Shake-up time: Will this tree die?
Camera in hand, I’ve stepped outdoors primed for delight, hoping for insight: another digitized Blog Fairy seeking truth.
What am I to make of this quaking aspen leaf with its arresting, toxic calligraphy?
Patterns seem embossed: a looping, crusted maze made by invisible hungers. Dotted lines of artful, ongoing destruction.
I want gentle discoveries, compelling connections—not bad news from a tree. I want whimsy laced with meaning.
This leaf will haunt me.
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Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Nature invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.”
Trying to think like a bug, I zoom in, this time using iPhoto. Such tender, juicy terrain! No wonder those dangerous trails follow veins, stitch through living tissue. Mites with big appetites? The Magnum opus of a worm working solo?
Poor aspen. Sustaining similar damage, I’d quake too.
MEMO: Beware invasions in fascinating disguises.
Does infestation metastasize? We’ve lost too many trees this past year. Please God, spare us another demise.
Five times I’ve tried to write about this besieged leaf. It’s bugging me. What am I meant to see?
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here.
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger.
—David Wagoner, “Lost”
Rooted things model hope, embody survival—a comfort when time weighs me down and connections elude me.
“Stand still,” poet Pádraig Ó Tuama echoes. “Learn from the things that are already in the place where you wish you were not. …it can help you be there” (emphasis, mine).
Memory interrupts, replaying a recent encounter: Feeling socially awkward last week, I started a conversation. Before the nice stranger could finish her thoughts, I was already formulating replies. Distracted, restless, my weight shifted from heels to toes, readied my body to edge away.
I’d been more present to that doggone leaf.
Now, the proverbial dots connect. Revelation thunderbolts into my soul. I latched onto a stranger to ease my looping path through a crowded room. Like bugs feeding off a leaf, I used her.
Leave it to Nature to stage a shake-up. To showcase glimpses from God.
My ailing leaf is a mirror.
I’d rather not own its reflection.
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How do you handle a shake-up?
*Read the whole Wagoner poem here
I long for revelation to bolt into my soul and be quiet enough to hear.
It makes such a difference when it does! I wish the excitement occurred more often. Better yet, all the time. I don’t know if chasing this one for so long played any part in finally understanding why the hurt leaf kept haunting me. More likely, insight came in its own good time the way grace does, unearned, a mercy simply given. Like you, I keep trying “to be quiet enough to hear.” A line I like from Annie Dillard goes something like this: “I cannot create the light, but I can place myself in the path of its beam.”
First, the way you write, Laurie, mesmerizes me. Your prose reads like poetry, with word choices offering delightful surprises and vivid images. Second, I love the insights you draw from your experiences. Even an invader-trail on a leaf catches your attention and leads you to a life lesson. Third, you’ve inspired me to be watchful as I interact with others, to be fully present and focused on them. Last, you challenged me to think about shake-ups in my own life. Sometimes I respond with prayer; other times I have to admit to being defensive. So, Lord, use Laurie’s post to remind me shake-ups have a purpose. Your intent is positive, progressive change toward righteousness. That’s what I want too.
Thanks for your kindling words. So encouraging!
I am seconding your prayer, Nancy, wholeheartedly. To live fully awake and engaged, “fully alive” as Ignatius said, reflecting Glory, oh yes! May we find our way forward, hour by hour.
I get defensive, too. Deny or prematurely try to pretty things up. Tie them up with a satin ribbon. This post wouldn’t tie for the longest time. Had you seen how many versions of this I wrote, you’d see how many times I dodged the quiet message of one small leaf. Ultimately, I’m grateful for every small haunting orchestrated by Love and God’s Spirit. I can be kinda cranky in-process.
Crushingly honest sublime articulation of words and images. As usual, I am deeply moved by your colorful writing. Thank you, Laurie!
Pacia, that you make time to read these posts amid your current demands humbles me. That they move you is pure reward. Makes it worth the effort of trying to wrestle words and images into the right places on-screen. Thank you. My hopes for your artistry and my belief in it hold strong, and I look forward to seeing what unfolds through you, as time allows.
I can’t at this moment speak to how to handle a shake up (other than to say I shy away from them and think about it later).
However, I’m always so astonished at the way you find life lessons in the physical world around you. It is a remarkable journey, seeing through your lens.
Thanks for riding cyber-shotgun, Jody. And hurray that no shake-up is currently trying to derail you‚ especially as you’re listening deeply these days, allowing the new book to come through you.
Oh I read that one, as is “Shake-Up 1.” Oh, no! I thought. I don’t even want to read about one shake-up, and there are more to come? So, slowing down (as you often ask us to do), I realize there is one shake-up, and two revelations you derived from it. Better. You had me quaking in my boots, a bit. I don’t like shake-ups, and yet, I know sometimes they are the only things that precede my “wake-ups”! Oh how I love nature and trees and all the lessons God teaches me through them. Scripture says the heavens declare God’s glory, and surely so does every, single thing He created. God has so often taught me through trees, especially winter ones (as later, I learned he had Brother Lawrence). I’ve been a stripped, winter tree more times than I care to count. But there is hope that leaves will return. So I can see why you lament leaves that are diseased. They indicate something deeper and dire. Will the whole tree fall? (And trees are your friends, so surely you don’t want another to die). But this friend of a tree revealed something in your soul that you didn’t want to admit, or to realize. Now that is a real friend who can do that . . . and you are a real friend to accept and learn that lesson. And you are even a greater friend to expose your leaves to your readers, and to encourage us to such painful transparency. My response is to you here is rambling, and thank God your post is not. It is precise, and I’m grateful for the lesson, Laurie. I hate to tell you how many times I have not heeded it.
Love
Lynn
(See Job 14:7)
Oh I am nodding at your insight in describing friendship this way, and what that sometimes entails. Good to be reminded, too, of your post about Brother Lawrence and the tree. I had meant to reread the book, then forgot. Second chance, and I thank you. Also, I am picturing a tree with transparent leaves now, and how photosynthesis would play its role, feeling the tug of imagination . . . Again, you open my eyes, Lynn. 🙂