meditations on a tree

As I stared at the tree, I absorbed its bareness. I thought about how all winter long, it scratched the sky with its silhouette. I know that spring is coming and is here (Paradox!), but today the air is still cold. Then I remembered that inside of the tree, something is happening. From the roots up through the trunk, into the thick branches and into the thin twigs, sap is stirring. Although we cannot see it, it stirs deep in the tree and is moving and bubbling up.
As the tree senses the movement within, the brush of warm air, it responds by bursting forth in buds, tiny, silky, fresh green leaf clusters or flowers. The flowers in themselves are beautiful. Fragile and seasonal, they express hope after so many months of stark bareness. Slowly, these buds or flowers fade away into thick, lush green leaves. The leaves provide shade in the heat of summer, absorb the abundant sunlight, catch the breeze and rustle, rendering the invisible visible. Again, like the flowers or leaf buds, they are beautiful in and of themselves. More durable than the initial delicate flowers of spring, they sustain storms, animals, and the tree itself.
Time passes and summer temperatures gently give way to cooler nights and crisp breezes. The tree again reaches deep inside itself and from those first flowers springs the fruit of the tree. After months of ripening, growth, storms, sunshine, those final leaves give way to something even more life sustaining: the tree’s own seeds. The fruit falls from the tree - a process which must be exhausting and somewhat painful. After the blossoms, endurance, and birthing, the tree falls into hibernation once more, preparing for the next season.


I am a tree. So are you.