To Speak of Trees...

I have been thinking a lot today about happiness and sadness, and about all that I have learned so far on this journey to where I now stand at 38 years old.  In many ways, I am not nearly as accomplished or successful as I thought I would be at this age. I still relish the question: "What do you want to do when you grow up?", and maybe for the first time in my life can actually answer it.  For now, I'm raising kids, unraveling myself from the snare of financial debt, and learning all I can learn about myself and the world in the school of life. In my finer moments- I get to speak, lead, and love from all that I have learned- and this brings me fulfillment. There is so much more to learn that will slowly unfold in service. 

I wonder if we get it wrong in our culture- saving the inner life for the later life. We contemplatives just cannot wait until we are retired to know ourselves.  And is it really the better way- to spend the first half of life acting, and the second half reflecting? What if our action and reflection were intertwined, and what if we really did not fully act until we knew the spirit from which we could act most wisely?  Perhaps then we might have more peace and kindness in this world- beginning with our ambitious youth. 

The past few days I have felt a kind of sadness, but rather than drowning in days of worry and loss of meaning as I used to, I have simply waited for it to pass.  I know myself better now, and when depression hits, I know that it is impermanent. This is sadness, not clinical depression.  I know the mood for its melancholy- the way its heaviness falls over eyelids and cheekbones, fills my entire face with water and frowns.  I ask the question- why? oh where did you come from?  I listen in silence and remember: the cold or unkind word picked up by the unconscious…the news of a young man I know with cancer...the news article I read about campus rape... the picture of a dead child from Gaza flashed across my computer screen. Is it any wonder that the water comes? This is not poetic…. This is deep woe.

It is woe that comes in waves and will always be there beneath everything, like silt in a river bed.  But there is in this same instance:  Joy.  When I look at the fruit trees, the river, the full green abundance of the yard; the overflowing bounty of a garden in late July- buckets of zucchini and cucumbers and the first tomatoes.  When I relish good moments with my children. Or read a friend's loving words.  Then I am blessed with the fullness of being alive. 

Are these frivolous things in the face of such horrors as war and illness? The poet Bertolt Brecht once wrote: "Ah, what an age it is/ When to speak of trees is almost a crime/ For it is a kind of silence about injustice!"  One could say this... that to turn our eyes toward natural beauty is to turn away from the sorrow. But we need nature and love and poetry to sustain us. What use is it to be all activist, without a source of overflowing love and inner capacity from which to draw? To speak of trees is to speak of the source of life. This is the work of the poets and the contemplatives too- to draw our attention to the holding of beauty in the midst of sorrow.

So tonight I speak of trees. I speak of the young tree of my 7 year old curled up in zebra-striped blankets and pillows, poring over National Geographic pictures, immersed in her countless questions, her need-to-knows. Or the tall tree of my 10 year old finding strength and compassion in the midst of her own broken heart caused by a conflict with a dear friend. I am sad for her and for her friend's unexpressed pain….for all the girls who are figuring out what it means to be 10 years old in a culture of so many harsh and unfair pressures bent on suppressing the spirit.   The tears come as we talk and cuddle… and figure out how to laugh our way back into life.

My own daughters, safe and strong, are "trees", growing and becoming testaments of strength and beauty and light.  Perhaps they are also the reason I do not sink in despair.  I let the tears come but do not wallow, and find life renewing itself, even in the midst of great tragedy, over and over again.