The Forest and the Trees

Autumn has arrived for a brief and glorious show.  The oaks and maples and elms are pulling off a costume change late in the performance, magnificent and raucous as they go about the thirsty work of change.  This is a season of call and response: half of the earth has tilted, chilled, and darkened; the trees have answered audaciously by bursting into flames and then quietly disrobing. They have allowed themselves to be unmasked, revealing all that remains when the green is gone, the growing season complete.  Amber and cinnamon, honey and flame are both price and prize for a graceful bow to change, for the deep and humble knowledge of how and when to let go. 

This season is fleeting; the trees will know when it is time to release, even if I may not.  I would prefer to cling to long days of sunshine rather than surrender to the unknown darkness of long winter nights.  The leafy canopy shelters in all seasons but the one to come; exposed and gnarled branches fail to protect us from harsh, unfiltered light.  There is a longing to shelter in place, but the business of daily living requires emergence from cozy lodgings and exposure to the elements.

It is easy to cling to comfort, to avoid a frigid sting of wind even when we most need to be shaken out of slumber. Instead we guard the embers of our fear behind locked doors and in protected company.  The embers that glow in darkness, that exist in whispered conversations or deeply entrenched beliefs, are stoked into flame by crass political rhetoric and given oxygen in sensationalized news.  We resist release and transformation, even in the midst of a season gently showing us that letting go is precisely what we must do. 

It is tempting, too, to be so blinded by the intense heat and light of our certainty that “the other” resides in shadow.  Perhaps the maple must die back to branches and let go of so much dead weight; but I am an evergreen, constant and growing, secure in my own constancy.  But the evergreen’s changes, though perhaps less dramatic, are no less profound.  Needles are shed and seed-laden cones must fall to the ground; branches that have become too heavy must be pruned, or break. 

No matter our place in cycles and seasons, we need both anchoring roots and a brilliant, growing edge. Without a deep sense of place and purpose, we may topple with the slightest change of wind.  But lacking branches that stretch toward the light or leaves that nourish in their season, the strongest of roots will simply rot beneath the surface.  Communities of comfort may in fact close us in; enclaves and echochambers suffocate us in exclusion. 

Roots allow for strength and growth that in time provide a glimpse of the whole forest from the highest branches. Each tree is mighty and brilliant; and the forest is vast and arrayed in vibrant colors.  Perhaps if we believed in the life of the forest, and not just the protection of our own bark and branches, we might understand how profoundly we need one another. Bearing witness, we may finally see how extraordinary we all are in the light.  Maybe we have missed voices in the rustling wind that exuberantly proclaim, “In all people I see myself…”  If we truly believed in our beauty, would we “let our own light shine, [giving] other people permission to do the same”? Perhaps it has been simply been more convenient to ignore the most profound words of ancient wisdom: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 

Seasons change, and sometimes we must allow for our own conversion, as well.  Entrenched belief and self-serving bias, like autumn leaves, may be transformed into something nourishing in seasons to come if we understand how to let them go.  Each individual has the capacity to grow into magnificence, but only if we have the clarity and wisdom to sustain one another in community. 

We are, after all, both the forest and the trees.