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December 10, 2003 ~ Talking to Trees
Wednesday.
Laugh at me. Call me crazy. Call me a heathen or a heretic. But there is soul, spirit, divinity in the trees, in the squirrels, in the river, in the soil from which we spring, in the prairie grass, in the birds, in the rain falling from the sky.
On Monday, I climbed a pine who was too young to be climbed. I should have known. When I dropped back down to the ground, I noticed that my boot had gouged a large flap of thin skin-like bark from one of the lower branches. Bark too thin, too young, to be climbed. The bark hung limply to the side, and the tree flesh bled clear sap, sticky, to the surface. I held my hand just over the wound and whispered, "I'm sorry. So sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you." I was earnest and childlike in that moment, wishing that my wrong could be undone, a lump rising in my throat.
I am dead serious when I say that I believe that the pine understood my meaning, my apology. I am dead serious in my sorrow for causing it harm. When I spoke to it, I was not speaking to the air or to myself or to some idea of a separate God in "Heaven." I was speaking to an energy, a soul, spirit emanating from that trunk. I was speaking to the tree, and the tree was listening.
When I walk amidst a group of people at a funeral, the air feels different. It is a pervasive mood of mourning, sadness, regret. I don't have to listen to what the people are saying or ask them how they are feeling. I know. It is there. It was the same thing on September 11, 2001, when I walked into Cannon Lounge, where many people from the college were gathered. The grief, the fear, the sadness, the horror, they were tangible.
When I walk into a clear-cut, I sense the exact same mood, even though there are no other people present. It feels precisely the same. It seems to seep up from the soil, it is in the breath of the birds, it comes in waves off the trunks of the nearby trees. Sadness. Horror. Mourning. Fear.
When I eat, even though it's just vegetables, I think a simple prayer. "I'm sorry that you had to die, but thank you for giving me life. I will try to be worthy of it."
I talk to animals and I know they understand, because they answer. Answer in their actions, in their bodies, in the look in their eyes.
And there is divinity for me. In a wild rabbit's eyes. In the wind that tugs my hair. In an oak soaking up the sun. In snow falling softly on the field. In the soil that feeds that which we feed off of. In the still waters of a pond. In the thunderstorm. These things, they all have soul, and everything, everywhere, is soaked through with spirit, with energy. I feel it, I talk to it, I thank it.
I hesitate to use the word "God" in this, because that word has such a specific image for most people. God is not definable for me, being everywhere and anywhere, in so many forms and perspectives. Frankly, I don't feel that a definition matters. I believe. That is enough.
Today, heavy rain fell steadily all day from a dark, dark sky. Spirit was there with the dark waters, falling to the earth to be soaked up. Divinity was there with the quiet, the rush of the rain, with the worms squirming on the pavement to escape the flood. As I left work, blue sky, sun, broke through to the west, and the rain stopped. Drips sparkled from tree branches, where the sap moves inside and the birds perch, looking for the squirming worms, as the sunlight hits their feathers and God is on their breath. I can feel the growing things drinking the water; I can feel the sun warming the ground.
It is all so alive, and I say thank you. It is all so alive, and I am too. And everything is so terribly beautiful that I am speechless and spellbound sometimes, even the pain and the striving and the struggle, because it fits, and it balances and makes possible the joy. I saw a thousand mini rainbows in the mist kicked up from the cars on the way home from work, and it was a miracle.
God is all of that, for me, everywhere, in all the living things and the things that give them life. But there is more than that, too. God is in the shooting stars that I rode here to find my destiny in Morgan's hazel eyes and nuzzles and delicious food and being held when the world is falling apart. God is little signs and suggestions that help me find my way, where I have faltered and where I have overcome. God is my sense of right and wrong. God is life and love. God is the still, small voice within, tugging me down the right path. God is not in any one faith, for me, but in my heart and all throughout the world, faceless, formless, but infinite.
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