POSSESSION
It’s not what we possess that is of value
But the energies, the passion that possess us-
The drive for beauty and creation….
The quest for knowledge and wisdom………..
The growing path of understanding and compassion…….
The acts of love we are a witness and a channel to…………………
Surrendering to these forces of perpetual, eternal value
That they may possess us greater still.
Kat Carroll
Thursday, August 30, 2007
THE MESSAGE OF AUTUMN
Some see the death of summer in the turning and falling of the leaves; the silent messenger of change ahead. Autumn, for some, is a time of mourning, a time of regret as the warmth of summer’s carefree days spent outside are left further behind with each shortening day. Dark, cold, wet days and long winter nights are ahead, at least in my latitude…
Even for those of us who anticipate the first signs of fall like a child anxious to return to school after being home all summer, there is still some truth to the mourning aspects of Fall. There is a sense of loss while we simultaneously embrace what lies ahead. Besides, how can we focus on the melancholy aspects of the season’s change when all around us Nature is at her best, sated with astonishing beauty and profusion that some travel for hundreds of miles to see?
Summer languishes on until the cobwebs betray the new chill in the morning air. Suddenly, their invisible presence is revealed. Weighty with drenching dew, they bear witness to a subtle change in the seasons. A spider is on every bush, a whole nation of them living side by side on the high wires and coming in at the first chance for more comfortable accommodations. Autumn is their season to shine, artists in their own right displaying enviable talent in the crisp dawn air. The splendor of their bejeweled designs adorned with iridescent sparkling dewdrops, opens the season of the natural world of art to the connoisseur of beauty.
The trees are heavy now with their gifts of life’s succulent fruits. Our efforts on their behalf are blessed with outrageous increase far out of proportion to our labors. But for years there was nothing; just the waiting to see if any of our hard work would bear fruit.
This orchard family whose intertwined roots have plunged deeper into the earth, reaching toward the very center of the planet if they could, worked madly below the surface with nothing of note to display above. Their potential remained unfulfilled. Yet they have withstood storm and cold, winds and rain, clinging together tightly below the ground giving stability and strength one to another. Their secret vocation in those first years of planting was work of another kind and we would be wise to learn of its lessons…coming from a strong foundation and hidden depths will ultimately support them well when they reach the potential they were created for.
Visiting the garden, the same abundance reveals itself. Fifteen raised beds are lavishly dressed in the colors of life, in health. Once again, such a response in relation to the work performed in the early springtime. Nature gives generously, like God; much more in return than we have given.
The Autumnal transition is a time of enigma, the great mystery of Nature - the impending death sleep of luxuriant growth and fruiting departing in a burst of magnificently condensed color. She asserts herself so loudly and deliberately into our busy days demanding to be seen and her generosity noted and ultimately reckoned within the kitchen. The bountiful harvest balances itself against our often monotone lives of desperate activity choosing to captivate us with the most passionate colors of the whole Universe.
Autumn is a time of passage into stillness, sleep and a form of death all the while coupled with sensuous oranges, rich deep reds and burnished gold; flaming sunsets painted on leaf canvases that capture the essence of a life lived well, with intention and purpose…..no mere fading on the vine but a promise spoken in the language of vibrant color of splendid rebirth in a season yet to come and the invitation to live with focused intensity today. The silent Voice of Autumn is crying out her belief in Life, in the wisdom and necessity of “deaths” along the way; her unshakable belief in living with a profound force of focused concentration on what is truly of importance here now and forever.
Paul of ancient scriptural texts is a man who understood and fully practiced a life of continual, unwavering commitment and intensity. His early training and education was impressive, rigorous, and disciplined. He lived seamlessly with the trajectory of his strong beliefs and inner convictions propelling his movement decisively toward his goals. His entire existence demonstrates the power of a life of undistracted pure focus, willing to die to some belief systems when those with more meaning and truth revealed themselves, replacing the errors and misguided tenets of the first early education.
Paul’s life reminds one of a strong spreading tree, unshakable, with a firm belief in life itself being lived for a higher purpose. He had a willingness to endure many “deaths” discovering his true path, not the one imposed on him by the dogma of the day. His refined beliefs were based on direct interactional knowledge of the One who revealed to him his purpose and destiny calling. Paul had the audacity to embrace his unique life story with passion unmatched by many even today. How many of us are on this trajectory living with this level of focus and undeterred intensity?
The greatest thing we can do here, the place where all progressive action springs from, is to be still. Again, the riddle. How is action born from not moving? “Everything is gestation,” Rilke says, “then the birthing”. God asks us to, “Be still and know that I am God.”
We attach much importance to the active workings of man; feeding the poor, giving time and money, sharing our faith….all this suggests movement and strength. Yet as a strong tree does much of its work under the dark cover of earth for many seasons, so it is with us. There is a time for everything. The wise look to nature and take their cues. Look first to the Creator and concentrate on building the foundation from which our great life’s work will inevitably come.
The surest course to a life lived with precision, intensity and focus is one spent in stillness, at the feet of the Master, absorbing deep Wisdom and listening for specific direction and learning the sheer pleasure of knowing the Source of all creativity and life. Making this connection, we realize we have no separation from His life, but are as intimately entwined with His life as the roots of singular trees are with each other and with the earth, as branch to trunk.
