Wearing away to Happiness

Dried corn leaves skittering across the road. It’s Chester County, the hills are small and undulating, the corn a formidable fortress between winding road and distant farm. The trees seem taller, the leaves entities with life of their own which one could easily mistake for fluttering crows or wriggling voles. One has a relationship to the roads here; like a member of the family, or a life-long next door neighbor friend.

Ash tree, growing in a Pennsylvania forest, from twin roots to an open palm of thanksgiving to the Lord. Ash tree, who can’t help being tall, though it cries spinning tears each end of Summer. Did you think yourself beautiful once, long ago, before rough soil had to be broken to accommodate growing roots? It wasn’t really beauty when I checked off all the boxes of experiencing and needed a bland surrounding to make myself seem bright. When I sacrificed reality for happiness, and real love for what I could comprehend. It’s not really living till you don’t have all the answers, not really you without a few dead branches, a lichen covered trunk or an uprooted stone or three. The trees survive by reaching for the Light first, then become themselves through the trials to such a goal.

When I let go of all that came to me in this life, who am I? I’m starting to see a little clearer. The ability to forgive this life, and myself therein, would bring such happiness. There is such wisdom in clouds, so much grace and majesty in Sunlight, in trees and air that all which seems to torment us is banished by the louder singing of their great song: God has made us, and He is infinitely perfect.