"Trees are as close to immortality as the rest of us ever come."
― Karen Joy Fowler
One Sunday, my black-furred companion and I took an unplanned trip to my childhood. Unexpected highway traffic, had us heading towards Woods that hold great memories. I seized the moment. Let’s walk the woods together.
I parked along the tree-lined curve, like I had done hundreds of times before. Getting out of the car, we walked toward the wood’s entrance, looking up at the crest of trees, I realized: The trees remember me. For an instant my body was in glee. I felt the feeling of my grandfather’s bike ahead of me and I was ecstatic to be riding with him again; those molecules of glee were held in canopy of trees. The intersection was a felt-sense. We were all timeless, him, me and the trees. Some would say that moment was a memory; I advance it was a cross-section of time held in the land. We need only to slow down to see. If you ever need to slow down time to the beat of magic, read John O’Donohue. He is quoted below.
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A tree is a perfect presence. It is somehow able to engage and integrate its own dissolution. The tree is wise in knowing how to foster its own loss. It does not become haunted by the loss nor addicted to it. The tree shelters and minds the loss. Out of this comes the quiet dignity and poise of a tree's presence.Trees stand beautifully on the clay. They stand with dignity. A life that wishes to honour its own possibility has to learn too how to integrate the suffering of dark and bleak times into a dignity of presence. Letting go of old forms of life, a tree practises hospitality towards new forms of life. It balances the perennial energies of winter and spring within its own living bark. The tree is wise in the art of belonging. The tree teaches us how to journey. Too frequently our inner journeys have no depth. We move forward feverishly into new situations and experiences which neither nourish nor challenge us, because we have left our deeper selves behind. It is no wonder that the addiction to superficial novelty leaves us invariably empty and weary. Much of our experience is literally superficial; it slips deftly from surface to surface. It lacks rootage. The tree can reach towards the light, endure wind, rain, and storm, precisely because it is rooted. Each of its branches is ultimately anchored in a reliable depth of clay. The wisdom of the tree balances the path inwards with the pathway outwards.
--John O'Donohue
"Nature is not a place to visit, it is home."
— Gary Snyder
It has unfortunately become the common lexicon to eviscerate ancestors, illuminating flaws and short-comings, banging on the drums of all their carelessness and short-sighted ways. People do this from bodies, bones and voices that exist because of the very same ancestors they berate.
My co-parent and I were deeply entrenched in the yoga world before our son was born. We were also older parents. I think that is relevant. Anyhow, we were invited to an event at a friend’s yoga studio, and people were gathered around life-promoting drinks, and meditation accruements, chatting about this and that, and a woman in her thirties, stepped over our son, crawling on the floor, looked at me and said “Is that yours?”
The worth that hung in the air suspended. I couldn’t quite blink.
I think of that moment as an un-explainable hint that something has gone sour in humanity’s idea of the miracle of being alive, and the communal responsibility to protect and love our children, of humanness.
🔗📚 here.
When I think about my own childhood, I think of trees and bike rides. I think of books and ice cream cones, long car rides, lots of family, and wondering why I had to wear glasses.
When I walked into the trees, that Sunday, four decades later, I remembered her — the little one. I also distinctly was able to access the feeling of being chosen. All the grandkids loved when Pop would ask, “C’mon, you wanna go for a bike ride?”
He would check all the tires for air. Strap a water bottle with a bungee cord, grab a hat, and his long lean legs would lead the way down to the park. His draft wind was a really great place to be; I can feel the wind through my hair and the freedom of the ride. The simple joy of being a kid. Being celebrated because I was a kid.
My grandfather may be physically gone now, but the same trees stand. They saw me walk my son on the same trail, telling him stories of who watches over him and who he is from.
A Hawaiian friend told me when my son was born, to be sure to tell him the family stories.
I smiled, but I had no idea what she was talking about. I thought of the long strands of judgment and the gossip I had overheard as child. The unfortunate feelings behind what seemed to be happiness — why would I tell my son about that? Those were the only stories I had.
That was a lie.
I had a thousand stories.
I had a million stories of joy. I had to step over that shard to understand the stories she meant. The stories of lopsided apple pies, card-games and ocean air. The stories of police captains reclaiming safety and dairy farmers providing for all. Of ancestors who rebranded forgiveness and stood at the threshold looking to help in ways they couldn’t while they were here. I had so many stories like leaves of a tree.
I could tell you I didn’t realize I started writing these things on the week of my grandfather, Bernard George Ortwein’s, anniversary of his walk on from this life to the next, but that would also be a lie. We know. If we slow down, we can know how much we know.
