somebody, we talk about being wounded. Like there’s all of these, these kinds of things that are in the kind of orbit of, of language we use for love. And in the chapter, I talk about how that has a long history, especially the love as a sickness or love as a madness, um, just in language in general, but like in something like Plato, cause you know, Plato has this whole dialogue where, where he’s like, is it better as a philosopher to fall in love or not? And ultimately he’s like,

Well, he goes with yes, but he goes for a long time being like, because, you know, when you fall in love, even that language fall in love, right? So we kind of stumble into it happens.

Molly Stillman (41:38.142)
Right. Yeah. Or head over heels. I’m like, that would be, I’m curious as to how that works. Yeah. Interesting.

Joy Clarkson (41:43.493)
Yeah. Yes. And that one connecting that with like safety is a castle. You have a lot of like, if you’re an underdog or you’re down and out, anything that’s down tends to be kind of like when you’re out of control, so falling in love or head over heels, it’s all that kind of sense of being out of control. Having something happen to you that you can’t control and, you know, Plato’s like, you know, it makes you forget your appointments and it makes you, um, you know, betray all your friends and everybody gets annoyed with you. Like, you know, why is it worth it? And, um,

So I looked at that and I think the reason we use those metaphors is that a lot of times love can feel like something that we can’t control, something that happens to us, something it takes over. Sometimes it does make us literally feel we have our tummies hurt or whatever, things like that. And we also have all seen or experienced love that did kind of manifest like an illness, something that actually did make people a little bit crazy and make them make choices they wouldn’t usually make.

Molly Stillman (42:22.894)
Bye.

Joy Clarkson (42:44.273)
So there’s lots of reasons why that metaphor, I think, is so pervasive. But, and this is what I talked about in the chapter, that metaphor also makes love something that happens to us and something we can’t make choices about, right? So if I want to have a healthy marriage or good relationship with my kids, if love is something that you fall into or catch or go crazy with, then it can kind of come and go.

So then I looked in scripture and said, well, what are other metaphors that are used? And two of the main metaphors I found in scripture were love as a home. So when we talk about belonging with someone or about Christ kind of asking us if we can come in and we let him in, and even just the language where it talks about, you know, if you accept the father, then he’ll come and he’ll make his home with you. And I kind of put that into conversation with Wendell Berry’s book, Hannah Coulter, where,

Molly Stillman (43:12.484)
Hmm.

Molly Stillman (43:40.779)
Thank you.

Joy Clarkson (43:40.997)
they talk about the room of belonging, that in their marriage, they have all these times, they go out and they struggle and they wrestle, but then in their marriage, they have this home that they’ve made together, both literally, but also emotionally, where they can belong, where they accept each other. And that metaphor of home means that it’s a place of safety, right? Home is somewhere where we can let people in, but it’s also somewhere that we keep unhealthy things out. It’s a place that we can

decorate and adjust according to our personalities and our histories and our lives and with something we can do together. And it’s somewhere where you are invited to stay, but free to go, right? There’s this sense that love can be that. And so in that chapter, I kind of thought about how that to me is a much more, a much more…

productive metaphor for thinking about how we love, how we fall in love and how we stay in love. And then I also looked at love as a mirror, that love is something that reveals ourself to us. We can’t really know ourselves except for in relationship. So that’s, yes, that’s that provocatively title chapter.

Molly Stillman (44:42.551)
Mm.

Molly Stillman (44:55.146)
I love that. And I wasn’t until you began unpacking it that I was like, Oh my gosh, you are right. That is a hundred percent. Um, and I don’t think I’d, I, it had never occurred to me to stop and think about that. Yeah. This thing that is supposed to be beautiful and, um, it does have so much, uh, almost angry imagery.

Joy Clarkson (45:19.197)
Well, I think the thing is as beautiful as love is, I think a lot of people experience love as kind of a dangerous, a dangerous, scary thing. And you know, and I think that’s partially just because it is scary to love another human being and be vulnerable to that. But also because we’ve all had mixed experiences of relationships in our own life. And, you know, Plato calls it the divine madness that it is crazy, does feel dangerous, but it’s also the thing that kind of draws us out of ourselves and towards God.

Molly Stillman (45:26.68)
Mm.

Molly Stillman (45:49.266)
Yeah. Okay. Clearly I could do 17 episodes with you about this. So that would be, this would be a very long conversation if I asked every question that I wanted to ask. But as we kind of wind down our time, the last question I wanted to ask you is just as you began to really dig deep into this and to get more, just really began to, you know,

Joy Clarkson (45:55.525)
Hahaha.

Molly Stillman (46:18.898)
uncover the layers, so to speak. Was there something in particular that you learned as far as the humans are trees metaphor that was in particularly meaningful to you or interesting to you that you just maybe going into it, you weren’t sure? It had never occurred to you.

Joy Clarkson (46:20.549)
Mm.