Einstein said, “I want to know the thoughts of God. All the rest are details.” This “knowing” God is born in silence before the creative God of the universe meditating on His character and beauty. It is nurtured by reading His letters and seeing His heart revealed in His dealings with man. The rest will follow as surely as the seasons, and they have their place; knowing God is the place of primacy.
One of the lessons of the time of transition then is the utmost intensity and passion in our life with God is gained in silence, sitting at His feet and learning to know who He is, learning to love Him with the intimacy of a lover and live with Him that way moment by moment. The privilege of this mentored and guided life by the One who created and understands the depths of our heart cannot be grasped. It amazes me to think of it. This is His intense love made visible as we lived potentiated lives, bearing abundantly.
In today’s world, the elderly are in a state of declining respect among many, sadly. Not so in all nations, but in America, yes. The aged are often overlooked for their wisdom, experience, talents and contributions as we pander to the young stars on our horizon. What a mistake as we overlook what we cannot often see; the most intense, focused work of life being accomplished in old age....
The message of Autumnal intensity is particularly for the aged, some of whom have no hope of the returning spring. Some, like the terminally ill young clients I work with, have their Autumn far sooner…The message of the heart of Autumn’s silent Voice is that the most important work is now at hand…do it with an intensity unmatched in former years when fully invested in the fray of life and perhaps being lured into the confusing goals of the world in general.
How can this force of concentrated non-action exist, with declines in mind or body with age or illness? It is simple. It is the exact quality of discovering that the most important act we can perform on this Earth journey is to sit at the feet of the Master, to know Him, to revel in His love, take deep pleasure His companionship and bring to Him all that are of concern while expressing gratitude and praise. If this was all we could do, it would be more than enough. I witnessed my father in law live with unimaginable stillness inside the message of Autumn’s powerful intensity and in that place of immobility achieve greatness.
Eugene was a family physician who used to do house calls with his little black bag. He got Parkinson’s disease and we were distressed to learn of it. He was so well loved and had served his community selflessly for so long. As the disease advanced, and blended with other diagnosis, he went to live in a nursing home owned by his family members. He had lost his wife of over 50 years by now. There was sorrow upon sorrow. His once stimulating, useful and active work life dissolved into being bedridden in a nursing home.
As his movements were gradually taken from him, his kind blue eyes and slow, barely audible speech were all that remained to reveal how much he still cared to participate, to serve and work at healing. He was far from surrendering. But he couldn’t even raise his hand to wipe his mouth with the frequent coughing. It was heart rending. Yet appearances can be so seductively deceiving…
Entering into his room was to enter into stillness itself, the stillness of a chapel. The air bore the weight of multitudes of prayers, much the same as one can feel the prayers that have ascended for centuries in ancient cathedrals. The TV which he watched much in his healthier years was now turned off, by his request. He had work to do… There was silence but it didn’t feel empty. He was no tree standing alone now. He had the company of unseen angels providing stability and support below the surface of our detection.
It was then that we realized he had entered into the most intense, serious work of his whole life- and probably the most spiritually profitable. He had healed bodies and birthed babies in his healthful years. In the his dying time, he healed spirits and lives with prayers that ascended constantly to heaven….We felt them. We feel them still….He was working in the unseen realm with all the focus, determination and intensity of the Apostle Paul himself. And accomplishing more than he ever did on earth, we suspect.
Eugene was, himself, becoming the essential combustion of Autumn’s glory, his later years of illness being powerfully productive as he submitted to the increasing stillness of paralysis. His eyes were becoming a brighter blue; illuminated from an inner light much as the portraits Rembrandt painted where the only source of light in the room came from the people, themselves.
In his years of health, he was quiet and reserved. In his death he had the glory of the maples that drape the hills of Vermont in orgasmic pulsations of color. The essence of him shone from those unforgettable penetrating eyes fresh with the light of heaven. We knew he was full of life, while his body labored to accomplish its transition toward death.
I can still see him in my mind’s eye, when we visited, bent over his old worn Bible filling his mind and spirit with strength that would burst forth vividly when reached his own personal Autumn transition. We were witnessing it now, his great labor in incredible stillness. The enigma of nature. The lesson of great trees gaining power in winter sleep and of their vibrancy in the Autumn that precedes it.
Earthly impediments like his Parkinson’s, and seeming tragic situations such as the death of his lover and being confined to his bed in a nursing home became the seed bed that encapsulated his deepest, most profound work. What we viewed as distressing he completely transformed into the prime of his life.
This Autumn in the Pacific Northwest mountain village where we live, all of nature is heavy with fruit, lavish with the artistry of the Master’s brush, celebrating itself and the Creator. What about us? It is time for examining details of our existence, for introspection as the days become shorter, taking time to see to things we’ve neglected all summer in favor of a broader more casual approach. A time to take stock and measure our ceaseless labor, or idleness against the reality of life in the final analysis. Busyness balanced against perfect stillness and the great work that can emerge from it; and the ultimate harvest of each.
