This is Myles doing Tree Pose in a tree. We were camping at a pretty little site on the East Bay at Grassy Point, just northeast of here. I emerged from my tent, and there he was up there, serenely suspended over the water in the arms of a mossy old scrub oak. I love this picture.
I was reminded of it in yoga Saturday when Megan, the insightful and gentle young instructor at URU, directed us into the pose with a metaphor. We had started out in Mountain Pose with both feet firmly planted on our mats and slowly made our way into the asymmetrical balancing posture called Vrksasana, or Tree Pose. As she invited us to reach our “branches” upward, lifting our arms from prayer position heavenward, she said, “Feel your connection to the earth even as you reach toward the sky, toward the light.”
And I knew that this was to be my metaphor du jour. And it may well be my metaphor du année, my metaphor of the year, this New Year we are about to commence. This is what my soul is craving after this season of great loss. I wish to be grounded. And I wish to be light.
Tree Pose is both. I can be both.
But it takes some concentration, some practice, and some actual effort. It also takes some acceptance, some repose, and some holy grace. It takes balance. It takes strength.
All of those qualities are accessible to me. I have learned this through hardship and prosperity. My goodness isn’t out there somewhere. It’s in here. Always has been. It is my awareness of it that makes it useful though. And I’m not always mindful. I would like to be.
I want my goodness to be useful, even beyond the promise to keep someone in my thoughts and prayers. Yes, there is power there in supplication; I have seen this as well. But I want to physically touch with my human hands the friend who is grieving the loss of a loved one, to repair with those hands the house that was damaged by storms, to reach out humbly with those hands to a friend or family member who has hurt me.
While I reach toward higher spiritual truths. Yes, all the while, growing, as a tree, toward light, and openness and yes, oneness. I don’t understand oneness yet. I would like to.
There’s an old saying that warns us not to be so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good. I get that. Spiritual curiosity can seem so cerebral and woo-woo, and for ponderers like me, it can actually pose risks. Jackson Browne sings—“I wanna live in the world, not inside my head.” It can be a rough neighborhood, my addled mind, at two AM on a sleepless night. That’s why I need to get out into the real noun-infested world of people, places and things. Terra firma. Earth. Ground.
I treasure my inquisitive spirit, as inconvenient as it seems at times when I just want to adopt some cute cliché and be done with it. But my curiosity lends me depth. Dutch theologian, Henri Nouwen writes, “Trees that grow tall have deep roots. Great height without great depth is dangerous.”
I have never really aspired to great height; a redwood I’ll never be. But maybe I could be like that lovely sabal palm tree out my window. It requires deep roots on that beach made of shifting sands. It must stand ever ready to bend in tropical winds. It must appreciate and accommodate the sun and the rain and the pelicans.
Yes, I’ll be a palm tree this year.
At yoga this morning, Paul led us in Tree Pose, and I paid special attention to my body as I lifted my branches toward heaven. I was strong even as I was wavering. I was relaxed even as I contracted all of my muscles. I was focused even as my mind drifted away on a palm frond. Pleasant paradoxes to ponder.
Balancing on one foot in stillness is challenging, but worth the practice in a physical and metaphysical sense. I do not expect perfect symmetry and stasis in my life this year. No, no, I know better than that. I will be called upon to balance and bend and stand tall.
And you will stand with me. I know you will. I have never had to stand alone. And I will stand with you—and balance and bend with you when your storms rage. I am not afraid.
I am a palm tree.