I have been taking coffee, book, journal and myself to the park across the street as often as possible, sitting at the roots of an old maple hoping that I might absorb its steadfast elegance by some miraculous osmosis. (The osmosis hasn't worked. I have, however, gotten a crick in my neck from craning upward to watch the wind play in the leaves, and grass stuck to my sandals and shorts.)
The glory of a tree is its long memory. By that I mean the way it bends and deepens over the years, persevering in its slow growth through all kinds of weather, drought, and trauma. Joy, too, I suppose. I imagine the tree holding within itself memories of the last storm or the last branch lopped off, so that it doesn't lose heart when the wind starts howling but instead keeps pushing inch by inch into the earth.
In my current transience and impatience, I resemble something more like a dandelion than a tree: sprouting up when the sun shines and keeling over when the temperature drops, hasty, green and trigger-happy. Dandelions rarely survive a good frost, much less an entire winter. Compare this with the old maple who has the wisdom of two hundred weathered storms! What can shake her? She is drinking from deep, ancient veins of water far below the frenzied surface. Do not blame me, then, for asking to borrow from this weathered soul. In her is the long-suffering Hope of her Maker.
Blessed is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked [...]
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord
He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither
Psalm 1