The transition into Autumn is a time to make sure we are in union with God’s destiny calling for our unique life. He is endlessly creative, as the natural world reveals, and He longs to work in partnership flowing His desires through the willing channel of our lives using own particular gifts magnified with Spirit power.
Only this work is of value; the fruits whose Originator and origination are outside our own abilities. And in perfect balance, the passionate colors in the leaf remind us to concentrate our essence in stillness before Him, sitting and waiting on Him, being absorbed in Him. We learn, like Eugene, to banish all nonessentials from our lives and concentrate all our affinities on the nurture of eternal labor, even in intense stillness. Therein lays the great mystery and our greatest power.
Listen to the unspoken message of Autumn’s Voice of passion and intensity. First the seed, buried in obscurity. Then the tender years of the sapling, quite insignificant yet but growing in grace and strength in the dark nurture of earth; gaining unseen support in the intertwining roots of neighboring trees creating more strength than if alone - a whole community of caring support invisible to those that only look on the surface. Finally, the outrageously abundant fruiting flowing into the last ardent burst of creative expression. Then the stillness of sleep.
Our lives are short. I am praying, like Moses, for the ability to number my days. I want to hold with incredible clarity the focus of my existence, distilled into the essence of my life – that is, the knowledge that we are here to know God, and to express His creative beauty, love and care for others and for the universe through our union with Him.
As the branch to the trunk, we receive all that is of value and importance ultimately by sitting at His feet in admiration, love and stillness allowing Him to flow through us like life giving sap. Then our lives will match the intensity of the trees of late Autumn, radiating with indescribable glory to the end.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
ONE
One
Twilight. I stand in front of our plum tree, now 15 years old or so. The plum is surrounded by apples, and one lone pear in the midst of the garden. A matched pair of kiwi destined to climb the roof of the garden shed is nearby. I don’t know why there is just one plum; most everything else was planted as part of a pair. But there she stands, small compared to the others clamoring for a bit of translucent Washington late summer sky around her.
I’ve been watering after another record day of heat. Finishing up for the evening, heading past the little tree, she stops me. I feel the arc, the silent, still reaching for me as I pass. The energy coming from her is palpable and I stop, really see the Tree.
Ah, she wants admiration I intuit... She’s a proud mama this year, utterly loaded with ripe plums, shining golden, a sheen of peach coloring them in the last glow of the sun before it drops behind the Black Hills, ripe and full like this fruit…the plums have the same color resting on them as the alpenglow on the mountain, Tahoma sitting opposite the Black Hills, in the sunset. A mirror image.
She offers me to taste; I hear it clear as a bell, and so I reach even while she seemingly hands it from herself to me, offering me to partake, enjoy the fruit of her life. The perfect, round plum is full of the warmth of the day, and succulent juices run down my chin.
The smile. Hers…the moment is so strange, this unanticipated interaction with the Tree that I find myself taking her hand, the branch, that so recently gifted me and I hold it for a moment before thanking her for such bounty this year when I expected nothing at all from her apart from her quiet presence in the orchard.
This little Tree has never produced more than one fruit in one year. She was placed into the ground 15 years ago carefully and with great expectations, set into specially prepared soil rich with life. A lip was carefully formed as a well to hold water during hot days. Later, as my life grew increasingly rushed and full of care, grass would overtake this protective cloak of soil and choke out the richness that now flowed down to her roots.
Years passed and nothing. No fruit…Since she was delicate and pretty, she remained when others said to cut her down. At least she was nice to gaze upon…I can imagine now how she felt as the apples around her displayed their talents on burgeoning limbs full of luscious fruit, supposedly proving their worth year after year with little care, and she…nothing. It was rather perplexing.
It had been so long since planting her here that I had forgotten what fruit exactly she bore. When I took that first proffered bite, I was prepared for apricots; looking quite similar to the softly colored fruit she possessed. Yet I was surprised! It was a plum! I like plums. They are God’s version of the child’s candy “Sweet Tarts”. Adult candy. What a sense of humor God has….and how He knows we never outgrow certain things.
We had had an unusual March this year. Instead of the Pacific Northwest drear and cold rains, we had heat, very unlike our normal patterns. Year after year I have seen the buds set on the little Plum Tree only to be robbed by a cruel frost. One by one they would drop to the ground at her feet, as if they were a broken promise.
But this year, the buds sprang from sleeping wood and they stayed. What is amazing is that all these years She has been faithfully producing, but her delicate nature and circumstance betrayed her. All her work has been erased year after year, except for now. She finally came into her own. Finally had a chance to prove herself alongside all the well established bearers in her plot of earth. After years of seeming barrenness, of simple, quiet steady growth but no real solid evidence to prove it, here she was – bursting with the gifts of life she was designed to bear.
This is the year for me too, I think. The year I came into my own after asking God to reveal my destiny to me 20 years ago in the height of my childrearing era. Like the Tree, I have been faithfully producing, growing steadily, but not much was visible for show. When other mothers of small children were working their way into a career or getting their degrees, I stayed home to care for my family. Very old fashioned thinking in today’s world, yet that’s what my heart dictated and I followed.