Joy Clarkson (46:35.781)
Mm.

Joy Clarkson (46:45.51)
Hmm.

Molly Stillman (46:46.494)
Was there something in particular that you learned about that whole, like, we are trees and not machines that ministered to you specifically?

Joy Clarkson (46:52.398)
Mm.

Joy Clarkson (46:56.553)
Yes, there was. I mean, I learned lots of things writing it that I consistently had moments of, oh my gosh, I never noticed that. But I think for me personally, something that was helpful was realizing how consistent the metaphor of trees are, but also how consistent the metaphor of travel is. And that those are kind of, they’re kind of at odds. Do you know what I mean? So if you think about all through the Psalms, it talks about the way of the righteous and

Molly Stillman (47:14.966)
Yeah.

Joy Clarkson (47:26.025)
And even in Psalm one, where I get kind of the basis for the book, where it talks about being a tree planted by streams, living water, bears fruit and season that the first half of that Psalm is about traveling. It’s about blessed as a man who does not, you know, stand and sit with the mockers is talking about traveling on a road. And, um, and the reason that was meaningful for me was, you know, I started off describing kind of being able to put my finger on that experience of rootlessness and, and.

Molly Stillman (47:54.327)
Yeah.

Joy Clarkson (47:55.401)
And the need that I really did have, and I think subsequently since that time that I have, there are ways in which I have rooted my life more than I was rooted then. In ways that have really deeply nourished me and made me feel much more at home in my life. So that was helpful. Having the language of the tree was helpful for going, okay, well, I think I’m feeling undernourished. I think I need a place to root. I think I need other trees be nourishing me.

Molly Stillman (48:05.236)
Right.

Molly Stillman (48:13.121)
Yeah.

Joy Clarkson (48:24.089)
sitting with that metaphor is really helpful. But then recognizing that there is also this metaphor of travel that is also pretty fundamental to what it is to be a human being, is to travel. And you know, Hebrews talks about kind of the whole kind of hall of faith, but the way that it does that is by talking about them longing for a country that they’re not in yet. And I think realizing that both of these metaphors are there in scripture, that they’re kind of contradictory.

Molly Stillman (48:45.09)
Right.

Joy Clarkson (48:52.837)
But that’s because being a human is kind of contradictory. To be in the world and to flourish, we do need to have roots. We do need to be like a tree and stay in one place. But even the best tree human life is still a temporary life and we still have this sense of a longing for home that isn’t here. And so I think realizing that those metaphors kind of go together and that if I always find in myself both a desire for roots and a desire for…

Molly Stillman (49:00.012)
Yeah.

Joy Clarkson (49:21.365)
you know, a home country that I haven’t yet discovered, that that’s not actually a flaw. It’s, it is, it is, um, it’s the inherent tension of what it is to be a human being is to need roots and to long for a country that we haven’t found yet. So that was, I know that may sound grand, but for me personally, wrestling with kind of the things I was wrestling with at that stage in my life about how to make decisions and, and how to live well.

Molly Stillman (49:35.277)
Mm.

Joy Clarkson (49:46.877)
realizing that kind of tension that I felt was also in scripture and thinking about it was really was really helpful for me and having some sense of direction and resolution to that restlessness I described in the first chapter.

Molly Stillman (49:59.442)
Oh, so good. Oh, and I just feel like that’s the bow on this particular conversation, especially since, you know, the way that we opened. Um, Oh my gosh, Joy, I have to have you back on, um, because this was so fun. It’s so rich. Um, thank you for being here and, uh, please tell the listeners, um, where they can, you know, about your book and, and I’ll plug all the things where they can, they connect with you and all of that.

Joy Clarkson (50:05.209)
Yeah.

Joy Clarkson (50:12.837)
Ha ha ha.

Joy Clarkson (50:24.561)
Hehehe

So the book is You Are a Tree and Other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought and Prayer, and you can find it wherever books are sold, especially when this episode comes out, it will already be out in the world. Um, I’m on Instagram and Facebook and the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter. Um, and, um, and I, I kind of consolidate everything on a sub stack, which is just like a website slash newsletter. So you could find me at joyclarx.

Molly Stillman (50:45.052)
I think all Twitter is fine.

Joy Clarkson (50:57.193)
on Substack, but also if you just type enjoyclarksen.com, it will redirect you there. And that’s where you can find me.

Molly Stillman (51:05.242)
Awesome. And your magical train riding life in Scotland and London. Joy, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for the wisdom and light that you shared and for allowing me to geek out over tree metaphors. I really, really appreciate it. And you are a gift and a joy.

Joy Clarkson (51:08.421)
Hahaha

Joy Clarkson (51:17.146)
Hehehe

Joy Clarkson (51:27.813)
Thank you, and you’re a tree!

Molly Stillman (51:29.462)
Well, thanks. Thank you. Thank you, I love you so much.

Joy Clarkson (51:33.71)
Thank you so much.