(KINGDOMS 2) Dances with Leaves

[These musings are a sequel to (KINGDOMS 1) Mystical Gardeners]

I have traveled to The Bay area much recently. My favorite days are temperate weather with light or no breeze. But they are surprisingly rare. Most days the wind is substantial and relentless.

I sat for many minutes in a persistent wind, waiting for my ride. Waiting–a word we use in our familiar world kingdom when things or life are not moving quickly enough for us to feel our living is productive or rewarding.

Beside my bench was a strange tree, or bush – a plant form unfamiliar to me. It’s fronds were dancing with each other in the wind – bumping and scraping one another. A sound I don’t think I’ve ever heard. I wonder if plants delight in the wind, dancing with motion unfamiliar to their kingdom. I wonder if they are singing out praise to God at a frequency my ears cannot hear, praising God to experience a kingdom unfamiliar to them… Their microscope. Their fast-forward time lapse.

My wait slowed down, in communion between two kingdoms. It was those leaves who communed with *my* kingdom. Joined me in the timescale of my world. Happened only because something opened me to receiving.

Wind is like the Spirit; it is invisible, but it brought us together. When I was receptive, anyway.

If later today, after temperatures rise, I am outside and hot, I will turn to the wind so that rushing air blows in my face. So that it cools and comforts me. Yet, even when the air is still, I know that molecules in the air never stop. Same air as wind. Both God doing work invisibly on different scales… Kingdoms at hand…

Neil D. 2019-07-30

Who Has Seen the Wind?

(by CHRISTINA ROSSETTI)

.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you:

But when the leaves hang trembling,

The wind is passing through.

.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads,

The wind is passing by.

Science discovered trees talk to each other, in the language of their own kingdom, and the chatter makes the whole forest more whole, above and below ground: cac.org/reciprocity. I say trees have souls.

Related FeelWithNeil: Ode to a Sacred Twig – An exercise for the soul

(KINGDOMS 1) Mystical Gardeners

I’ve had the uncommon pleasure of seeing the frenetic but organized flow through the cells of plants by microscopy. It made the kingdom plantae “come alive” for me.

We all know plants to be alive by their macroscopic motion like growth, or withering, or, the favorite of most, flowering. But because those transformations happen so slowly, they seem to be on a timescale of a kingdom different than ours. Plant-lovers capture time-lapse videos to appeal to wider masses. And everyone is enthralled by the Venus fly trap (Google for a video). When we see it snap shut on prey, we can’t think of it as only a plant; we search for eyes around the scary jaws….

We project our kingdom onto everything…

Loving gardeners nurture life. They have a gift of patience for transformation–a vision that doesn’t need to see life’s motion on our time scale. I envy it. They can sit and adore their garden at the very state it is in, the co-creation of their toil. But, I suspect those long moments of adoration are sometimes or eventually interrupted by visions of their creation’s future. An unwelcome weed. Open ground that could use a shrub…or, god forbid, a home for a gnome:)

I sense that mystics resemble real plant lovers. By meditation they seek stillness as the background against which God moves them, on the timescale of a different kingdom. Those experiences are visions which see God’s creative work being done in our more familiar kingdom of the world. They see God in things that appear not to be moving to most of us. An ugly weed sitting still in its soil is beautiful by that vision – without a microscope, without snapping jaws – perhaps because they have a sense of their own time-lapse video in the world. They see closer linkage between the past and the future – linkage to the now. Contentment simply to be.

Sequel: (KINGDOMS 2) Dances with Leaves

Neil D. 2019-07-30

Science discovered trees talk to each other, in the language of their own kingdom, and the chatter makes the whole forest more whole, above and below ground: cac.org/reciprocity. I say trees have souls.

Related FeelWithNeil: Ode to a Sacred Twig – An exercise for the soul

Green Shirt

The gently soft-spoken 20-something didn’t seem to ever stop talking except when he asked of me simple questions and waited for replies with earnestness that made me feel like my answer would be divine and resonate with profoundly undeniable truth and universal wisdom. He sat on a park bench with his beautiful, unthreatening, expectant, wide eyes open naturally enough to look up at me as I stood beside the bench on which he sat lower. His eyes weren’t bloodshot or distant, squinted or spookily wide. His pupils locked on my gaze, without blinking, without discomfort or shame. Without abiding by any conventions of time or rhythm familiar. Just natural, as anyone’s might be awaiting an answer, unconsciously exhaling the puff of smoke from a satisfying drag off the cigarette he just bummed off me…

He did that several times, awaiting several answers to several questions. Of me. Me. Me? Me!

Not hard answers to give. But not easy questions to ask. So, wait–maybe hard questions to answer, but not hard words to summon in answer: “Yeah.” “That’s true.” I know.” “I feel you.” “Right.” “Damn.” “I know.”

Know? Do I really *know* anything?

Now I know I do.

Green Shirt talked and asked about his joy and loss of waking next to her, whose name he didn’t remember. Of being anxious about how he would get eggs and bacon like yesterday. Would the nurses let him have the medicine he needed again?

He’s glad it’s warm today.

Hopes it will be tonight, wherever he winds up.

Wants to work on my car. She knows how to service bearings. He knows he has to clean up dog poop in the park before her company lets him collect cans. She’s not afraid to work hard. Why do they think their reality’s rules make more sense?

Yeah, I suppose Yeshua from Nazareth wore some shade of white fabric in the middle eastern form of that time. But I think, yesterday morning, He wore a green t-shirt.

If you see Green Shirt today, tell her I miss him. Tell him I said hello. Tell her I remember him. Say Hello to her for me. Thank him for talking to me about her own world. Tell her I love hymn… because he trusted me just to affirm her truth. And … loved ME too.

Neil D. 2019-07-25