She beguiled me, that autumn tree
With dancing reds and golds;
I breathed a sigh,
A thank you, my,
And found her to unfold;
She dropped her glory, and dazzled me
all over once again,
Her stark, bare frame
It’s grace retained,
a brand new stunning yen.
Zen Treks
As mentioned previously in this space, my dog, Zen, likes to walk me on a trail attached to Lake Roland Park in Baltimore County. I’ve been taking pictures in similar spots as we moved from early Fall into almost Winter. I’ve been pouring over, literally, hundreds of pictures from our walks trying to get roughly the same spots as the park reveals itself over time.
It is a breathtaking transformation. (Stay tuned for some video and picture projects designed to capture it.)
Implicit Nature Bias
Every walk invites me to look at the same things in a different light. I notice things I missed before. My personal biases also come starkly into view.
I didn’t realize how easily I’m taken by showy, obvious beauty. When the trees look almost like vivid licks of fire dancing together, I gasp. Later in the season on the same path, most of the showy leaves have dropped and browned, but there will be some late-dancing shocky gold or red tree still hanging onto its leaves. I find the contrast alarmingly beautiful.
“the eyes of my eyes are opened”
Once all of the flashy colors have dried out, the whole path takes on a sort of ashy winteriness. On our walk the other day, I looked for some familiar trees, shrubs and rocks to our right. Instead of our usual “friends,” I noticed that there were other paths and trails, right there! I had no idea.
I also started to see, as if for the first time, the elegance, strength and beauty in the structures of the trees themselves. Late Autumn trees are not defective peak-Autumn trees! Those resilient trunks and branches turn and bend in the most captivating ways. They have their own kind of beauty, on totally different terms.
Winter Reveals Us
Until the distractions and clutter are swept away by hard Autumn winds, we don’t see the more enduring things holding it all up.
That’s true of us too, isn’t it? Until we quiet ourselves and let go of the things that no longer belong, we can’t even see the powerful stuff of which we are made.
Windburn
Very often it seems like the life “winds” that blow our distractions away are brutal. Grief, loss, disappointment, frustration, anger – these can be so painful. I’ve wished a thousand times that I could clear an internal path without them. I guess sometimes I do, but often it seems that I don’t even recognize there are things obscuring my self-view until my soul is already windburned by one of these experiences.
I’m not in that camp that sees some grand force orchestrating these things to “teach us a lesson.” That feels like such a harsh version of Divinity. However, like I often say in session: “If we are going to hurt, we might as well do it productively."
Taking Time
Taking time to heal soul windburn is important. Something has broken down; Often our vision for our lives, relationships or futures. Healing is a process of transformation. What made sense on one side of the experience doesn’t make sense on the other. We will need to update our beliefs about how the world works, what does and doesn’t make sense in our relationships, and even what we know about ourselves. (This is what Jack Worden’s 3rd grief task is about.)
In the middle of that muddle, we have the opportunity to see it all with new eyes, and possibly make a different plan for how we hold our lives in light of the new information. If we are intentional about our thoughts, thinking them through to the end and sharing them with others in ways that help to better inform us, we can create something finer moving forward.
Winter Trees
Much of the time that we are doing that deeply internal work, we look like trees in Winter on the outside. Our energy and resources are making magic in our trunks and root systems. We don’t allocate our healing sap to creating new branches or leaves; Every drop of it is required for healing, strengthening, foundation-rebuilding.
While that work does manifest once our lives have warmed up some and we are once again able to take in sunlight, the results we see in Spring are a different kind of beautiful. Winter has a beauty all its own.
We need to open “the eyes of our eyes” in order to see it.
Not Alone
It’s tempting to think that Winter trees are these isolated, lonely creatures. I’ve been listening to Peter Wohlleben’s book, The Hidden Life of Trees, lately. (My Mama would be proud!) He reveals that nothing could be farther from the truth.
In a natural forest, under the hard earth, each tree has an astonishingly complex root system that sends messages across the plant community with the help of fungi. (How crazy cool is that?) The trees send and receive messages and adjust what they are doing with their interior nutrients in light of what the entire biome needs at that moment.
They don’t simply deep-dive into themselves in Winter. They negotiate, distribute and see to the wellbeing of the whole. They allocate resources in such a way that each plant in their network has what it needs.
Energy
If one of those trees is struggling or damaged, it receives what it needs from the other connected trees. It isn’t giving much at that moment, and that’s just fine. Once it regains its strength, it will do the same for others.
With humans, the soul windburn often blows our support system away. We may not have the energy to take the emotional risks required to heal from disconnection in order to create something new.
I saw a meme this morning that read: “I saw the way your friends treated you, so I sent you strangers. Love, The Universe.” Sometimes our nourishment comes from unexpected sources. Look for them!
Connections
Our roots may be bumping into other roots we didn’t even know were there. Let them deliver you some “tree sugar.” Gain your strength in whatever timing you can tolerate in the dance between Grief Tasks.
Sometimes it’s all we can do to hold onto the side of a rock face. (See picture.) We have to take in clean-enough water wherever it can be found in order to survive.
While you’re busy surviving, don’t forget to notice the beauty of your limbs, roots and trunk. They may not be flashy at this moment, but they are stunningly beautiful, nonetheless.