9/23/22 What do you have to tell me, fiery, red, fallen, maple leaf? What is your message? I’d like to hear it, big or small. I’m listening.
You’re onto something and you already have an inkling of what it is I’m here to offer, when you mention big or small. Here I lay on the forest floor, having been let go and having let go myself of the one world, the sole home and entire universe I’ve ever known.
It was not forced, there was no push or agony or dramatic frenzy full of emotional pain and chaos I’ve seen many grieving humans undergo. It simply was time. I’d been growing, photosynthesizing, receiving nutrients and minerals and multiplying my cells for quite some time. Many weeks, many more days than that, and many more moments than that, I have hung on. And this tree I grew from held me.
An inner sense bubbled up within me that change was arriving, and without fuss and without fight, I directed my attention towards embracing this change, as change embraced me.
This thin small stem of my leaf body, the part that like an umbilical cord of one of your kind in its fetal form is fed and nurtured by ~ it began to lose its importance as I looked beyond the world I’d always known. My attention expanded and my awareness grew . . . and grew. It took imagination and curiosity to consider the possibility of something larger than my beloved tree that had sustained me for so long. My entire life had been devoted to serving and being served as one of many integral parts of this organism that made up something that always seemed humongous.
Though this tree was my everything for so long, my days began to reveal a deeper knowing within my cells that turned my gaze even wider. I started to see a ground below that spread many miles in every direction. I began wondering where the wind might come from. I let my curiosities take me new places as I saw many other trees ~ hundreds, thousands, in the distance with thousands, millions of other leaves attached and all interconnected. Then, as a change of seasons and all I’d ever known of warm cozy air turned cooler, I noticed in gusts of winds, leaves that were no longer green. It wasn’t just I who was changing. What began as one or two of us leaves turned into many, day by day.
As my awareness expanded, my perspective did too. And as my understanding of the magnitude of the world grew, my need to remain attached to the tree I’d always known diminished.
It suddenly felt natural to detach and cut my ties from all I’d ever known.
The more I focused my gaze on other realities besides the community of leaves I’d always been a part of, the more my reliance on it dwindled. I began to be fed and nurtured by something more vast, much more subtle, and equally as sacred.
This growth of my vision continued until just a few days ago, a gust of wind no longer meant “Hold on. Tighten your grip. Be strong and use all your might. Hunker down till the storm has passed.”
Instead, the wind began to sing to me, “Let go. Let God. Catch this gust as your graceful passage and flight of fancy. Let the wind take you, dance you, and enjoy the next wild ride that has always been a part of your life. Relax into this next season that may look like an end but is rather a beginning. Change forms just as you’ve seen the butterfly in metamorphosis do. Take your own flight. Fall. It’s how you’ll fly.”
And now, as I have been fortunate enough to have you find me and hold me long enough to listen to this review of my beautiful life, there’s a longing inside. I must answer the call. This yearning is one I’ve always seemed to possess that only now, in this blessed moment of being seen in all my glory, do I fully understand what it is. It is this yearning to embrace and be embraced by my own death, not as something fearful, but as my very own flight and road to something . . . full of awe.
I thank you for listening to my subtle, quiet, musings. Many have passed by, unable to hear a message that lacks loud bells and whistles. You possess something that is driven by a deep appreciation for natural beauty. You noticed my radiant color and my desire to express this divinity within that I have been humbled by.
Something tender, yet steady drives you. It is likely the same longing that drives me. It is quite beautiful, and it is what possessed me to create this incredibly vivid color. Not too long ago, I had no idea I could do this. I had no idea I could be on fire with beauty, radiating something from deep inside myself. It fuels my excitement to discover what else I can become.
What else am I destined to be in this vast beautiful ever-changing existence?
Goodbye, for now. Until we meet again.