Yet I had been putting deep roots down, and had little to show on the surface that the world would have been interested in by way of awards or prestigious titles. Raising children without the help of nannies is not popular or noteworthy in our culture. There were no degrees, no titles after my name then, nothing published. The rest of college had been put on the back burner to pursue a home and a family. I spent day after day working my garden, devouring books on any interest that surfaced, tending to my family’s needs, cooking for them and for my own pleasure. These were the days of fresh bread and chocolate chip cookies filling the house with a lovely and loving aroma as the children got off the bus outside the house at 3:30 in the afternoon.
The world in general wouldn’t want any of that even though it was and is vitally meaningful to me; in retrospect: to us. This life here- fully present- on this land, was the real jewel, the real success from my standpoint. Raising my children in the rhythms of the land, with animals and nature, with parents that were more present than absent…..and attending to the building of my Spirit, and subsequently, theirs….These were the things that drove my decisions and mattered greatly. Rumi,Persian Poet and Mystic, 1207-1273 says “only the jeweled inner life matters”. Such truth from hundreds of years ago. Before temptations of extravagant lifestyle outpaced a woman’s role of nurturer and guide above all else when she is invested with small lives.
This little Plum Tree and I are maturing together here; experiencing a passage of life at the same time into visible productivity and the fulfillment of broader destinies after many seeming wilderness years just spent putting down deeper roots and taking care of daily life.
A bond has formed in this twilight, and she feels it too. Suddenly the whole orchard is aware and celebrating. Rumi, must have experienced the same as he wrote,“Every tree and plant in the meadow seemed to be dancing, those which average eyes would see as fixed and still”
I walk to each One, waving my wand of rushing well water over the mantle of earth at their feet and I feel the love enveloping me just as though I walked into a room of close friends. Their arms, so laden with fruits and gifts for us reach invisibly further than the physical eye can see to envelop me with their love. It is a silent, unmoving symphony of invisible movement and festivity. The air seems to snap with energy; it is palpable…
A week or two past, I had walked through the orchard, to each Tree blessing it aloud, thanking It. My heart was so full of gratitude at their unfailing generosity. But I didn’t feel this love then, coming back to me in this conspicuous way...
It was a strange act I performed that day, strange even to me-yet I performed it all the same; it was a little quiet in the air between us. It felt a little strained like when we say, “I love you” and only silence resonates in response…. There was perhaps a sense of wonder on their behalf, even amazement that a human in all their proud arrogance as the supposed “higher creation”, would stoop to thank the individual members of the orchard family. But I did, and today, the love was clearly running boundlessly, sweeping me up between their outstretched arms. In retrospect, I think it was that original act of my blessing them that broke the ice. Now I was in their home; being received with such amazing grace it nearly broke my heart.
I’ve known some of this type of love with Sasha, my dearly loved Borzoi, as I gingerly step over her as I climb the stairs, her ever spreading bulk draping lavishly over the entire landing of the stairs. I acknowledge her with a smile or a nod in passing, and she, in turn, lengthens her already impossibly long nose yet further to reach toward me in my passing, touching me in wet acknowledgment, in love as I climb the stairs.
It is the same interaction with her when a dish of food is placed before her. She has the inborn grace and manners to pause, look up and nod her thankful gratitude before beginning to eat. This consistent act is from an animal, no matter how hungry she is. There are certain rules of conduct and polite protocol she is privy to, ways of relating to her human friends that are, in her world, inviolate. Would that we would be more like some animals in our care and gratitude, I often think….
I realize tonight how much life there is all around us if we could but see into the invisible world of energy and vibration. In our humble orchard there is life shimmering in the space around each organic fruit; energy surging strongly through the limbs coursing between members of the Orchard Family. Each member of this family wears this energy robustly as an aura of vitality surrounding it. Tonight I feel it, and it is around me too. It’s not my imagination; it’s been photographed with Kirilian photography. It is our life force. I remember one scene in a physics movie about an angry man walking by a plant, and the plant literally recoiling from his energy, wanting no part of the anger and disruption in his field…
My experience this falling evening is different. There is gratitude emanating from me, washing over the group of Trees…. for this is the year I turned my focus on their needs and on my own finally as the children were growing to need me less. Like the child who is too silent for his own good, continually deferring to others’ needs or desires, this Tree and I were getting our own at last….
These trees have seen my stress these past years, my overwhelm with a hard first marriage and a family to raise well, and they remained quiet and steadfast, doing the best they could year after year with little care from me while I concerned myself with more pressing needs. But this year, they got it all. The circles were cleared at their feet, dismissing the competing grass and weeds. The exposed soil was enriched with rich earth to feed and nourish them, as they will in return nourish and feed us this autumn... My act of kindness did not go unnoticed. I know they felt my sense of care over their existence – all of us on this planet at the same time in earth’s history. The land supporting us all, plant life, human, animal…
The same sense of nurture returned to my own life this year as the children are growing up and out. For once there is time to see freshly, apart from so much stifling routine. To remember the question asked twenty years ago of God to reveal my calling and my destiny to me. This year, the pathway is clear and I am on it…the fulfillment of being able to say that is overwhelming in itself. Just as the Tree in the orchard has a clear sense of what she is to provide to the world, so I have that clear sense, the desire, and the passion to walk the path for the rest of my life sharing as I go along what was given me to impart to the world.
