MEDITATION ON AN OAK

MEDITATION

Close your eyes and feel your body. Breath in, breath out; savor the miracle of breath. Feel your fingers. Feel your hands and arms. Savor the miracle of touch. You can find out so much; rough or smooth, hot or cold.

Move down your body, feel your legs and feet. With them you can explore the world whether it’s your backyard or the other side of the world. Walk barefoot through your world. Dry, rustling autumn leaves or the cold wet sands of an Oregon beach at low tide.

Breath in, breath out. Stretch out your consciousness. Feel the essence of your life. Your body may be new, but your soul is old. Finally it can express its beauty in songs, poems, dance, story, tears and joy.

You are no longer bound by time or space. Let your thoughts drift. They are as free as the breezes that kiss you on a cool spring morning. But, it could be a summer night in Greece two thousand years ago. It could be autumn in Tuscany next year. You are no longer bound by time or place.

Stretch out you consciousness. You are an acorn born in the spring. You grew ripe through the summer. The winds of an August thunderstorm pulled you from the tree. You fell down, down to nestle among the wildflowers of late summer. The flowers die with the fall frosts and they bury you among their dead leaves. You are not alone, the banches of your mother tree were full. In half a millennia a new grove will rise again.

Another year, another spring; your shell splits. The first tiny leaves reach up towards the sun, the silk thread roots begin their long journey towards the center of the earth. Spring comes and goes. Summer sun comes and goes. A sapling slowly reaches for the sky. The wheel of the year turns and turns again. After all what is a century or so to an oak.

Another century of summers and winters. Your roots are intertwined with soil and gravels that rode the melting ice sheets that began to retreat ten thousand years ago. Remember, you weren’t the only acorn that fell that long ago spring. Your branches touch and intertwine with the trees next to you. Their branches intertwine with all the others. A grove of oaks a thousand strong.

Another century comes, another goes. You are slowly returning the soil that gave you birth. Even as your trunk weakens, it provides life to the moss and lichens growing in your bark. Trees were there before you. Perhaps they knew the ancient Druids. Perhaps Hern led the Wild Hunt through your grove. Times are harder, the earth changes faster and faster. But, not so much yet, that your sons and daughters have failed to take root and begin their long journey towards the sun.

Know this your life, and the lives of the trees and the stars are as intertwined as the branches of that grove of oaks.

Inspired by a piece on the website for the Raven Wood Grove.