I’ve been reading poems to the trees for over a week now. Donning my jacket and earmuffs and trolling out into the chilly morning air in my pajamas. Like all rituals, this is one that has nestled itself warmly in my heart and made an impact upon the quality of my presence and mind as I move through my day. Reading to the trees every morning has been easy enough. In the journey where I’d been guided to make such an offering to the trees, my guide said that any heart-centered offering would do, but the assignment- if you want to call it that- was to make daily offerings to the trees. My guide gave me suggestions like reading poems, singing songs, or adorning the trees with prayers and ribbons and strings.
When you learn to listen the right way, you will begin to hear them. The trees. The plants. The grass and the butterflies. They are all singing their own song. And if you open your heart and mind to them, they might even become your friend.
Last night, the trees informed me that tomorrow morning they would like a story. A story from my own imagination. I laughed, doubtful anything interesting would emerge, but I agreed, as you must in cases like these.
So, this morning I went out without a book. My scarf tucked tightly around my neck did little to keep out the bitter wind that had flown in during the night. Reveling in the cold, early morning light, I stood, rather than sat, on the edge of my garden as I often do to read. Two crows perched in a tree across the street, whom I saluted, taking solace in their presence. I cleared my throat and began without any idea what kind of story might unfold from my lips.
Once there was a girl, I said to the Linden tree. Once there was a girl with a deep sadness in her heart. A sadness so vast she could barely breathe some days. She wore a blue dress that stood out against her dark hair. This sadness felt as deep as the sea. It was there, she knew, because she could see and feel the depths of the world. In others, she saw what they stuffed down, she saw their fears, their shame, their despair. She also saw their light and how it was blocked in so many of them. She felt it was her responsibility to remove this shadow from the world and its people and took it upon herself to endeavor to do so. But in taking on such an insurmountable responsibility, she began to forget who she was. Her only purpose was to help others see their truth and their light as she so easily could. The weight of sadness pressed harder on her heart and mind as she felt her efforts to show people who they really were went unnoticed.
One day, while walking in the forest, feeling the well of sadness threatening to drown her and pin her to the bottom of the ocean, a women emerged through a golden streak of late afternoon sunlight. The woman was unnaturally tall, with auburn hair that fell in silky trusses down a robe that could have only been made from twinkling stars. Her pale eyes reflected that same starlight. Soundlessly, though the tails of her cloak traveled across the leaf strewn ground, she made her way to the girl in the blue dress.
“Child,” she said, lifting the little girl’s chin to catch the light of a soon to be setting sun, “your sadness was meant to be a gift.”
“It is a curse,” said the girl.
“Gifts often have two sides,” agreed the woman. “You’ve let this sadness cloud your way. It is a gift that you can feel and see as deeply into the heart of the world as you do, but it is blocking you from seeing into your own heart, which needs attention now.”
Tears streamed down my face as words poured from my mouth to the Linden tree, words that were coming from somewhere beyond me. One crow swooped from its perch into somewhere in the yard I couldn’t see. A moment later, its companion followed. Something was happening in this seemingly mundane morning. A blessing and healing were taking place. One I hadn’t expected. My voice shook as I continued to tell the Linden tree a story that was coming from a sacred place beyond my conscious mind. Perhaps, I thought, from the Linden tree herself.
The woman pulled an ornate silver box from the depths of her robes. “You will place your sadness in here,” she said.
“Where will it go?”
“To the sea.”
The little girl shook her head. “My sadness is too big. I don’t want it to damage the sea. I don’t want to burden anyone with it.”
“The sea cannot be burdened by your sadness. She is the sea, after all, and holds much more than sadness in her depths.”
The little girl stepped back, tears welling in her eyes. “I can’t,” she whispered.
In a silent stride, the women swept the little girl up in her cloak and drew into an embrace that softened the little girl’s mind. “This sadness has become your own shadow now, and that was never the intent. You must relinquish it if you are to see your way forward.”
“I don’t know the way forward,” the girl sobbed, coming undone now that she was in the safe embrace of the woman.
“Yes, that is the problem. You’ve become mired in service and forgotten how to live for yourself. Give your sadness to the sea and the way will clear.”
Trembling the little girl stood up taller and gazed at the woman, whose face glowed like the full moon in summer. “What if I lose who I am?” She whispered the words as though afraid the wrong person might hear.
“That is a fear all humans have when asked to let go of something they have long held. Will I be the same? Of course, you will not be the same. But will you lose who you are? No. The idea here, child- the reason I came to you- is for the hope that you will find yourself.”
The little girl mouthed the words, find myself. She gazed into the ring of trees surrounding them, heavy golden light poured onto their trucks like honey and the girl wondered what it would feel like without the weight of this sadness.
“It won’t be gone,” said the woman. “Merely transformed.”
The girl nodded and the woman lifted the lid of the silver box, which the girl noticed was decorated with roses. “How do I put my sadness in there?” she asked, peering into the box that appeared to be filled with dewy tear drops.
“With your mind, dip down into where you feel the pool of sadness within yourself. Scoop it out with your hands and let it spill into the box.”
It’s that easy? Thought the girl.
“It’s that easy,” said the woman.
The girls’ eyes widened at the response to her non-verbal question. And then inside her mind she could’ve sworn she heard a tinkling laugh and the words: are you really surprised?
The girl answered that she supposed she wasn’t. She closed her eyes to pull the sadness that had so long been resident within her that she wondered with still a thread of doubt and dread, what it would be like to have it gone. As the sadness came out of her, she held it for a moment in her hands before pouring it into the silver box. “It looks like tears,” she remarked, watching a mini ocean settle into the box.
“Tears you needn’t cry, for they are not yours. They never were, my love.”
“Can I go with you?” asked the girl to the woman.
“You have work to do here,” she replied, closing the box and tucking it back into the silver folds her robes.
“I know. I meant, can I go with you to put my sadness in the sea?”
“Oh. Why, yes. Yes, you may. Let us go now. Here, take my hand. Don’t mind the mist. We will be through it quickly enough. Close your eyes if you must.”
The girl did as she was told, choosing to close her eyes straight away. She felt nothing to suggest she was moving across a broad expanse of space, but when she opened her eyes, she was standing upon a craggy rock shore she had never seen before. Vast hills and grass lands surrounded her, and she had the strangest feeling like she was home. Something about the hum of the wind on the water stirred feelings of familiarity in her, though she could conjure no memories of this landscape.
Water lapped at the pebble shore and the woman helped the girl down from the higher rock to the water’s edge. “Would you like to do it?” she asked, passing the silver box engraved with roses to the girl.
The girl took the box and opened it, having the sense, once again, that it was tears- her tears- that filled the box.
“Are you ready?”
The girl nodded. With a gentleness that edged on reverence, she poured the contents of the box into the sea. It made barely a splash before uniting with the wide, vast water. As though it was never there, she thought. Who will I be without it?
“Who you were born to be,” said the woman. She wrapped her long-fingered hands around the girl’s shoulders. “Who you are becoming.”
They stood side by side in silence, taking in the great breath of the sea. The wind coaxed the surface to dance in little white-capped waves and the girl sent a prayer to her sadness that was now part of something so huge her mind could barely comprehend. A deeper knowing told her she could trust all that the woman had told her. She still didn’t know who she would be without her sadness, but for the first time in a long time, she was eager to find out, eager to live life for herself. What that meant, she didn’t quite know yet. I am open, she whispered to the sea. I am open to possibility.