I thought of moving today before the event in the orchard happened– closer to work, which is an hour away; to a high hill, a territorial view of magnificent beauty…rolling farmlands, contentedly grazing sleek black cattle on the gentle hills, a deep mountain lake beyond…It seems so wise to simplify our lives, cut our hour commute in half, even though we do have deep, stimulating talks in the car and we drive in the sheer luxury of the Porsche that my husband, Donn has finally bought.
We stopped on that Pleasant View hill, climbed in the heat until I could go no further, and while I waited in the shade of an old tree as Donn went on, I stood in dirt and brambles. Raw earth broke through the straps on my sandals. There is something about raw land… There is excitement, possibility, potential waiting to unfurl.
Yet suddenly on that hillside, I felt I’d already borne my babies, walked that passage of creating something great from raw materials. I had borne the babies that were fruit of our flesh, my first husband and I, and borne the babies of every little flower, every tree I slipped into the Earth as soon as she was thawed enough to part, praying for it to take, and then to return again to life each year from frozen winter land in the springtime. I’ve felled trees that were sick, full of bores, sick myself at their loss, and replanted in faith that someday they would grow taller than myself before I had to leave again for new territory.
Staying is a luxury. Only as a child have I ever lived under a tree taller than myself…I have planted so many only to leave the next year for the next house in the next city. If we left all of them now on this land, what would they do? What would we do?
These plants, trees, the land of every acre here never properly leveled because we never had the cash in those early years, would be missed as a rich, lifelong community of growing friendships, for that’s what they’ve become. Not only in the Orchard…Every inch of meandering pathways, rolling rises, even the sharp drops from old Cat tracks….these nuances are woven into my legs and my footprints the same way we memorize a lover’s curves and valleys, or run our fingers over a keyboard just knowing where to go, how to go….
We humans, so proud and haughty in many respects, forget that we are all One weave of the Master’s web. One thread coalescing into a fabulous syzygy. When we lay down on the land at the end of our lives, at the enduring feet of the trees, we will become as they are; dust, earth, sun, winds and rain. We are One pulsing thread with the acres beneath our feet, with the Plum Tree and the Apples, with the cloak of verdant grass that Donn now relentlessly mows into some semblance of order. That same grass I prayed for, all those years ago, watching for a sign of life through mounds of mud left by the heavy equipment. I had read, “I will give grass to your cattle in due season” said the Lord, so I waited and now, the abundance…the overwhelming abundance….
My heart is the same Plum Tree’s heart that pushes the sap up through the frozen trunk in early spring. That Tree and I, we have the same needs, the same desires. The same unfolding of our destiny in this year…We are closer than we know. One. My bare foot prints have touched upon every bit of this land; there is not a place where they have not trodden. My footstep has breathed blessing everywhere it has set down.
In four years, there will be no more ownership with the bank. Adytum, the new name of this place, grew up from Rosebriar, an earlier self - much as we do. Names have always been important historically, denoting a new calling and purpose. Rosebriar was the time of our lives filled with a mixture of good and bad, roses and limitless briars visible to all who came here. Adytum means “Sanctuary”. This is what She – the Land- has become to us even apart from the ownership aspect.
I used to only see the mortgage ending; the ownership in the world’s way of thinking. The investment I hoped would appreciate in value. I never realized that the first year I knelt on the virgin soil of this land; never lived on by a white man I’m sure…I never realized that this is when She owned me fully and investments were made on a deeper level…
She healed me day by day as I went to work in the gardens. She healed me of a breaking marriage that would finally go on to fully shatter as a dead limb ripping away from the trunk after a hard freeze. This land and I are One. All that is on the land is One with me. We are all One with Yahweh. One with each other. One with all the little lives here and everywhere - the bunnies of the fields, the ducks on the winter pond, the deer and coyotes, the ring eyed raccoons, the birds of the air, the bees and snakes and all of it, we are One with it all….We are all One.
Yahweh walks in the cool of the evening here, in the gardens, along the trails that lead through enchanted woods…always the Great Presence is here sharing His gift of our own Eden with us. Yes, I feel Him too…The Angels I asked to guard Adytum, Greek for "the Sanctuary", still hold their post at every boundary. It’s become a blessed Eden here, green when every house’s lawns and pastures along the street have long since browned in the heat of summer. A miracle, every year without fail…even in drought. The blessing of God Himself lays on us all – the land, each creature and plant, on all She supports – because we asked for this bounty. I’ve never had such a sense of Oneness with this place as I do here tonight in the fading light of day.
Donn’s waterfall in the front of the house brings tumbling, merry creek music in through my writing room window. The rush of greenery is just outside, along with our cheery little bird friends who nest here, raise families here, all returning here to this home every season to share their Oneness with us.
This afternoon, we watched at the upstairs window, our hearts joying with a flock of black birds having a lawn party at our house, playing in the sprinkler like children. Running, dodging the spray, trying to put their beaks in the holes where the water comes out; a society of child-birds having the time of their life on a hot summer’s day. It made us smile just as I smiled watching my own children, now grown, playing on that same lawn all these years.
