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.