Imagine you are invited…

So, tell me true,
please if you will.

Imagine you are invited
to a personal meeting
with a 200-year-old human
yet full and present and vibrant with life.

Would you not enthusiastically say, “Yes!”
Eagerly and wholeheartedly?
And what kinds of questions
might you wish to ask of such a one?

So tell me true, please
I ask yet again.

What senses might yet be asleep in you
What prejudices might you hold
that you do not accept
this invitation from a tree?

“Quit being a drop. Make yourself an ocean.”
— Rumi

Reflections:

I share this recent poem during a time of great turmoil in the US and indeed around the globe. Issues of social, economic and environmental justice are rising to the forefront as protests in the streets call attention to continuing racial inequality and white privilege… “Black Lives Matter” is a cry rising up even as the COVID-19 virus is leaving a wake of illness, death, grieving and sorrow in our Southwestern Navajo communities and economic disruption across our world…. The forces of division are using fear and religion for personal interest and power in our political arenas as invitations into yet greater social chaos—in the names of God and Country, Law and Order.

Yet against this background is a deeper invitation. It is the invitation to remember who we are in our essence and wholeness. This is the invitation the trees and indeed all of nature extends to us. And oh how sweet it is to say “Yes!” to this primal hunger.

So whether you hug a tree in the wilds today or water a house plant or pet your dog or cat, use the opportunity to consciously invite in the re-membering of your innate wholeness, worthiness and belonging. These are your birthright, the trees proclaim, and the birthright of every human and indeed every species on the planet. The thread of this invitation for such honoring of Life weaves itself throughout all of these seemingly differing conflict and challenges we face. Yet they are woven of a whole, even as are we; or so the trees tell me.