As I grow older, I’m finding that something strange is happening to my emotions. The most unexpected things can move me to tears, whereas the things that probably ought to move me to tears – or which once would have done – have little traction.
In my last post, I wrote about the old rowan tree on our field boundary, which I call the Entwife. Ancient, more hole than trunk, bent sideways by the wind, she seemed more dead than alive when we first moved here. And then one spring day, miraculously, she began to grow shoots. From her roots, from her trunk – from everywhere. And so we build a little fence around her, to protect her, so those shoots wouldn’t get grazed by our sheep.
Well, it’s a pity not to share those earlier images again, so here they are:
And then, with the ripening of summer, another miracle. Berries! A couple of days ago, I was congratulating her on her bounty, on her remarkable ability to bring forth life from what looks for all the world like death, and I found myself suddenly overcome by a remarkable intensity of love for this tree. I sit and talk to her two or three times a week, perched on the stile which David built so that I could cross over the protective fence and into her sanctuary. And as a consequence of that continuous converation, I seem to have come to love her deeply.
As I carried on down the lane weeping (yup, as I said, the most unexpected things make me cry these days) with the pleasure of that growing relationship, I was thinking about German philosopher/ phenomenologist Max Scheler, whose work I came across recently. In a nutshell, he wrote about love as a way of listening to what the world has to say to us. Love as a necessary quality that we must bring to our connections with other beings in the world around us, which allows them to offer themselves up to us as they really are.
If you think about it, it’s like human relationships. For example: if you enter into a discussion with someone different from you – someone with a different perspective – with the intent of proving them wrong, beating them down, or belittling their opinions, then clearly you are not adopting this approach of open-heartedness to the world and the other beings which share it with you. And, not surprisingly, the person you’re ‘conversing’ with isn’t then going to reveal herself to you in any meaningful way at all. She’s going to shrink back. There’s no revelation here except the strength of your ego.
So it is with the world. Love, then, from Scheler’s perspective, is more than just an attitude, it’s a spiritual stance: a way for us to know things as they truly are; a way to have the world open itself to us, just as love in turn opens us to the world. Love is, above all, an act of participation.
And love, in this sense, was exactly what I experienced with the Entwife. By sitting with her in an open-hearted way, participating fully and paying deep attention to her, then in some way that I can’t properly express, she revealed herself to me. And I understood that she was beautiful, exceptional, and full of life and heart, in her gloriously rickety, gnarly old way. She was the green and growing at the heart of the dormant; the rebirth at the heart of death.
That revelation which other beings might offer to us, if we approach them with love and participatory attention, occurs and is transmitted at some level on the imaginal plane. And I’m reminded too of Henry Corbin, the French theologian who translated and interpreted ancient Sufi texts, and his assertion that the heart is the seat of the imagination; that imagination is the authentic voice of the heart.
If psyche, as depth psychologists from Carl Jung to James Hillman have asserted, is image; and if the heart is the organ of imagination; then psyche – soul – and in particular, the act of soul-making – can only ever be fuelled by love.
This is lovely. Now more than ever I feel we are called to send our roots into the earth in order to access this deeper wisdom. Nature seems to be an endless source if we can open to listen, and I agree we must transfer this inner knowing to our human relationships too…which can be challenging but well worth the effort..both for others and ourselves.
thank you for the telling images and words of hope and regeneration.
‘kindness’ is what resonate mostly for me at the moment.A shy word much
neglected. Being french have a direct very appreciated link with Corbin’s work.
wishing you much berrie joy.
Kindness! Ahh! It’s everything. It’s the beginning and end. Love from Australia.
What a beautiful piece of writing!
My partner and I also have a special tree we sit with in the Yorkshire Dales, so this post really resonates with me. Our tree is the most beautiful, old, hardy hawthorn tree, growing through limestone rock. It certainly has its own, very powerful energy and a quiet strength.
Thank you for sharing this!
The “quiet strength” of your tree seems to communicate a powerful yet gentle reminder of what we need more of in our world. I’m from Canada and have lots of forest to explore around my home, but I’ve always dreamed of walking in Yorkshire someday. It seems like such a beautiful place! They say it’s God’s country, don’t they? ?
I do have a tree I have come to love deeply. She offers wise counsel whenever I sit with her and even sometimes when I conjure her in my heart of imagination. When I first walked towards her eye to wept with some profound sense of having unequivocally been met and seen and known.
i cannot even tell you how exceptionally this is reaching me right now– thank you thank you thank you. my dearest tree guardian is in a state similar to what you mentioned due to a high powered storm– and to see your entwife growing and blooming– it is beyond words. <3
Dearest Sharon,
Beautiful to listen to grace in the world.
It is ALL LOVE.
Thanks for sharing the tree with me.(us)
Grateful.
