Gifts of root and wing

I’m sitting in this little house in the woods month after everlasting month growing fat sturdy roots into the earth.  Down, down, down, go my roots.  Past the fading couch, past the basement with its wood stove, past the clay and sand, past pebbles and rocks and boulders, down, down, down, go these roots.

Growing roots into this land we call home.  Growing roots that keep our secrets here.  Growing roots that whisper:  you are mine now, you earthling, you are finally mine.

I’ve grown wings before, haven’t you?  Wings that flew me from this place to that.  Wings that jetted across the curved globe.  Wings that delivered me on the doorstep of precious sons and daughters and mothers and fathers.

I have so loved these wings, loved feathers propelling into new horizons, new seas, new forests, new meadows.  Haven’t you loved your wings motoring you across state lines?  Sweeping left and right wings together we’ve flown high and low, hither and yon, oh precious visiting and seeing and proclaiming.

But for every season under heaven Life blinks and changes and now I’m growing roots, sturdy wide wood roots, tethering me in place, teaching me of the values of dirt, stone, property, here, now.

The bird in us might think that roots bind and jail and threaten and tether.  The bird in us might weep at nest’s seeming confine.  The bird in us longs to clamor into sky and sweep high across infinite terrain toward that which sings newness and freshness and endless open palm.  The bird calls the root “boredom” and sings freedom, freedom, freedom without seeing the gifts beneath what stops, what stays, what creeps like a turtle so very slowly.

 

Yet the tree within us roots down, down, down, doesn’t it?  Lest we forget the mother that feeds us.  Lest we forget the earth that clothes us.  Lest we forget the worms and slugs and snails that populate grasses beneath our bare feet.

Every two to four months I’ve traveled to touch the faces of you and you and you.  But now almost nine months pass on this couch, in this house in the woods, growing roots down into this Upper Peninsula earth.  Almost time to birth a baby.  A baby with sturdy legs to toddle through endless trees, to deeply learn the lessons of grass, wildflower, snake, stone.

The body relaxes so deliciously–in ways wings can’t ever understand–resting on the soil of this precious place, this precious immediacy, this precious here.

I try to heed the lessons of root as I sink even deeper down.   May you, too, find the sacred gift root brings as it whispers home, home, you’re finally home.

And–dear one–the wings wait ready until it’s time to fly again.  Never fear, the wings await your feathered flight up, up and away into the endless infinite blue sky.