by the light in the trees-- part iii
Post on 09-Mar-2016
213 Views
Preview:
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
BY THE
LIGHT IN
THE TREESpart III
Haiku: In space between time You can find your faith by light in the trees
!"#$%&%'(%'()$*%+"#%,-##.
!
"#$%!&!'(!'()%*!+#$!+,$$-.
$-/$01'223!+#$!4122)4-!'%5!+#$!#)%$3!2)06-+.
$76'223!+#$!8$$0#.!+#$!)'9-!'%5!+#$!/1%$-.
+#$3!*1:$!);;!-60#!#1%+-!);!*2'5%$--.
&!4)625!'2()-+!-'3!+#'+!+#$3!-':$!($.!'%5!5'123<
!
&!'(!-)!51-+'%+!;,)(!+#$!#)/$!);!(3-$2;.
1%!4#10#!&!#':$!*))5%$--.!'%5!51-0$,%($%+.
'%5!%$:$,!#6,,3!+#,)6*#!+#$!4),25
86+!4'29!-2)423.!'%5!8)4!);+$%<
!
=,)6%5!($!+#$!+,$$-!-+1,!1%!+#$1,!2$':$-
'%5!0'22!)6+.!>?+'3!'4#12$<>
@#$!21*#+!A2)4-!;,)(!+#$1,!8,'%0#$-<
!
=%5!+#$3!0'22!'*'1%.!>&+B-!-1(/2$.>!+#$3!-'3.
>'%5!3)6!+))!#':$!0)($
1%+)!+#$!4),25!+)!5)!+#1-.!+)!*)!$'-3.!+)!8$!A122$5
41+#!21*#+.!'%5!+)!-#1%$<>
!
C!D',3!E21:$,!C
By the light in the trees
Our church is built with stain glass branches, wild flower pews, beehive pulpits
and hymns that blow like music through the cold colored leaves in fall
By the light in the trees
The word G – O - D is spelled with letters that have not been written, described
by a faith that has not been spoken, and interpreted by a light that shines
through the birch and redwoods and oaks and madrones and pines and firs and
olive
By the light in the trees
We show our children a universe that is unfathomable and beautiful and alive
and moving-- which holds us in its immense web that connects us to a family of
all things
By the light in the trees
We tell them stories and play games in glowing shafts of radiance
By the light in the trees
We build cold memorials in ancient olive orchards, celebrations of life in old
theatres named after a bird on fire, beach glass alters in old mossy oaks,
driftwood shelters with holy bonfires on beaches, burning temples in the black
desert nights,
By the light in the trees
We sit quietly for hours with our small children and
look for blue glass on sunny seashore sands and make
up exotic stories how a magic tide brought them from
far away places
By the light in the trees
We show our children how to find fairy circles
around small mushroom towns, and how to find wild
orchards and make daisy chains to hang like garlands
over the secret door and place that blue glass as a
sacred offering for the fairy princess who lives behind
the curtain of light
By the light in the trees
We photograph our inspirations, water colors our
dreams, illustrate our hopes, sketch our self portraits
By the light in the trees
We sit quietly and tell someone how much
we love them
By the light in the trees
We walk sadly and tell someone how much
we miss them
By the light in the trees
We help someone, forgive someone, reach out to
someone, be true for someone who we have never
met and will never see again
By the light in the trees
A father stands proudly for his family and holds forth
to say life sometimes does not easily move on and yet
is filled with mystery we don’t understand and dear
one, have faith that the earth is still a safe place and
my arms are always there to catch you
By the light in the trees
A mother holds dearly a child to her chest and wraps
her arms around it with layers of colorful scarves and
knitted shawls and ancient love and holds forth to say
that even in this cold air your life will be warm and
bountiful and I will hold you and nurture you and
your children and your children’s children
By the light in the trees
The reflection of light is revealed by teaching our
youth how to build beautiful and sacred things
By the light in the trees
A community of beautiful people with tattoos and
piercings and bikes with no brakes and strumming
guitars and songs they write and skateboards they
ride and cans of paint and journals of notes and
sketches of ideas and torn jeans and smiles and hearts
who do not believe in a system that has a picture of
Sara Palin posing for a nation that confuses religion
and state with dogma and politics—but still feels the
glimmer of faith and connection to that mysterious
light shining into their live to be quietly, privately
dreamed about in the poetry they live
By the light in the trees
We can see divine intervention while we harvest honey
By the light in the trees
Our children will take their children to the church they build and listen to their
prayers at bedtime with stories of moonlight in the window
By the light in the trees
We feel the guiding spirit of a daughter
who is no longer on the temporal plane,
Shine down on a moonbeam,
Sets us down to rest
And quiets our mind
With a whisper of one small sacred truth
In the space between time
The mystery of light through the branches is real
If this is a meditation… the phrases, How well do
you remember? and Waters Rising produce an ache in
my chest with their huge loss and sorrow attached.