Beautiful. Thank you, Sharon.
What a miracle!!!!
Such a beautiful piece Sharon. I was moved too while reading it.
I am moved to tears by your writing dear Sharon. I too feel deeply as never in my youth or middle age nowadays as I near seventy. Quite healthy physically and mentally somewhere deep a teenage girl is still alive, I often wish I had this sensitivity and compassion, passion and love in my youth. Callow desirous years often wasted on all sorts of distractions. I often wish we should be born old and wise and age and die young and innocent. It is so for me too. Yes love is a spiritual attitude, a gift and a talent perhaps to love unconditionally and with total acceptance of all the diversity and wild free spirit of all the living beings and Nature Goddess. All my love and prayers , appreciation and respect to you Sharon…
Thank you for this tree story. There is a beautiful Princess bush that grows just outside my window. I have grown to love her. She was brutally cut down last year by the wild winds that occurred during fire season here in
California. There was only a stump left and one straggly branch. My wife staked the branch and I waited and watched as the months passed. The Princess bush branch and her beautiful purple flowers and soft fuzzy green leaves have grown strong and tall again, gracing my sight each morning when I greet her. May we all be blessed with communion with Nature.
Your seeing and sitting, care and words of love brought that sleeping tree back to life. What a beautiful lesson.
A tender writing of your felt experience, it’s wonderfully life affirming. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings with us. Hope you’re settling into your new home and landscape.
And isn’t it lovely that trees are so often the catalyst that awakens that awareness of our connection. I am so in love with the trees here, old friends for decades. I respond to them as they do to me…and protect them fiercely!
Beautiful reflections, beautifully written; thank you, Sharon.
I’m sure that your appreciation and loving attitude towards it, has helped your Rowan to flourish, and she is glad that you are her neighbour.
Here on walks in quiet, secluded places in the Yorkshire dales, where I’m privileged to live, getting to know the trees, and some in particular, has been and remains to be , one of the chief pleasures of living here. Love extended to them,is always returned in full measure, unconditionally.
Thank you for this Sharon. I have a similar experience with an old Oak in Richmond Park. It has been struck, right into the root by lightening and is somewhat stunted in stature by that injury. But every spring leaves burst forth again, it blossoms and then bears fruit, umpteen acorns. A new generation given the chance! Stunted, almost cleaved in two but strong, beautiful and fruitful. Great metaphors for living life till it ends!
Dear Sharon, how beautiful and inspiring to see how unconditional love friendship ,non judgment and openness of heart causes such an abundant flourishing of beauty and joy! You can see it radiating from your beautiful Entwife, She is just bursting with happiness to have a friend like you who loves her A and understands her through all her forms, warts and all.
A beautiful expression of love! I seem to find a special tree wherever I live as well. Here it’s actually twin cottonwoods that almost hug one another. Both have dead branches at the very top that are beloved by crows. One day I counted 9 sitting in them. But the real ‘wow’ was the morning there were 32 grazing for breakfast in the grass beneath the trees’ feet. Crows and I both love these trees!
During Lockdown, I have found a special (to me), tree in my local park. It’s in a bit that’s overlooked by most people and has a fallen tree just in front of it. I have sat on the fallen tree and watched Spring arrive and found some space to just be. It’s a meditative feeling but also intensely alert and open to the messages of nature that are teeming all around me.
I am so moved. Thank you Sharon.
Tears, tears of joy, tears of love.
What a necessary story in the world we currently find ourselves in. Thank you x
Thank you Sharon,
I just finished reading and pondering on Like a Tree by Jean Shinoda Bolen. All you have described here is exactly what her book is about.
When I was about 12, I used to wander down the back yards of our neighbours (very friendly neighbours) where my large Oak tree stood. She allowed me to climb high into her branches where I would sit and just watch all the life going on around us. I’d snuggle into her branches and talk to her. She had a rope tied to one branch wth a tire tied to the end. I’d pull that tire up and sail down when it was time to go home.
One day, a neighbour called out – Sharon is that you in the tree? I answered yes, and it’s wonderful. Then she said, “Girls don’t climb trees!”” I just answered, “This girl does!”
Now as an old crone of 77, I just look at trees in the forest and wish I could climb up into their branches and be nurtured again.
I have trees close to me that I love.
Thanks for reminding me again.
