service sounding the first note of our Winter
discovering our true home from which to serve from
I have used the mythology that tells of how a Pine cannot be planted but must always find its own home. Therefore it is said to inspire our sense of belonging, our feelings of being at home.
Bards have shared stories of creating personal sanctuaries where every part and particle of our mind, body and spirit can seem to be at its most complete and where our vision and performance is at its best.
to read my Ailim the Pine story poem, please click here to indulge ...
my Ailim the Pine story poem explained ...
When we first find ourselves in this season of life we can possibly find ourselves feeling alone again, but also so much seems very present around us. I start of expressing this through how a pine tree comes to be present. Pines generally, do not respond very well to human planting. A lot of pine plants planted by human hand do not survive, but those seeded by the elements and transporting by nature seem to sow well and grow strong.
Likewise, we grow strong by our own choices and not those of others.
It is through our own planting and growing that we build our own sense of belonging, and our own sense of where we feel at home through our own choices, not through anyone elses.
I regret writing the line that starts with "End of a journey ..."
as I do not recognize that anything comes to an end.
What this is expressing is a time of pause, such as the pause between the changing between the ebb and flow of tides.
At these times of pause we become our most reflective, and at this point of our lives it seems to be common to be concerned for our maturing and our ageing. One of these thoughts may be that all good times, from the vitality of being young, have gone.
So looking at the pine, the story reveals the present and its constant inspirations. Everything and every activity is a stream of wonder as colourful and as calling as it ever was when we were children.
At this time of transition into divine service many people seek for a path through a church or divine order. As this is a suite that invited people close to the trees I remind how trees were the first churches, the first alters for humans.
It is from these trees we built churches and scribed our stories of belief and grief onto paper made from these trees, and that is what I am doing with Ogma's Tale of The Trees too, but ....
This story then turns into the distraction of the wind blowing around the pines, followed by silence.
Each distraction towards the pine seems to tune all of our senses towards it, our sight, hearing, touching, smelling, and maybe even tasting.
I then move into some words from John Muir, that I altered a little, that also compares our choices of cutting down trees to make churches or to be within the trees standing alive. This reflects John Muir's life, first of a Calvanist family with a lifestyle that caused him to go blind while working within a wood sawmills through to the regaining of his sight within a forest.
In a way, this story poem is calling upon people to consider the ways of John Muir as a choice of faith. Without John Muir there may never have been forest parks, open access woodlands, the Sierra Clubm Friends Of The Earth, Greenpeace etc.
That is why I ask what this Ogma's Tale of The Trees could be for us. So I finish with a surreal imagery of opening the door, between two pines, to enter into the quarter of Divine Service "on the day we discover that trees have tongues".
We open the doors to leave the place where we have been told to be and find our own true home to serve from.
I believe we are indeed like the Pine, at this stage of our life, where we cannot be planted by human hand, but be taken to where nature take us to feel "at home".
You will notice "home" is a common theme through this suite.
to read about to grow and care for your own Pine trees, please click here
