Today we’re headed for the forests. As always, I’m looking at the landscapes as “soulcapes”–places that reflect the fierce challenges and deep beauty we confront within ourselves. In this post, I’m sharing from the forest chapter on “Mystery.”
“We may seek straight paths and the straightforward approach, but it is a Universe both circular and shrouded that shapes us. Physicists tell us that dark matter and dark energy comprise 95 percent of the Universe. With all our technologies, all our instruments, we have observed less than 5 percent of the cosmos. What scientists have measured, we sense with our souls. Entering the forest, we know we are bound by darkness, born into mystery.
“The light of modern consciousness burns brightly, but the Earth was never meant to be bare of trees, nor our souls fully exposed to the light of reason. We are meant to include some element of uncharted terrain in our makeup. A clear-cut area becomes drier and less fertile with time, just as we, too, are diminished by a modern mind-set that wants to elevate rational thought and industry at the expense of vision and spirit.”
(From “Reclaiming the Wild Soul”– White Cloud Press, October 2014)
As you consider the forest, its darkness and its mystery, consider your relationship to mystery. Do you value vision and spirit over rational thought and industry? If so, how do you honor the mystery? Love to have you share your thoughts on forests, mystery, and more.
“To be rooted,” wrote Simone Weil, “is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.” And trees, certainly can teach us about rootedness as I write in “Reclaiming the Wild Soul.”
“Native Americans call the trees Standing People. Trees share with humans the “vertical” life, only they remain in place from birth to death. Except perhaps for a very strange group of trees somewhere on a Pacific island that are reported to lift up their roots and inch along the earth year by year. But they are the exception. Trees, in the main, hold their ground.
“Being stationary requires ingenuity. Some trees contort themselves into incredible pretzel shapes in order to push through the crowded canopy around them and receive their share of sunlight. Their roots, likewise, may adapt by exhibiting a marvelous roaming spirit. They dig deep in the earth, move laterally, bond with mycorrhizal fungi that enable them to seek moisture and sustenance from farther afield, all while maintaining their position.
“Trees have learned to live large, despite constraints. They have all kinds of rich relationships, too, with the birds and insects and other beings that seek out their branches and nest in their hollowed trunks. “I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do,” writes Willa Cather. ”
In a world of restless motion, how might trees restore us to stillness and calm? How can they teach us to live large and yet to honor the constraints that finite resources and an Earth-under-siege place on us? Love to hear your comments, observations, and stories.
