For some 50 years I lived in an attic flat in Belsize Park Gardens, high above the tree tops. It had a balcony and often in the summer I would sleep out. At night I would lie gazing up at the brilliance of stars, the moving pageant of clouds and the changing shapes of the moon. Sometimes very early in the morning I would be woken to hear and see a flight of birds crossing the sky like some calligraphy. .
In the West our relationship with Nature barely exists ,which is why the National Trust has launched a major scheme to encourage people to explore the countryside. How few children today get to climb trees, kick up autumn leaves , or watch hares boxing. And while lockdown has encouraged more people to take long walks, how many actually stop to sit on a bench for say fifteen minutes, keeping very still, being aware of the life around them.
Trees alone have so much to teach us as our forefathers and mothers knew in these maxims :
What is well rooted survives.
As the twig bends so the tree will grow.
Severed branches grow again. (to all who have been wounded, emotionally or physical, such words bring reassurance.)
Every tree is known by its fruit.
A rotten tree bears rotten fruitful.
Trees are full of secrets.
It is as St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote, ‘ What I know of the divine sciences and holy writ I learnt in the woods and fields. I have had no other masters than the beeches and the oaks. You will learn more in the woods than in books. Trees, stones will teach you more than you can acquire from the mouth of a teacher.’
In Frances Hodgson Burnet’s The Secret Garden little Mary, the orphan, asks her guardian if she may have a piece of earth. ‘A piece of earth?’ kh repeats. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘to plant things in, to make things grow.’ He replies ‘Child, when you see a piece of earth, take it and make it come alive!’
Which is exactly what Mary, aided by Dickon and Colin, does when they discover the secret garden. They weed it, they plant it -and then what do they do? They sit cross-legged and meditate!
And this reminds me of some words of Rumi ‘When we nurture the seeds of meditation in our inner garden we begin to come alive at a deeper level than that of mere happiness. Happiness is elusive, it comes and goes. What grows and becomes evergreen in our innermost garden is contentment.’
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Thank you, James. Canadian painter Emily Carr would go out to the woods each summer to paint, thinning her paint with gasoline as she had little money. She tells that she would sit in a place for a long time, most of the day even, and wait, wait for the trees to speak to her, tell her what to paint.
To say trees teach is to accept that they speak to us, have something to say, if we would only listen, if we would only see them as wiser than ourselves, go there as you say, to the deep place within where we find ourself in connection to all things, only there to give ourself to the tree, let it speak, tell us the way of the world, what we cannot know for ourselves.
Thankyou James for this beautiful message. As usual it is wise and loving and I have been sitting in my daughter’s garden in Devon while thinking about you. Diana
Thank you James. Your video was a blessing.