The tree and the breeze

The Long Way Home
"The Long Way Home" by DeeAshley on Flickr

I see a tree.

It is blue and bright outside. Late-fall, warm, cloudless. The still air interrupted by breeze. The breeze interrupted by still air. This tree is the foreground. It is most of what I see. Branches sprawling to the side, hanging, lifting, laying, reaching, drooping, rocking, connected, independent, overlapping, dividing and dividing again, or meeting and joining, depending on which way you read the branch. A solid trunk and solid roots are evident, but outside my view.

Many leaves still cling to the branches. Enough have fallen to show space between the foliage, the peeking through of sky, of other branches, of other trees. But enough leaves are still clinging that they fill the space of my sight. Late-fall leaves, green on one side, yellow on the other, smooth, shining, catching the light. The leaves are always moving. Only a whisper sets them trembling, flashing and shimmering across my sight, catching my eye always, asking my eye to follow, to move, catching me off guard, never letting me settle too long on one place, one thing, one inner detail, but always drawing me back to the whole.

Each breeze swings up from below. Each movement of the tree in the air is first a movement upwards. Branches bucking to the sky as if the long neck of a bucking horse, rising to two feet, tossing its mane, throwing back its head. Branches sway heavenward, leaves spin on their axes, green and silver and gold playing with each other, rippling, showing where the wind has been.

I see another tree.

In the distance, a tall, dark, unmoving, leafless silhouette against the blue sky. Branches standing tall far above the horizon, which is below my sight. Branches and sky. Dark and steady arms standing with resolve. Wise, perhaps, and certainly old. Weathered. Tall. A solid trunk and roots are evident, but outside my view. Nothing shakes this tree at the tips of its branches. Breezes pass by without even a quiver. There is nothing green to catch the wind, nothing yellow or silver to reflect the light back to my eye. There is nothing changing. All is dark. All is still.

I see two trees.

The branches nearest my sight are filled with green life and they move with the breeze. Or is it the other way around? The branches that move with the breeze are filled with green life.

The distant branches with no life are branches that do not move. The branches that do not move are the branches with no life.

What is it about the green tree that knows and trusts its trunk and roots so deeply that it can be content to sway and trust that it will not fall? What is it about the green tree that knows and blesses strength, movement, and growth in proper measure and proportion, necessary for the flourishing of the tree, nourishing the the soul of the tree, opening up the possibility of being this very tree in this very moment, and then a new tree in the next breath, though a tree not entirely different than it was before or will be after.

What is it about the dark tree that is so committed to standing strong that it has forsaken both movement and growth? That it has rejected the call of the wind and has rejected the life-giving and life-saving dance of green against blue? There is no buoyancy left, no bowing or bending, no tender give and take, no trust that the trunk will hold. There is only stillness. Only the winds of a leveling storm will move it or shake it, but the only way to move will be to break and to fall, or to be uprooted completely, to be pulled out of the ground, roots found wanting.

I see two trees.

One says, “movement is life and spirit is life and spirit is movement and flourishing.”
One says, “forsake all things for the illusion of permanence.”

The tree that grows might yet be uprooted in the same storm that blows all things away. But in its life, it will have given, and danced, played and breathed, been a vision of gold and good things, a vessel for beauty, long arms pointing to life and to heaven and to the bright sun.

I see two trees.

I am a tree. We are trees.

When we are all finally uprooted, how, then, should we have preferred to live?

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