The Tree in My Rear Garden
by Chaplain Tilia Giron, PhD, RScP
The tree that stands tallest in my rear garden is The Tree that everyone advised me to cut down. It could not be saved, they said. Tree experts, nature experts, state experts.
It is The Tree that the Robins and Doves and the little Green Finches migrating on their way to elsewhere flock toward.
It is The Tree that bears many wounds. Its’ bark is gray and decayed – dead and hollow in places. Indeed, its trunk is flaked and ashen, like charred wood whose life has gone out long ago and of which now only wasted barren ashes remain.
Yet, its crown stands majestic, broad and tall, green with life in the midst of winter in this cold mountain air. Thriving and Strong, Proud and Teaming with life. There is a moral here.
It is that there is strength in our wounds.
Gifts beyond what we can imagine.
It is the knowing that we – like The Tree – are more than our pain and our injuries.
So much more.
It is the moral of fortitude, of paradox, of inner strength as well as the will to live.
That will is inherent in all that is, for we are born each of us, whether tree, or stick, or rock, or human, with the Essence of the Divine within us: with life force and spirit. And the Essence is undefeatable and infinite — far beyond all human advice or knowing.
It is boundless potentiality!!! For me and for you!
It is powerful and It is me.
And It is you.
It is all of us.
And I am grateful.
And so it is!