Dear Sharon, I too feel you have communicated to me personally this intimate extraordinary experience, which resonates with my own. Last friday I spent 3 hours in silence in the sub tropical gardens and woodland of Glanleam house in Valentia in Kerry. Stroking the pony’s mane and later the barks of the tree ferns, there was no difference, both alive, it was one of those samadhi moments. I had always known that I felt happiest in nature, surrounded by growing forms but it wasn’t until that day that I realised the communication is at another level, a pre-language level where insights and wisdom and clarity are downloaded into the psyche. My Mum had just passed in July and without any conscious intention on my behalf, I was gifted with a lovely image of my Mum (who passed in July) with my dad in their early years walking
happily together, it gave me great peace and reassurance. I knew it to be a gift for my attention and reverence. It opened me to understand that the greater the silence within, the greater the capacity to hear, to listen to observe the cues, the greater the rewards. It was as if this intelligence knew I was grieving without any conscious thought or utterance and delivered to me what was most sought. The only difference with this visit particularly was my intention of receptivity, I was open.
I love your writing Sharon, I am currently reading ‘If women rose rooted’.
You are like nothing else out there, you voice something very old and authentic and I am listening.
sooo so beautiful… that you both also found each other…
brightest blessings… x (((o))))
A wonderful read.I felt a great energy when I looked at her photos. She is thriving under your love.
Nature is filled with wisdom. Rowan is making sure by both an abundant crop of berries as well as the shoots springing up from her roots that she will live on.
Yes, beauty is everywhere if we simply open our hearts to its existence. Thank you Sharon.
Sharon, as I’ve come to know your work, through a variety of venues, the one true thing I realize is you open my mind in a manner often unexpected. You are leading me full circle and I love it! I work toward being a better listener to trees, respecting their wisdom and asking what they need from me.
Dear Sharon,
We have a decades old oak behind our Florida home that we needed to have trimmed back due to the possibility of the oak destroying the house during a hurricane. I was beside myself because the arborist was coming while we were up in New Jersey, yet to see that majestic tree pruned back made me a basket case. I took 13 acorns back to New Jersey with me since the arborist explained that the oak had some health issues that would eventually lead to its demise. I grew all 13 acorns in our dining room and brought them back to Florida with us when we were finally able to move back here permanently a little over a year ago. Those little oaks were more like children than trees to my husband and I.
Beautiful Sharon! I too find my emotional responses to many things changing as I near 50. Your piece was among a few others I’ve encountered recently urging us to listen, especially to the non-human beings with which we share this life.
Message received! Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom!
I love the simplicity of your writing and just looking at that beautiful tree and her growth speaks to my soul and how beautiful life is in all its ages thank you Sharon may your new home wrap around you like a soft warm shawl
A beautiful and inspiring piece of writing. I felt deeply moved. We have a several hundred year old Kahikitea on our bush block in Aotearoa/New Zealand. It was lucky to be spared the slaughter of our native trees by the early colonialists because it was malformed. I love that tree and get a wonderful feeling of love and peace when I sit with her.
Thank you Sharon for your beautiful writing, it often moves me to tears. As I get older, (almost 64) I too, seem to tear up and weep. It is most times from experiences with nature, or my dear friends, the Barred Owls that visit me frequently. There is an old gnarly maple tree down in our woods that has an extension off of her…I call this my Crone Goddess Tree. She even has a face and some very long, wild moss that hangs from her head. I have a bench right across from her and have a sitting time with her several times a week. I feel her wisdom, love and acceptance for all the parts of me. Trees are my most beloved friends and guardians on this land we call home. They are often my sanctuary of safety and peace, when the world seems like it has become too chaotic for my sensitivities. I am in awe each and every day with the gifts that nature brings to us. I am so deeply grateful that I have the time and desire to learn from her in all her beauty and mystical blessings! Thank you so much for sharing all your gifts and wisdom with all of us!
Thank you Sharon your words have resonance and the love and truth you shared was felt xxx
Thank you for sharing your beautiful story, Sharon. I had relationships of love with two such trees. It broke my heart when I had to leave that home and them. I have a dried leaf from one of them, and the other night in a weepy time that comes unbidden, I took out the leaf, held it to my lips and whispered, “Can you hear me? I still love you.” Who knows? Maybe my tree heard it deep in her wooden spirit. Again…thank you.
Thank you for sharing your tree journey,Sharon.
I hug my special trees every chance I get.
It is as beneficial to them As it is to me.
Thank you for this lovely reminder that love has the potential to rebirth and renew. I watch with awe the trees in their seasonal transitions from my window and their silent beauty fills me with gratitude. They call me to patient faithfulness to my own transitions. ‘Poems were made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree’.
Thank you Sharon, I adore your writing, your deep connection with nature and all things beyond the veil. God speaks and you listen, you write and we all feel grounded.
What a beautiful image! Gnarled and old yet full of life and fruitful. A symbol for my own elder years! Thank you for this. Your teachings have changed how I bring myself into the woods where the trees have always provided nurturing but it’s been from a stance of status rather than equality. Now I see them as friends and neighbors, in a spirit of mutuality and the deepening is breathtaking.