Who Has a Right to the Tree of Life? Covid-19 Response

For African American people, those whose ancestors were torn from their homes in Africa and enslaved in the Americas,  the Tree of Life may  have signified the sacred tree—created at the beginning of time---from which the seeds of all plants burst forth to make the whole world an abundant garden.  The Serer peoples of West Africa told stories of the Tree, and held Trees to be sacred sites of divine presence.  They made offerings to the Creator at the base of trees, and in the hollows of trees they buried  their Griots—storytellers who remembered and retold generation after generation in music and in poetry the stories of their people.  The ancestor’s stories were held in the heartwood of the Tree.

When it asked “Ain’t You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?” this spiritual comforted, inspired and spiritually empowered a people who had  been uprooted, enslaved, and oppressed. The power of the song lifted a suffering and sorrowing people into the embrace of the  transcendent source of mercy, justice and life.   It echoes strains of the ancestral religions that crossed the  Atlantic with the West African people and re-mixes those echoes with stories and archetypal images from  Jewish and Christian tradition.  The Tree of Life is planted at the center of the Garden of Paradise in the Genesis creation story, a sign of the abundance of life intended for all. In the book of Revelation, at the end of the Bible, the Tree of Life is restored to those who have endured great travail.   Its leaves are for “the healing of the nations” and it grows on the banks of the River of Life that flows through the New Jerusalem. This spiritual reminds descendants and all within the hearing of the song that we are not separated from the Tree of Life but that we belong to it and it to us, by Divine right, by the Creator’s gift.  In this time of dual pandemics – COVID 19 and Racism—the affirmation “You’ve Got a Right to the Tree of Life”  invokes the transcendent source of life and healing, the birthright of all humanity and the promised gift for those who suffer, a testimony to the creative power of Black Faith.

Rebecca Ann Parker, the Braxton Institute

The Braxton Institute for Sustainability, Resiliency and Joy is grateful to Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir for permission for their version of “Tree of Life” to be the theme song for our Columbia University Center on African-American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice Covid-19 Rapid Response Grant.