I have a long-standing love affair with trees. I love the forests, and I hate to see a tree chopped down. Any tree. I have a ficus tree that has died, but I can’t bring myself to cut it down and throw it away.

When I was very young I had a favorite tree. It grew in the middle of a corn field. I looked forward to spring when my mother would pack me and my sisters in our car and drive out to that field to see that tree. It grew there, a stately king in a black loam field, reigning gloriously over the budding corn and soybeans.

When I lived in Washington, D.C. as a seminary professor, I had a room that overlooked a giant elm tree. I could reach out my window to touch its branches. One day I began to notice something strange about that tree. Its leaves drooped. Some of its branches didn’t bu…