Root out of Jesse. Root cause. Root position of a chord on a piano. Root of all evil. Root ball. Root like an armadillo. Root canal…. So much we can do with the word “root.”

How about “root crown”? Or “crown of roots”? I have never heard of it either, but I saw one.

It was, in fact, a root ball. Or had been. The tree it once anchored had long fallen and yielded its foundation to the sea. And the sun had bleached and the waves had tumbled and polished and returned this thing of the land to the land.

Transformed by its passage through the sea, it sits inverted on the sand, a majestic patinaed crown of roots.

I think of Jonah. I think of a crown of thorns. I think of a divine love that insists on redeeming, resurrecting, repurposing, replenishing.