These birds were the same “children” we saw as we left Morton after work this afternoon on the way home. They were playing in the Tilton River with all their friends, splashing, running, dodging each other’s water sprays. Different bodies. Same “people”. Humans there, bird people here.
We are all One. Same desires, same needs to love, laugh, joy, play, contribute, share meaningful existences…. Do we realize this? By the grace of God, we have our form as human life. Believe me when I say, we are built closer in basic desires, drives and feelings than we can imagine.
This land I inhabit has woven me into its strata and I accept, I surrender. I understand now. As God gave Abraham the land, who shared it with Lot, as God gave Israel her “beautiful land” too, so has He given me Adytum to be a sanctuary for us all in this life here. She is a welcoming Mother to us all…This land is sacred ground. I am sacred ground. We are all, at once, The Sanctuary, Adytum.
Twilight. I stand in front of our plum tree, now 15 years old or so. The plum is surrounded by apples, and one lone pear in the midst of the garden. A matched pair of kiwi destined to climb the roof of the garden shed is nearby. I don’t know why there is just one plum; most everything else was planted as part of a pair. But there she stands, small compared to the others clamoring for a bit of translucent Washington late summer sky around her.
I’ve been watering after another record day of heat. Finishing up for the evening, heading past the little tree, she stops me. I feel the arc, the silent, still reaching for me as I pass. The energy coming from her is palpable and I stop, really see the Tree.
Ah, she wants admiration I intuit... She’s a proud mama this year, utterly loaded with ripe plums, shining golden, a sheen of peach coloring them in the last glow of the sun before it drops behind the Black Hills, ripe and full like this fruit…the plums have the same color resting on them as the alpenglow on the mountain, Tahoma sitting opposite the Black Hills, in the sunset. A mirror image.
She offers me to taste; I hear it clear as a bell, and so I reach even while she seemingly hands it from herself to me, offering me to partake, enjoy the fruit of her life. The perfect, round plum is full of the warmth of the day, and succulent juices run down my chin.
The smile. Hers…the moment is so strange, this unanticipated interaction with the Tree that I find myself taking her hand, the branch, that so recently gifted me and I hold it for a moment before thanking her for such bounty this year when I expected nothing at all from her apart from her quiet presence in the orchard.
This little Tree has never produced more than one fruit in one year. She was placed into the ground 15 years ago carefully and with great expectations, set into specially prepared soil rich with life. A lip was carefully formed as a well to hold water during hot days. Later, as my life grew increasingly rushed and full of care, grass would overtake this protective cloak of soil and choke out the richness that now flowed down to her roots.
Years passed and nothing. No fruit…Since she was delicate and pretty, she remained when others said to cut her down. At least she was nice to gaze upon…I can imagine now how she felt as the apples around her displayed their talents on burgeoning limbs full of luscious fruit, supposedly proving their worth year after year with little care, and she…nothing. It was rather perplexing.
It had been so long since planting her here that I had forgotten what fruit exactly she bore. When I took that first proffered bite, I was prepared for apricots; looking quite similar to the softly colored fruit she possessed. Yet I was surprised! It was a plum! I like plums. They are God’s version of the child’s candy “Sweet Tarts”. Adult candy. What a sense of humor God has….and how He knows we never outgrow certain things.
We had had an unusual March this year. Instead of the Pacific Northwest drear and cold rains, we had heat, very unlike our normal patterns. Year after year I have seen the buds set on the little Plum Tree only to be robbed by a cruel frost. One by one they would drop to the ground at her feet, as if they were a broken promise.
But this year, the buds sprang from sleeping wood and they stayed. What is amazing is that all these years She has been faithfully producing, but her delicate nature and circumstance betrayed her. All her work has been erased year after year, except for now. She finally came into her own. Finally had a chance to prove herself alongside all the well established bearers in her plot of earth. After years of seeming barrenness, of simple, quiet steady growth but no real solid evidence to prove it, here she was – bursting with the gifts of life she was designed to bear.
This is the year for me too, I think. The year I came into my own after asking God to reveal my destiny to me 20 years ago in the height of my childrearing era. Like the Tree, I have been faithfully producing, growing steadily, but not much was visible for show. When other mothers of small children were working their way into a career or getting their degrees, I stayed home to care for my family. Very old fashioned thinking in today’s world, yet that’s what my heart dictated and I followed.
Yet I had been putting deep roots down, and had little to show on the surface that the world would have been interested in by way of awards or prestigious titles. Raising children without the help of nannies is not popular or noteworthy in our culture. There were no degrees, no titles after my name then, nothing published. The rest of college had been put on the back burner to pursue a home and a family. I spent day after day working my garden, devouring books on any interest that surfaced, tending to my family’s needs, cooking for them and for my own pleasure. These were the days of fresh bread and chocolate chip cookies filling the house with a lovely and loving aroma as the children got off the bus outside the house at 3:30 in the afternoon.
The world in general wouldn’t want any of that even though it was and is vitally meaningful to me; in retrospect: to us. This life here- fully present- on this land, was the real jewel, the real success from my standpoint. Raising my children in the rhythms of the land, with animals and nature, with parents that were more present than absent…..and attending to the building of my Spirit, and subsequently, theirs….These were the things that drove my decisions and mattered greatly. Rumi,Persian Poet and Mystic, 1207-1273 says “only the jeweled inner life matters”. Such truth from hundreds of years ago. Before temptations of extravagant lifestyle outpaced a woman’s role of nurturer and guide above all else when she is invested with small lives.
