Let It Be (place entry 7)

This morning, even before 9AM, I sit beneath my tulip poplar and watch the sunlight flicker through the branches. It flirts here and there with the breeze. Even the lowest weeds seem to garner its lovely face as it lights the forest so that the woods become a cathedral. I hear birds trilling, and I see dandelions beginning to pop up. The trees are no longer flowering, though. They have blossomed to leaves, still curled in their infancy, or fruits blushing and twirling away at the attention of the coy sunshine. I sit here still.

            

 What to make of this? What deep meaning can I find in all of this while the forest resurrects whether I am here to see it or not? I try very hard to come up with something to write, something important to say. But I come up empty and end up just looking instead. I am silent in the wake of the wind that has been so insistent these last few days. So, nearby I notice new weeds. They are flowering with blooms so feathery that when I reach out my fingers, I almost don’t feel anything. They are little pink clouds, a substance I can see but barely touch, and I believe they exist. 

 Then, I wander, finding a path that is unobstructed, finding it like second nature the way I knew these woods when I was a child. I don’t fight thorns this time. I just take what the woods will hand to me and meander along, snapping photos as I go. I don’t fight anything anymore. Not dark thoughts, not the idea of my father lying here or here or here. Instead, I begin to wonder what he would have seen. I notice the wood nailed to a tree to form a ladder where our tree house used to perch. I stand beneath tangled bushes turning emerald and look up at the sky beyond. I notice little rosy leaves poking through the forest floor. I peak at the meadow I can no longer reach and breathe, knowing that it does not need me. 

             

And just like that, I know, too, that Dad probably didn’t look for meaning here. He probably didn’t examine a plant and philosophize or create metaphors. He didn’t look for any of these things because meaning came to him unbidden. “This is amazing,” I imagine him thinking. “For all of this life to rise from a tiny seed. Doesn’t it prove the presence of God? Doesn’t it show His wonder?” Then, he would have left it alone because nature, like God, does not need us to become important or meaningful or deep. Perhaps, in the midst of his doubt and hurt, he stepped into nature and knew exactly what he needed to know: God is. Maybe, here, he was simply able to let it be. 

I will too.