When I arrive at the phrase Light in the Trees, my
breath relaxes, my heart pauses, the knot in my
stomach unwinds and for a moment I feel a glimmer
of hope. As a meditation, I didn’t know why. It just
happened like that. I find solace in that. Writing these
entries is a journey for sure. There are no clichés in
grief this deep, but cliché as it sounds this is a journey
of discovery. Before I can write any of this I have to
discover what it means. It is not only discovering the
meaning of By the Light in the trees, or Surrender with a
Sigh, but discovering how to access a path to a deeper
understanding of those things. Phoebe could have
randomly chosen these titles for her art work, I could
have randomly had them inked into my arm-- there
are always easy logical explanations for why things
might be…. A journey is about seeing things for the
first time. I am learning the difference of the writer
who writes what he sees and the writer who writes
what he knows.
When I think of light in the trees my mind
immediately pictures the olive orchard where we held
our memorial for Phoebe. For me the olive orchard is
the perfect photograph of light in the trees. The
process of building a church; of expressing our faith
and reverence; of showing a devotion to a universe
that is huge with mystery: How phoebe’s girls club
stayed up late into the night stringing photographs,
tying garlands, even in the sadness laughing and
joyfully cutting and collecting; how family and friends
arrived in the warm morning and built alters, fire pits,
pews, tables for food and drink, how the boys played
guitar and jammed on the benches. I remember the
day of the ceremony. It had been warm for a month.
David Best had told us the orchard is always warm
this time of year, but that afternoon a cold and a wind
had settled on the hill like something brought from a
far away land-- The same wind that blew out across
the Marin headlands a week earlier. My grief and
exhaustion not of a world that was meant to be
inhabited by us mortals. I walked through the
driftwood arch, under the olive canopy with the light
casting through the branches and witness this church
It is a father’s duty to stand in front of his
family and closest friends and to speak of what has
happened. My closest friend Steve who stood beside
me had given me a metal cup to strike. Pause. Strike.
Sound ringing out into the orchard-- I see my family,
Phoebe’s family, Phoebe’s closest friends and allies
waiting, huddling together with blankets, rugs,
sleeping bags, anything to keep our bones from
rattling in a cold that is hard to describe. The sound
descended and with a whisper vanished. I saw the
light in the trees. Perhaps in that moment I
understood it perfectly, perhaps I put on an awkward
pair of my dad’s shiny minister shoes, but the first
words I spoke were: “God is in these trees!” In the
vacuum of that moment I felt my voice leave my
mouth and fall at my feet-- Eyes staring at me,
waiting, wanting, to cold to move. A voice leaned
over and whispered if you want to heal in this
moment you have to have your words become real.
Tell a story. Speak from your heart.
A funny thing happened, for all the notes I had
scribbled, for all the passages I tried to remember, the
poetry I had collected, the stories I jotted down—this
little Phoebe story I had forgotten until that moment
emerged:
It was a rainy dark morning traveling along
highway 580 to visit my parents. We left before sunrise
and there were howling winds and torrents of rain. The
road suddenly became flooded. I loose control of the van
and we go spinning down the highway, around and around
and around, I see my world flash before my eyes, my babies
asleep in the back, until finally careening into the overpass
wall and stopping sideways in the middle of the freeway,
our lights shining into a dark void with blind cars and their
glaring lights coming down upon us in the dark rain.
We’re invisible. Cars swerving. Our crumpled van
dodging. We manage to limp off the freeway. Disoriented,
scared and confused I access the damage in the gas station
fluorescent light. I ask my four year old daughter. What do
we do? Should we go on? Phoebe looks me straight in the
eye. “You should go on Dad. We need to go on.” And in
the first morning light we drove south.
I saw people shift in their chairs, I saw a
moment of relief, the cold lifted a few degrees and
words started flowing, I remember talking to
phoebe’s friends who were sitting on a blanket in the
front, I remember people smiling at me, nodding
their heads to say-- it’s okay we’re listening, we’re
hearing you. I remember the light in the trees that
contained this moment. I don’t remember what else I
said but I clearly remember the difference between
those words falling from my mouth and words
flowing from my heart.
It was an insincere voice that uttered the three
letter word and it made the cold even worse. I
understood that something was in those trees, but I
do not have a word to describe it. The way I have
raised my family, the way I raised my daughters and
sons is to see that word hidden in the beauty in the
light of the trees. Phoebe is a gift that now shines
that light so much brighter. As a family our faith is to
walk in the mystery by the light of the trees; look for
blue glass in sea shore.
We build that church in the olive orchard by
the light of the trees. We build that church under the
graffiti of the Phoenix Theatre. At the Phoenix I’m on
stage singing Forever Young and there must be 800
people listening to these words. I see all these
wonderful, loving, giving, caring, compassionate
people cryining and singing with me. I see all my
friends, all phoebe’s friends, my family and their
families and out of this amazing community I can
only see a small handful that actually go to church,
actually have a faith that allows them to sit in a pew
on a Sunday and have that moment with their God.
