It requires courage, this even-so life.
Courage and endurance. It sounds so easy, stringing those two words together, so simple, as if they would be there, falling right into your hand and into your heart because you need them. But reality is different. Reality teaches you that the only way to develop courage is to face the fear and remain standing. Reality teaches you that the only way to grow endurance is to keep going when you can’t anymore.
A hard school, splintery with difficulty. The pain and the worry keep hooking at you, driving slivers of it underneath your skin. Sometimes it feels as if you’re run through with whole beams of wood. A tree run right through your aching heart!
When you can’t stand it anymore, you go outside. Find a place where you can lay down this heaviness you carry inside you. The tree in the back garden is raining down leaves. You’re not saddened by the sight. Not now that you know it is not about loss, it is about transient beauty passing on. The leaves make a carpet underneath the tree.
You lie down on the yellow and brown carpet and look up. Up, up, up to where its branches reach for the sky. You feel an affinity with the tree, its trunk so sturdy, and you, carrying this shaft of wood through your heart.
Stillness whispers in. Like the rustling of the papery leaves. Like the breathing of the breeze.
You heap the leaves on top of you, becoming tree. Becoming Earth. Becoming quiet. You give the shaft of wood back, because here … here in all this holiness, there is not enough place for it in your heart. Not when light filters in! Light and lightness … and the peace of knowing: all is well.
When my heart was embittered and I was pierced within, then I was senseless and ignorant; I was like a beast before You. Nevertheless I am continually with You; You have taken hold of my right hand. With Your counsel You will guide me, and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For, behold, those who are far from You will perish; You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You. But as for me, the nearness of God is my good ; I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works.- Psalm 73:21-28
And in this moment, this moment of finding your core whole again, you know: You trust Him explicitly … implicitly … and exquisitely.
Photo taken 3 May 2012
beautiful !
Thank you! =)
Trees are heavenly things aren’t they, so powerful, beautiful and calming. The park I’ve been walking in so much recently has so many beautiful trees and I often find myself just standing there staring at them. In fact, you’ve given me an idea. Some tree studies in my photography, thanks for the inspiration!
Thank you, Andrew! And thanks for the mention in your post. I agree: trees are great. If you need to get grounded, finding a tree must be one of the easiest ways to do it.
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