Today’s meditation comes from the first poem in my first book, Pruning Burning Bushes. It’s one of my favorites to read, so thanks for tuning in and traveling with me into Cascade Valley!
Cascade Valley
Look, my daughter, the pine tree dropped its seeds, and here a fragile sapling braves the forest floor. This used to be a birch tree, but lightning sliced it, wind heaved its heavy breath and now the trunk is rust. Sticks once flared skirts of springtime buds, but now we throw the broken limbs into rushing floodwaters to see how quickly we could be carried away. Always a hair too close to the edge, pebbles skitter into the river. Let's find our way back from this spring rage, out of the valley that catches what used to cling above. Climb this mountain with its tread marks, hoof prints, decomposing oaks—we are not the first to grow and fall. But see the way the leaves return to earth, the way the dust collects? Crocus blades emerge from crumbling stumps as if this growth does not take more than soil, light, and rain. Reach down, my child, bring a pine cone home to show how miraculously we are carried.
Monday Meditation:
Consider the decomposing oak, the oak that stood for decades or maybe even centuries, content to be rooted in this one place, to send forth its seeds to scurrying squirrels, to broaden and reach and stretch, to tango with fungus and mycelium underground in night clubs. Consider how it has fallen, how it was bound to fall someday after one windstorm or lightning strike or slow rotting out heartwood, how we are all bound to fall.
Consider, now, how over 1,000 species of wildlife count on the fallen for their cover, their habitat, their hiding place, how fallen trees help the forest regenerate, how fallen trees create gaps in the canopy to allow young saplings light.
Consider how our lives take root in the glorious rot of former generations, planted and enriched by what preceded us. What goodness might we leave, what light might we open in the canopy, what bright hope will our lives nurture long after they’re over?
We are all part of a far grander story unfolding in the woods and fields and neighborhoods.
Great and extravagant God, let us broaden and reach and stretch. Let us tango together. When it is time, let us fall with a grace that makes room for the next generation and leave a legacy of lasting fullness to sustain those who come after us.
You can get Pruning Burning Bushes from Amazon.com or order a signed copy directly from my website. Thanks for considering supporting my work!
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