About three or four years into motherhood, when my friend placed another reminder of stories and ancestries, I began praying to understand my ancestors. I have been praying to reconnect with their gifts, to understand them and to walk with them, rather than away from them.
You see today when we focus only on what was wrong — are we not abandoning them? Guru Singh, a phenomenal orator and teacher, explains:”When we align with our 32,766 influencing ancestors, we connect to the cosmos.”
Throughout your life, a stadium of angelic supporters and fans are rooting for you from a cosmic stairway. Time flows through you, not just passing by, as it pours into your present. Your past and future coexist, but your true experience is in the now. It's okay to reference the past or anticipate the future, but for health and vitality, live in the present moment. Shed the dramas and traumas of the past to fully embrace the alive, vibrant time of now. - Guru Singh
I mean how could I have the life that I have and not have an inception of support in the bones of those that gave me life. Why do we think that they are not in the essence of who we are? How is that serving us? Is it helping us to step-over our ancestry?
I understand some of us (keeping it connected) have truly unreal misery in our childhood line. Does divorcing ourselves from our lineage entirely heal this? Where do we have light?
Did you ever think about your leukocytes? They are your white blood cells. They protect you from harm and infection. In Greek Leuko means brilliant, white. In the Bible, apparently, it is used to describe the brightness of the garments of the angels.
I once had an altar to a bunch of things that were not from my ancestry, and they deeply served me in awakening a private and thriving spiritual practice. I went through a period of disappointment with people, and I cleared the altar. I was in my 30’s. The people that I had met that dressed all in white, had proclaimed this sacredness, and then had went on to steal money from clients, and sleep with a few of said clients, and I was flummoxed at the rules of the game.
Who do I trust? What is true and good?
The altar I had was an old black IKEA table, and I let it stare blankly at me for weeks in the corner of my room. I stared at it with disdain, as if the practice of opening up to see what is was at fault, rather than realizing the truth of life’s complexities were simply a manner of course. The truth is we are all polarities of light and dark. There is no place where the opposite does not exist on Earth. Some handle it differently than others.
After some time, I missed the ritual of sitting and orienting myself to my day. One morning, a dawning came to me. Who else could I trust than the ones that in life love me? The ones who made the time and the effort, when time and effort were limited. They could be my relays. They could be the ones that could help me find new footing (I was raised Catholic, so having a legion of peeps to pick from as relays was part of my lexicon). I put one picture on my altar: It was of my grandfather and my great grandfather.
Interesting to note reader, that is not father and son. That is a man and his father-in law. The seeds of the forrest can grow in so many ways to provide shelter, different species creating a space for the sacred together.
Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another the most varied opinions can be reconciled - thus one of the most important tasks for humankind today and in the future is that we should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of development is empty. - Rudolf Steiner
Now, almost nine years after that choice, I can tell you there was and is truth in that inspiration. To return to the ones that guarded me, taught me, loved me — perfectly or imperfectly, while I was young is a powerful medicine of compassion. As a parent myself, I think perhaps we are so entrenched in our primary parental relationships that depending on our age and story we cannot always see the guardians that our parents were | are. But we will, this life or another. As we age, the sense widens and if we choose it, we grow eyes of compassion and gratitude.
‘The ancestral lines behind us support our ascent, as we support those who will follow us. We are all of us in this game together. We incarnate and do a few good deeds, which make it possible for the next being to step further. Then we return, and those before us have made it easier for us. Veneration takes place at every rung of the ladder.‘
Dare to Be Divine, Richard Rudd
🧩 Have you heard of the Gene Keys? Apparently this week, is about the Ancestors. I mean this is not coincidence, it is the time of year we celebrate them. Richard Rudd talks about the Failure | Preservation | Veneration of the Ancestors. He talks about the cycle of living and examining the relationships of the ancestors.
Perhaps this is the best place for us to pause. I’ll share more about the power of purpose embedded in our ancestry and bones another time. Think on it for when we meet here again, on the page. For now, Let’s Sit & Write.
See you back here soon,
With love and hope,
Kate
📝 Journal Prompts
Are you missing a Love one? Write them a letter, tell then about your day and what you loving in the present. See what arises.
What gifts have you been given from your Ancestry that you did not originally see as gifts?
What kind of Ancestor will you be?
📝Do you have a longer story?
Are you ready to think about the arc of your life or your ancestry. We have a first step for you, here.
So beautiful and timely as always ❤️