The rest of us-- where do we go when we need deep
faith and solace? Loosing a daughter, a sister, a close
friend, an inspiration-- where do we go? You show
up, you bring food, your guitar, your poetry, your
hug, your tears, your smile, your love, your eyes,
your help, your offering, your ability to build and to
see and to create. You honor a spirit and you touch a
mystery. We meditate, We sit, We walk, We play
music, We write, We build alters....
I just wrote that paragraph and while getting
ready to decorate the Christmas tree. (More light in
the trees). Jordan found this book I made with
Phoebe when she was seven. It’s about discovering
the mystery in the forest on some hikes we used to
take. (Thank you for the reminder Phoebe). I think
I'll post it at the end of this.
We just came back from our Christmas in Elk.
Drew and Jack, Henry, Jordan and Max and Pam and
me. A rainy afternoon spent at glass beach collecting
artifacts. The kids now twenty, eighteen and
seventeen still call me from long distances exclaiming:
Dad/Dave, blue glass!!! Still the little kids remembering
the stories we told about it. I can’t tell you how that
makes me feel. “We can put it on the alter for Phoebe.”
Collecting gifts from tide pools.
The other night we’re sitting around the
Christmas tree, I don’t remember what we are
talking about, but Max declares I don’t believe in God.
I get a jolt and feel a moment of yes you do take that
back…. But say calmly as not to sound parental and
get the kids defensive. “You do or you don’t, but you
certainly believe in the mystery you feel when you
take your long hikes in the hills, play music with your
bandmates, you believe in a mystery that you share
at sunset on the hill with your friends all standing
quiet looking out towards the ocean…. Maybe you
should say something like I don’t believe in the word
God for me it’s a bigger mystery that can’t be
explained by one word.” Surprisingly he doesn’t
argue and just nods his head and says yeah maybe.
When I was young my father was a Methodist
minister who built a church and grew a congregation
from a small handful to two thousand. I was a young
boy in this world—being told to say quiet as dad
wrote his sermons, dragged to Sunday boring school,
fidgeting for hours in boring church, potluck boring
dinners, old ladies with blue boring hair and men with
shiny boring shoes, but all this dreary church life
dissolved in an instant when I discovered the secret
entrance to the off limits construction zone of the new
church he was building. I found a labyrinth of secret
passages, I watched dirt get excavated and change to
steel and wood, steel and wood change to slabs of
concrete, slabs of concrete grow to gargantuan
proportions. I would sneak off, hide from the Sunday
throng and go through the locked door, past the off
limits signs and then I played in the mud, I played in
the dark, I played in the lost areas of the building and
created elaborate stories and games, showed my
friends the markings left by ancient civilizations and
the patterns laid down by futuristic beings in the
forbidden passages of the Garden Grove catacombs
For me the best memory of church was the
building of a church. The memory of the day I
walked in after seeing the stain glass installed marks
by first breath taking moment of witnessing how
artifact is so much larger than life. The sound of an
organ the size of a wall the first memory of music the
filled your body more than your ears. I easily
remember dad writing sermons around Beatles songs,
borrowing my Sgt Peppers album to do a sermon
around-- Day in the Life. I remember that people
laughed in his sermons. I remember standing in line
while people filed past us and my mom whispering
the names of people dad couldn’t remember. I
remember my dad sitting on the pot, bellowing out
his sermon from typed pages laid out on the
bathroom floor. I remember the church but not the
religion.
Suddenly I see this all about building churches
for our family and community. Not big ornate
structures with a steeple and open the doors and see
all the people, but of things of sticks and stones and
blue glass and abalone shells and flowers and
garlands, and trees and mountain tops and cliffs
overlooking the sea and beaches and fires and secrete
alters in nooks and crannies.
So for me it’s the building part not the church
part: My dad’s concrete church and also the adobe
chapel in Mexico still a huge memory as a kid hiding
in the goat caves and stacking adobe blocks and
lighting a candle at night. Getting married in the
merry go round with Drew and then on the beach
with Pam with me and the boys collecting driftwood
in the morning and making a circle and the Jordan
and Phoebe coming down later with flowers to make
a path and hang them from a gate we made
The Yurt on the hill and the hut on the plateau,
Spirit Rock, All our driftwood houses, Rock labyrinths
on hill tops, hand made dams and stacked rocks in
rivers, amazing camp sites at 10,000 feet, playing
music in front of a fire, Jack building at burning man,
drew making a gallery for a community or artists,
Pam creating books of family heritage…. This list is
endless. Even 4 friends going to Spider Murphy’s and
getting a tattoo of Phoebe’s artwork is building a
church.
If I mention to the kids right now asleep in
their beds-- lets go to the beach and build a house out
of driftwood and make a fire they will drop
everything to go. And when we do we always see
amazing things along the way. There are always
stories to tell, photos to take, memories to hold.
There is always-- the light in the trees.
top related