Dying Wiser #9–Eldering Trees
Wisdom through Poetry; Eldering through Dad: “Maybe Dad’s ARE like trees”
It’s fun to skim through books and poetry and literature to see what will fit every week. The timing has to be just right for certain selections, passages, and poems—but as you may be experiencing, we’re being guided not by luck, but by synchronicity. Things just have to line up to make sense—and the Universe seems to be making that so.
With trees again.
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Learning from Trees ~ Grace Butcher If we could, like the trees, practice dying, do it every year just as something we do— like going on vacation or celebrating birthdays— it would become as easy a part of us as our hair or clothing. Someone would show us how to lie down and fade away as if in deepest meditation, and we would learn about the fine dark emptiness, both knowing it and not knowing it, and coming back would be irrelevant. Whatever it is the trees know when they stand undone, surprisingly intricate, we need to know also so we can allow that last thing to happen to us as if it were only any ordinary thing, leaves and lives falling away, the spirit, complex, waiting in the fine darkness to learn which way it will go.
I didn’t look long before I found this poem by Grace Butcher in my copy of “Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems” (Cole-Dye & Wilson, eds. Grayson Press, 2017). When you consider what we surfaced on Friday of last week, the synchronicity will be obvious—I didn’t find this poem until this morning; but I think it makes an appropriate coda to last week’s post. There may be more on trees in the future too—of all the beings on our planet, trees may be among the most wise. But you have to look, sit under them or next to them, come to know them well…and then listen.
Just think of what they’ve seen as they’ve grown in place over their years. There is exciting scientific research happening of late that is uncovering more detail about trees, especially in forests, especially in Old Growth forests, and the role they play in the health of the forest ecosystem including how they communicate with each other and with other organisms in their ecological community. There is so much more to be learned from trees.
“Dad’s are like trees…except when they’re not.”
After reading “Learning from Trees,” I’m thinking my Dad is more like a tree than I thought.
Without being flamboyant about it or explicit in his example and teaching, rather, exactly like a tree, Dad’s Eldering is meant to be observed in his presence, or read via a competent interpreter, in exactly a manner any ol’ tree would expect. Trees in autumn, if they could talk and teach their practice, might say to us then:
“Glad you are here. You have to be here, next to me, to get this. Now, just sit down and be quiet and watch. Let everything else go—nothing else could be more important. I’ll do this slow for you so that the lessons sink in. Wait here and be with me too until the cold and darkness of winter—in order to really understand. Then, you’ll be glad you were here too. Eventually, and trust me, you will be glad. Your own winter is on its way.”
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In his own way, and without such words, Dad is saying the same thing to me each and every day. Reading that again with Dad as narrator sends shivers of recognition down my spine. He’s saying it to you too if you continue to be engaged with us on this journey.
Dad and trees, or course, also differ in their Eldering example—which, as we’re learning, is still powerful teaching. With trees, this practice of yearly autumn is about being subtle, and graceful, and steadfast, and still. Through their stillness, trees are showing us that things—things that are inevitable—have a way of happening regardless of how we feel about them. I cannot help but think trees have “a knowing”—in that they allow and accept their yearly inevitable “autumn-ness” as simply an ordinary part of who they are and what they must do.
And they do it with such dignity.
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“Dads are like trees except when they’re not.”
Still, I wish I could say Dad was more like a tree, more of the time—so know that each day here we try to practice subtlety, gracefulness, steadfastness, and stillness since these are not as innate in Dad as they are in trees. In other words, we practice autumn. At least I do. I’m learning the importance of it from Dad.
This is where and how Dad needs help. “If we could, like the trees, practice….”
Dad should have sat under more trees in his younger days.
How does one practice dying, like the trees practice dying every fall and winter? There are actually many ways—our trouble is, we typically don’t bother. Like my Dad didn’t bother. Had he bothered, to practice dying, to sit under more trees and to learn from them and even the hops in his world, I would think and trust we’d find ourselves in a different world now. That’s the advice coming from trees anyway. But that doesn’t matter, does it? We are in the world we are in, and it is still perfect. Just like every single tree that is currently experiencing its own autumn. So, what then?
How does one practice dying?
(Because we should)
One way: we learn from Elders. This, in a practical way, is the whole reason for this blog. Speaking personally, as I’ve been writing, I’ve been learning more than I ever thought possible about so many things: sickness, health, ability, disability, patience, impatience, service, compassion, living…and dying. And love. All from Dad. And as I comb my reading for nuggets of wisdom to reflect upon and write about, even if it isn’t for this blog, even if it is just in my own personal journaling, I’m learning even more from other wise Elders in the world.
And then, of course, I go outside, sit next to an Elder friend insuring physical contact in some way, close my eyes, and listen. Or look up…but still I listen.
There are other practices as well—to help us come to know and not know that “fine dark emptiness” that will come to each of us. I’ll share another practice on life and death that has come to mean a lot to me over the years soon. And, again, we should—we should practice this. Dad didn’t have a practice like this and it’s been consequential. This is an explicit Eldering lesson from Dad to all of us.
And we should learn from trees. Trees don’t look in agony, autumn after autumn, as they shed their leaves, succumb to senescence, and slumber through the winter. We should follow their example because then we might be more equipped to “allow that last thing to happen to us as if it were only any ordinary thing.” But to truly mine the wisdom they offer, we’d ideally have an on-going relationship with trees—or with at least one in our lives. That way, with that intimate contact and communion, we’d come to know closely, and personally, how that particular tree spirit practices its own dying year, after year, after year. Until it’s no longer practicing anymore.
Until it does a truly ordinary thing.
“The meaning of life is that it ends.” ~ Franz Kafka
“Whatever it is the trees know…we need to know also.”
Whatever it is Dad is discovering, I need to learn. Because I want to die differently. I want to be in a place, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, where I can realize what is for me perhaps the most striking line in Butcher’s entire poem—I want to practice, and practice, and learn, now, while it’s not too late, how “coming back would be irrelevant.”
Wow!
But I have to practice.
T plus 113 days…and counting. You really are missing out if you haven’t sat next to a tree, for extended periods of time, over multiple occasions and in silence, to grasp the wisdom inherent within them. It’s there.
Come to know a tree, and you’ll come to know Soul.
