Thank you to my friend Gill Henwood who has sent me this photo of a Rowan Tree in the Lake District.
There are a number of legends associated with the Rowan.
They are are known as Mountain Ash because they often take root in mountainous areas, but they are unrelated to Ash Trees.
The Rowan  was cited by Plato, the pre-Christian Greek Philosopher who mentions it in in his Symposium
They have a place in Celtic mythology and were sacred to Druids who saw them as portals between death and rebirth.
It was often planted near homes because ancient belief associated it with the qualities of courage, wisdom and protection, which they treasured.
Early Welsh Christianity refers to it as the Tree of Life because  it was thought that the Cross of Christ was carved from the wood of the Rowan, the blood red berries being symbolic of the blood of Christ.
This thought leads me to offer this little Pondering.

ROWAN.

There are those who say your berries,
rich and red,
remind them of Jesus’s blood
falling as deep droplets;
beckoning us to the Cross
and drawing us into the immensity
of God’s Love for us.

Others, though, see the berries as baubles
on the Tree of Incarnation;
decorating the Manger,
drawing us to the Child who sparkles for us,
beaming with the immensity of God’s Love for us.

Both are right!

[Mr G. 17^th September 2024]
Photo by Gill Henwood.