This little Plum Tree and I are maturing together here; experiencing a passage of life at the same time into visible productivity and the fulfillment of broader destinies after many seeming wilderness years just spent putting down deeper roots and taking care of daily life.
A bond has formed in this twilight, and she feels it too. Suddenly the whole orchard is aware and celebrating. Rumi, must have experienced the same as he wrote,“Every tree and plant in the meadow seemed to be dancing, those which average eyes would see as fixed and still”
I walk to each One, waving my wand of rushing well water over the mantle of earth at their feet and I feel the love enveloping me just as though I walked into a room of close friends. Their arms, so laden with fruits and gifts for us reach invisibly further than the physical eye can see to envelop me with their love. It is a silent, unmoving symphony of invisible movement and festivity. The air seems to snap with energy; it is palpable…
A week or two past, I had walked through the orchard, to each Tree blessing it aloud, thanking It. My heart was so full of gratitude at their unfailing generosity. But I didn’t feel this love then, coming back to me in this conspicuous way...
It was a strange act I performed that day, strange even to me-yet I performed it all the same; it was a little quiet in the air between us. It felt a little strained like when we say, “I love you” and only silence resonates in response…. There was perhaps a sense of wonder on their behalf, even amazement that a human in all their proud arrogance as the supposed “higher creation”, would stoop to thank the individual members of the orchard family. But I did, and today, the love was clearly running boundlessly, sweeping me up between their outstretched arms. In retrospect, I think it was that original act of my blessing them that broke the ice. Now I was in their home; being received with such amazing grace it nearly broke my heart.
I’ve known some of this type of love with Sasha, my dearly loved Borzoi, as I gingerly step over her as I climb the stairs, her ever spreading bulk draping lavishly over the entire landing of the stairs. I acknowledge her with a smile or a nod in passing, and she, in turn, lengthens her already impossibly long nose yet further to reach toward me in my passing, touching me in wet acknowledgment, in love as I climb the stairs.
It is the same interaction with her when a dish of food is placed before her. She has the inborn grace and manners to pause, look up and nod her thankful gratitude before beginning to eat. This consistent act is from an animal, no matter how hungry she is. There are certain rules of conduct and polite protocol she is privy to, ways of relating to her human friends that are, in her world, inviolate. Would that we would be more like some animals in our care and gratitude, I often think….
I realize tonight how much life there is all around us if we could but see into the invisible world of energy and vibration. In our humble orchard there is life shimmering in the space around each organic fruit; energy surging strongly through the limbs coursing between members of the Orchard Family. Each member of this family wears this energy robustly as an aura of vitality surrounding it. Tonight I feel it, and it is around me too. It’s not my imagination; it’s been photographed with Kirilian photography. It is our life force. I remember one scene in a physics movie about an angry man walking by a plant, and the plant literally recoiling from his energy, wanting no part of the anger and disruption in his field…
My experience this falling evening is different. There is gratitude emanating from me, washing over the group of Trees…. for this is the year I turned my focus on their needs and on my own finally as the children were growing to need me less. Like the child who is too silent for his own good, continually deferring to others’ needs or desires, this Tree and I were getting our own at last….
These trees have seen my stress these past years, my overwhelm with a hard first marriage and a family to raise well, and they remained quiet and steadfast, doing the best they could year after year with little care from me while I concerned myself with more pressing needs. But this year, they got it all. The circles were cleared at their feet, dismissing the competing grass and weeds. The exposed soil was enriched with rich earth to feed and nourish them, as they will in return nourish and feed us this autumn... My act of kindness did not go unnoticed. I know they felt my sense of care over their existence – all of us on this planet at the same time in earth’s history. The land supporting us all, plant life, human, animal…
The same sense of nurture returned to my own life this year as the children are growing up and out. For once there is time to see freshly, apart from so much stifling routine. To remember the question asked twenty years ago of God to reveal my calling and my destiny to me. This year, the pathway is clear and I am on it…the fulfillment of being able to say that is overwhelming in itself. Just as the Tree in the orchard has a clear sense of what she is to provide to the world, so I have that clear sense, the desire, and the passion to walk the path for the rest of my life sharing as I go along what was given me to impart to the world.
I thought of moving today before the event in the orchard happened– closer to work, which is an hour away; to a high hill, a territorial view of magnificent beauty…rolling farmlands, contentedly grazing sleek black cattle on the gentle hills, a deep mountain lake beyond…It seems so wise to simplify our lives, cut our hour commute in half, even though we do have deep, stimulating talks in the car and we drive in the sheer luxury of the Porsche that my husband, Donn has finally bought.
We stopped on that Pleasant View hill, climbed in the heat until I could go no further, and while I waited in the shade of an old tree as Donn went on, I stood in dirt and brambles. Raw earth broke through the straps on my sandals. There is something about raw land… There is excitement, possibility, potential waiting to unfurl.
