awake in the dark
a luminous aurora-like light dancing
along the skirt of the mountains
where to begin
the astonishing quiet
but for the shush of the Cottonwood trees
the creek
the top of the peak
where
my heart burst open to the sky with joy
here
alone in this Place
my breath mingling with heaven
nothing between me and infinite space
where to begin
begin here
"How we love one thing is how we love everything."
-Father Richard Rohr
Sometimes it is so hard to be present. Even alone on the Little Tesuque Creek Trail with the creek burbling beside me I find my head rushing forward in time. Stop. Be here with this moment. The shivering cottonwoods kept whispering “hello, hello” as I hiked by. I keep forgetting to acknowledge them, having decided after listening to the Secret Life of Trees how poplars speak to one another, protect one another, nurture each other. I recall how once both my sister and I found ourselves mysteriously called to stand on the back deck of our house in the middle of the summer. We just stood. We did not speak. And then. A 100-foot pecan tree fell completely over onto the back fence and the roof of an apartment building behind our house. She looked at me and said That was weird, and went back in the house. I think those may have been the only three words she spoke to me the whole year (the only year) we lived together our adult lives. When I think back I can only think that the tree had called us out of the house to bear witness, or maybe to keep us safe.
When I was at the ashram in the summer I was sitting by Little Bear Creek at dusk. The cicadas hummed in rhythm and the wind rustled the leaves of the trees along its banks. I suddenly had this deep realization that everything in nature is singing. The falling boulders—the roiling water of the rapids, the birds, the whales the frogs, everything participating in a symphony of sound that somehow makes sense to some listener—the Earth? Does she shiver with delight at the song?
