Advice From Nature

Instead of going to the foot­ball game last night, I stretched out on the swing under the big tree by the social hall. It was a full moon night with a clear sky. I looked up through that mighty tree, and this is the advice it gave me:

Grow where you are planted. Prov­i­dence put you here. Home is where you are as long as you are in this state of exis­tence. All places have their pur­pose. Do not envy other places or times. Right here and right now is what counts the most.

Reach toward the sky as long as you live. A life lived in aspi­ra­tion is glo­ri­ous. The sight above is the best. You do not have to be the tallest tree to have a mag­nif­i­cent view — just look up.

Some years are bet­ter than oth­ers. On the dry years you will have to sac­ri­fice lots of leaves and a few limbs in order to sur­vive. That is just life. Losses are part of every­day exis­tence for every­thing that lives.

Bend with the wind. Bend­ing beats break­ing any day. You can­not dodge light­ning. Solomon said that, “time and chance hap­pen to all.” What hap­pens to you may seem unfair, but life was never designed to be fair. It was designed to be life with the luck-of-the-draw. That keeps it cre­atively interesting. There are no ade­quate expla­na­tions for most of what hap­pens to you.

Do not for­get your roots. They are what hold you in a storm.

Your next form will be supe­rior to this one. Grow as straight as you can. You may some­day be a beam in a cathe­dral or the lowly urn that holds the ashes of another creature’s pre­vi­ous life. What­ever is ahead has its place. Do not hold onto your present form. Whether you have been the Tree of the Knowl­edge of Good and Evil or the tree that made the cross, you still have a des­tiny ahead to be the Apoc­a­lyp­tic Tree that Brings Heal­ing to the Nations.

What you leave behind is for nur­tur­ing the next gen­er­a­tion. Be generous.

And thus said the big tree out­side of the social hall on a Fri­day night.