Confession to Plants: How We Think About Sins Against Nature

When I was a child, I spoke to trees. I knew my secrets would be safe with these great green friendly things. And I thought the trees spoke back to me. I'd press my ear against their trunks to hear the reverberating, strangely musical sound of branches knocking against one another in the wind, a sound that seems to be traveling to my ear from the decades coded into each tree's annual growth rings.

I'm comfortable talking to plants, but I'm not sure if I could do so through a microphone in front of a bunch of seminarians, as a student at Union Theological Seminary is doing in a photo tweeted out Tuesday by the seminary's account.