Sometimes, I like to think of myself as a tree. My roots are deep, and they tangle around the mycelium that the fungi spread out beneath the upper world to tie everything together. I love to feel my roots digging around in the earth below. My community is filled with insects, animals, and threads of fungus.
I am at home. I belong. I am rooted in a continually growing place, changing, dying, and returning to life.
I started so small, unlike the tall tree I became, and I grew. I couldn’t imagine what I would become. That didn’t matter. I was the becoming, so there was no future, just the now of day and night, warmth and cold, rain and dry.
I stretched my body up to the sky, and my branches extended out. Birds nested in my limbs, and I watched new life crack out of the eggs. I watched fledglings take flight to find a life far from where they began in my arms.
I stretched even higher, far above the roots who lived a life below so different from the branches above.
We were one thing, but we met the world in such different ways. My roots did not dance with the sky the way my leaves danced. They moved slowly in the dark. My leaves flittered in the wind or stayed still, with little agency of their own, until one day, they let go. The life force had leaked out, they had dried up, and they surrendered to become part of the process of starting over again in the life cycle.
My powerful, straight trunk held it all together. My parts brought earth and sky together into one entity that celebrated the differences each brought to the One. One thing out of many, one nourishment to all, and one gift to all who took the time to see.
I wonder how you ground, connect the earth plane with the spiritual realms, and find community.