The Woman and The Tree

This March, on a dreary cold day, I attended a class in Celtic Shamanism, given by Andrew Steed - www.andrewsteed.com - a gentleman I love and admire. I've practiced the Craft for many years, so Andrew's class was basic to me - but it's always good to be around like minded folk.

Part of Andrew's class was out in a nearby park. As soon as I walked into the park, I gravitated towards a tree. I love trees (as you can tell from my "grounding" post). I didn't know that finding a special tree was part of Andrew's plan.

I loved this tree because her trunk was wide and her roots were thick. Her branches were gnarled and bent. She gave the impression of surviving years of storms. I stood by her as Andrew told us we were to pick out a tree that "spoke" to us and try to determine what the tree was trying to say.

I leaned against her firm trunk and ran my hands over her bark, looping and ridged. Suddenly I remembered staring at my legs as I dried them after my shower that morning. I was bending over to pat the towel over my calves and I noticed how the skin on my legs wrinkled. Yet another sign of getting older, I sighed to myself and then immediately forgot it - that is until I saw this tree's beautiful trunk.

With tears in my eyes, I looked up into her branches and noticed that names had been carved - some singly in expressions of egotism - some thing in expressions of love. I traced her scares with my finger tips and asked forgiveness of those who could have hurt so by taking a knife to her skin.

And then I thought of those who had carved their names in me - in my heart and would I have wanted them not to have been in my life. No - each name carved in the bark of this crone, whether carved in egotism or in love - each one helped to make me the person I am today.

That was the lesson the woman took from the tree.

The storms, the people, the experiences, the weathering - make the wrinkles, make the names carved on my heart - make it all precious and very, very, very important.