This morning’s tree song was mesmerizing. Their movement and expression held me. Swaying, bending, rustling, growing, being. I hung out with them for a long time, seeing with my heart and feeling with my eyes. Still , I watched through the window as they danced…
Then, as if by magic, I found these words by Hermann Hesse that I’d never read before. He understood the dancing, singing, and wisdom filled trees.
At the end of the words by Hesse is my gallery of trees…
“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farm boy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte
“I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting as it were, into the system of beings, in identifying myself with the whole of nature.” -Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Everywhere water is flowing, moving, seeking new adventures. Awakening the earth, trees, sprouts, bushes and bears. The melting brings a sweet song and a green promise.
Seeing the beauty of creation in all the wild ones, knowing every life is a gift –
how can you not?
“Your growing antlers,’ Bambi continued, ‘are proof of your intimate place in the forest, for of all the things that live and grow only the trees and the deer shed their foliage each year and replace it more strongly, more magnificently, in the spring.”
― Felix Salten, Bambi’s Children
The morning stars were resplendent as this new day unfolded.
Remembering that we all live in creation’s dawn is rejuvenating, exhilarating and liberating! We can always start anew bringing our best and most creative selves to this newest dawn.
“…I also live in ‘creation’s dawn.’
The morning stars still sing together,
and the world,
not
yet half made,
becomes more
beautiful every day.”
-John Muir
“Morning has broken like the first morning, blackbird has spoken like the first bird. Praise for the singing! Praise for the morning!”
–Morning Has Broken (Song Lyrics, Cat Stevens)
“Every morning the world is created. Under the orange sticks of the sun the heaped ashes of the night turn into leaves again and fasten themselves to the high branches—and the ponds appear like black cloth on which are painted islands of summer lilies. If it is your nature to be happy you will swim away along the soft trails for hours, your imagination alighting everywhere. And if your spirit carries within it the thorn that is heavier than lead—if it’s all you can do to keep on trudging—there is still somewhere deep within you a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what is wanted—each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly, every morning, whether or not you have ever dared to be happy, whether or not you have ever dared to pray.”
In northwest Montana, Spring comes slowly – a gradual awakening, full of fits and starts. Beautiful warmth in the daytime, back to freezing at night. Comfortable transition. Exciting anticipation. The earth waking up, baby critters on the way, red buds on shrubs by the river, cottonwoods showing bright yellow…
Yes! Here Comes The Sun, and I say, “It’s all right!”
“There is in Celtic mythology the notion of ‘thin places’ in the universe where the visible and the invisible world come into their closest proximity. To seek such places is the vocation of the wise and the good — and for those that find them, the clearest communication between the temporal and eternal. Mountains and rivers are particularly favored as thin places marking invariably as they do, the horizontal and perpendicular frontiers. But perhaps the ultimate of these thin places in the human condition are the experiences people are likely to have as they encounter suffering, joy, and mystery.”
Mountains and Rivers and
Mysteries as the clearest communicators between the temporal and the eternal – yes, for me, absorbed in those sacred places in nature and contemplating the Great Mystery, the visible and invisible are almost merged. The veil is thin and the feeling is of a wondrous oneness.
What a lovely way to start the new morning – Dan Fogelberg……..
(the photography in the video accompanying the song is just stunning, click below to hear the song and/or just look at the photos – it’s such an inspiring collection of images)
“To The Morning” (Lyrics, Dan Fogelberg)
Watching the sun…watching it come
Watching it come up over the rooftops
Cloudy and warm…maybe a storm
You can never quite tell from the morning
(Chorus)
And it’s going to be a day
There is really no way to say no to the morning
Yes it’s going to be a day
There is really nothing left to say but come on morning
Waiting for mail
Maybe a tale from an old friend or even a lover
Sometimes there’s none
But we have fun thinking of all who might have written
And maybe there are seasons
And maybe they change
And maybe to love is not so strange
The sounds of the day
Now they hurry away
Now they are gone until tomorrow
When day will break and you will wake
And you will rake your hands across your eyes and realize
That it’s going to be a day
There is really no way to say no to the morning
Yes it’s going to be a day
There is really nothing left to say but come on morning
And maybe there are seasons and maybe they change
And maybe to love is not so strange
There is so much wonder and mystery in the world… and so much we can never know. We desperately want the “knowing” of answers to life’s big questions and work toward that end with studying and learning. Because we are seekers, the continuing unknowns and mysteries can be unnerving – all those big questions are pressing to be solved.
I believe though that there can be calm in the face of the unknown. Peace even within the space of all that can’t be understood. Safety in what comes next. Trust in the process of life’s unfolding. Where there is connection and a oneness it is enough. There can be sanctuary in the midst of the mystery.
As the Lakota say, “When you see Mystery, call it Mystery”.
The more these words are contemplated, the more they seem to be the most respectful and honoring of the possible ways to celebrate the enormity of all that can’t be known or named or understood. It is all just too big to be contained in human constraints. Feeble attempts to find words for these wonders make them small and limited. Better to let the power remain unnamed; call it mystery and feel the awe.
There is peace in the surrender to not knowing. Not knowing and still trusting. Loving without explaining. Feelings without words. Falling into the wonder…
“Once again I accept that life is uncertain and that the goal is not to become more certain about anything but to relax more into the mystery of not knowing what will come next.”
-Elizabeth Lesser
“Great Mystery, teach me how to trust my heart, my mind, my intuition, my inner knowing, the senses of my body, the blessings of my spirit. Teach me to trust these things so that I may enter my sacred space and love beyond my fear, and thus walk in balance with the passing of each glorious sun.”
― American Indian Lakota Prayer
“Life is an unanswered question, but let’s still believe in the dignity and importance of the question”
“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farm boy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.
and the world,
bor. Catch the trade
There is so much wonder and mystery in the world… and so much we can never know. We desperately want the “knowing” of answers to life’s big questions and work toward that end with studying and learning. Because we are seekers, the continuing unknowns and mysteries can be unnerving – all those big questions are pressing to be solved.