Tree Hugger

Steve and I recently added a new voice to our morning ritual. Titled “The Book of Awakening,” Mark Nepo’s daily meditations are a poet’s words of awakening to life after walking down long halls in the school of hard knocks. He takes the places that rubbed down his rough edges, the darkest corners, the loneliest nights and emerges light as a feather. Each morning I read Mark Nepo’s thoughts about having the life I want by being present to life I have. It is an outstanding way to orient my day.

Yesterday morning he offered this quote from Naomi Shihab Nye, “Older now, you find holiness in anything that continues” then posed this question. “What is oldest in you?”

I like to remember that as a child I would sit in the maple tree and, well.. just sit. I listened and watched. But mostly I just sat in the crooked seat where branches crossed paths on their journey toward the sky. I marveled at the simple. I felt the connection of all life. I imagined myself the sap moving through the tree.

These days I find myself leaning forward with excitement into conversations about small shifts in cultural perceptions and random evidence of a world turning toward its spiritual center. Some days it feels like I was born to wait for this time in human history. So it is not new to me, this awareness. The desire to revel in the slow, methodical ways of the Universe. It is old in me.

I don’t remember, but I guess my Mom gave me the skills to reach my maple tree chair. I do remember how she taught each of my boys to climb. First the orange tree in the backyard and then the magnolia tree out front. The first branches were only a foot or so above the ground, but the boys delighted in their freedom and the way the world looked from their new heights. Eventually each would quietly find a way to visit the tree alone. If we were patient Mom and I could witness this miracle from the window. It’s not easy to watch your child climb and slip and stretch so far and reach so high and sometimes fall and wait breathlessly as they wipe the dirt from their sweet little hands and try again. It’s not easy, but oh what a gift!

I once overheard Rusty repeating and mimicking my Mom’s instructions. “First you hold a branch with this hand. Don’t let go until you hold another branch with this hand. Put your foot on this branch. Put your other foot very close. Stop. Look around. Never take both hands off while you’re climbing. When you find a good place wrap your arm around the branch. Hug the tree and sit down.”

I am grateful for the instruction. And I am grateful to have found many places to wrap my arms around a branch and sit down. In those places I enjoy asking Mark’s question. What is oldest in me? I guess it’s my heartbeat. In it s pulsing I feel the rhythm of all time. I know the continual, ancient, ancestral birthing. I remember where I came from and what I’m here for. And I can enjoy the mystery of where I’m going.