Yet suddenly on that hillside, I felt I’d already borne my babies, walked that passage of creating something great from raw materials. I had borne the babies that were fruit of our flesh, my first husband and I, and borne the babies of every little flower, every tree I slipped into the Earth as soon as she was thawed enough to part, praying for it to take, and then to return again to life each year from frozen winter land in the springtime. I’ve felled trees that were sick, full of bores, sick myself at their loss, and replanted in faith that someday they would grow taller than myself before I had to leave again for new territory.
Staying is a luxury. Only as a child have I ever lived under a tree taller than myself…I have planted so many only to leave the next year for the next house in the next city. If we left all of them now on this land, what would they do? What would we do?
These plants, trees, the land of every acre here never properly leveled because we never had the cash in those early years, would be missed as a rich, lifelong community of growing friendships, for that’s what they’ve become. Not only in the Orchard…Every inch of meandering pathways, rolling rises, even the sharp drops from old Cat tracks….these nuances are woven into my legs and my footprints the same way we memorize a lover’s curves and valleys, or run our fingers over a keyboard just knowing where to go, how to go….
We humans, so proud and haughty in many respects, forget that we are all One weave of the Master’s web. One thread coalescing into a fabulous syzygy. When we lay down on the land at the end of our lives, at the enduring feet of the trees, we will become as they are; dust, earth, sun, winds and rain. We are One pulsing thread with the acres beneath our feet, with the Plum Tree and the Apples, with the cloak of verdant grass that Donn now relentlessly mows into some semblance of order. That same grass I prayed for, all those years ago, watching for a sign of life through mounds of mud left by the heavy equipment. I had read, “I will give grass to your cattle in due season” said the Lord, so I waited and now, the abundance…the overwhelming abundance….
My heart is the same Plum Tree’s heart that pushes the sap up through the frozen trunk in early spring. That Tree and I, we have the same needs, the same desires. The same unfolding of our destiny in this year…We are closer than we know. One. My bare foot prints have touched upon every bit of this land; there is not a place where they have not trodden. My footstep has breathed blessing everywhere it has set down.
In four years, there will be no more ownership with the bank. Adytum, the new name of this place, grew up from Rosebriar, an earlier self - much as we do. Names have always been important historically, denoting a new calling and purpose. Rosebriar was the time of our lives filled with a mixture of good and bad, roses and limitless briars visible to all who came here. Adytum means “Sanctuary”. This is what She – the Land- has become to us even apart from the ownership aspect.
I used to only see the mortgage ending; the ownership in the world’s way of thinking. The investment I hoped would appreciate in value. I never realized that the first year I knelt on the virgin soil of this land; never lived on by a white man I’m sure…I never realized that this is when She owned me fully and investments were made on a deeper level…
She healed me day by day as I went to work in the gardens. She healed me of a breaking marriage that would finally go on to fully shatter as a dead limb ripping away from the trunk after a hard freeze. This land and I are One. All that is on the land is One with me. We are all One with Yahweh. One with each other. One with all the little lives here and everywhere - the bunnies of the fields, the ducks on the winter pond, the deer and coyotes, the ring eyed raccoons, the birds of the air, the bees and snakes and all of it, we are One with it all….We are all One.
Yahweh walks in the cool of the evening here, in the gardens, along the trails that lead through enchanted woods…always the Great Presence is here sharing His gift of our own Eden with us. Yes, I feel Him too…The Angels I asked to guard Adytum, Greek for "the Sanctuary", still hold their post at every boundary. It’s become a blessed Eden here, green when every house’s lawns and pastures along the street have long since browned in the heat of summer. A miracle, every year without fail…even in drought. The blessing of God Himself lays on us all – the land, each creature and plant, on all She supports – because we asked for this bounty. I’ve never had such a sense of Oneness with this place as I do here tonight in the fading light of day.
Donn’s waterfall in the front of the house brings tumbling, merry creek music in through my writing room window. The rush of greenery is just outside, along with our cheery little bird friends who nest here, raise families here, all returning here to this home every season to share their Oneness with us.
This afternoon, we watched at the upstairs window, our hearts joying with a flock of black birds having a lawn party at our house, playing in the sprinkler like children. Running, dodging the spray, trying to put their beaks in the holes where the water comes out; a society of child-birds having the time of their life on a hot summer’s day. It made us smile just as I smiled watching my own children, now grown, playing on that same lawn all these years.
These birds were the same “children” we saw as we left Morton after work this afternoon on the way home. They were playing in the Tilton River with all their friends, splashing, running, dodging each other’s water sprays. Different bodies. Same “people”. Humans there, bird people here.
We are all One. Same desires, same needs to love, laugh, joy, play, contribute, share meaningful existences…. Do we realize this? By the grace of God, we have our form as human life. Believe me when I say, we are built closer in basic desires, drives and feelings than we can imagine.
This land I inhabit has woven me into its strata and I accept, I surrender. I understand now. As God gave Abraham the land, who shared it with Lot, as God gave Israel her “beautiful land” too, so has He given me Adytum to be a sanctuary for us all in this life here. She is a welcoming Mother to us all…This land is sacred ground. I am sacred ground. We are all, at once, The Sanctuary, Adytum.
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