Amethyst Poetry / Writing Saga # 11 / THE LIGHT TREE JOURNAL: A Twelve Month Story-Journal: Portrait of a Lost Door / A Memoir

  

                                            An Introduction:

                                      PORTRAIT PAINTING

    I BEGIN MY TREE JOURNAL IN JULY because that is where I was, in that particular year when I felt ready to write some sort of a memoir . . . some sort of a creative retelling of my story, in stories, rather than in a single chronological narrative. I had already done that in my autobiography DAWNING. But I had crossed a divide since then and my story was now not so much concerned with what was happening on the outside as it was with what was going on, on the inside. I was discovering to my delight that my inside life was more readily expressed in picture language, and in parables and allegory, and in short bursts, rather than in those continuous sort of straight-forward describings, such as one finds in normal autobiographies. 

   But this book doesn’t really fit into any category which could possibly be classified as ‘normal!’ It is not a real journal/diary; yet it is. It is not a book of short stories; and yet it is. It is not strictly autobiography; but it is. Neither is it a work of fiction; but it is, and it isn’t. It is very curious, but somehow inner truth is more versatile than its outer variety, and can move across all the boundaries known to man; or woman; for as I am sure you have experienced yourself, or have heard before: insides is bigger than outsides. 

   Over time I have come to see that the dividing line between Art and Life becomes indistinct at the interface of abandon. Out of inner surrender, light is creatively diffused through truth upon another plane where the revelation of the self is expressed in spirit alone. All my stories are true by perception in a heavenly realm. They happened as they were happening inside me, invisibly, as I wrote; or, they were happening in the outside world all around – about me, literally – and which I recorded later, when I got home. (Recording even to the very centre of that word, home: for I had been found in and through the pages of my light tree journal.) 

   Anyway, this ‘short bursts’ book – be it imaginative memoir, a spiritual outpouring, or a creative way of sharing what has been wrought within me through eating of the Tree of Life – it just so happened to start on the first of JULY – which isn’t so strange a timing, because it coincided with Matariki, the Maori NEW YEAR Celebration in New Zealand, where I happened to be living at the time. Living upside down in the Antipodes, in the Southern Hemisphere, NEW YEAR here is at the end of JUNE! And although I am Welsh, not Maori – born and bred in Cardiff, Wales – I feel I can identify with the upside-down-ness of this glorious beautiful, beautiful Island in which I now live; where I have not only been turned upside down, but turned inside out and back-to-front as well! 

   Matariki – which is the Maori name for the Seven Sisters, or the Pleiades star cluster – is the celebration of the return of the Sun after the winter solstice – marked by the rising of this lovely star cluster just before dawn. The story is that the Sun has gone as far north as he can, and Matariki goes to tell him that it is now time to return, and to come south once more, to bring his warmth again to the earth and Aotearoa; New Zealand: The Land of the Long White Cloud. 

   I wonder if I didn’t mix-and-match the Maori winter solstice mythology, with the Celtic variety of it, in the opposite part of the year. Could it be I saw a correlation between the two, which reinforced my tree theme? For in the ancient Celtic parts of the Northern Hemisphere the branch of an evergreen tree was brought indoors to celebrate the return of the Sun, and the resurgence of life, and to bring good fortune – the tree being revered as a sign of life; and a symbol of light. 

   I think perhaps I had grabbed hold of the idea of ‘indoors,’ seeing it as ‘insides;’ and in my mind the tree being brought inside a house: a picture of life being brought inside a person. Any person – even me – and that this invisible upside-down tree would be inside my heart. There to bring health and healing within, by the return of inner Light within: the return of the Son; and the Tree of Life, inside! 

   A tree is the only living thing which never stops growing throughout its entire life. Its ever-widening rings of growth symbolic of the continual inner growth of a person in ever-expanding cycles of insight, and compassion, and gradually changing opinions.

   And as though in evidence of this, the living stories from this inside tree, they could not help but pour forth in cycles through days, and weeks, and months . . . and month after month for twelve months: baring ‘twelve manner of fruits’ . . . all in a subtle portrait of a lost door . . . a forgotten entrance to a hidden land. 

   It was from the pattern of trees, and the continuum of their fruitful journey, and the round-about-ness of our walk through this life, that I found out that the narrow path is actually a spiral. Ascending and descending circles repeated over and over. Of course! Not only trees, but the whole world turns upon a single axis. Just one inner pivot upon which all turns: keeping it alive, and living! My revelations were going in circles just as much as the whole world was! So, if my ideas and perceptions in all the journal stories were found to be variations upon a single theme, it should not be surprising, for the light from which they were all radiating was as a single bright star turning within the heart of the tree opening out from one centre through the door. 

   It is round about things which tell us the most. Straight forward things, though plainly understandable, don’t tell what we really want to know. It is just as The Little Prince said, in Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s wonderful parable: ‘Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far....’ 

   And now the heart-patterned stories from The Light Tree, where it breathed and fed as it transmuted light into life, these were its leaves; and its leaves were its letters, for the healing of the heart; and its twelve fruits, new each month, was for food. 

   So this tree journal, is it Art, as I write it; or is it Life, as I live it? It is both. And now, after its coming into existence, it is what you will make of it!      

                                                                 * 

 ‘And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.’                                                                                                                                        Revelation 22: 1-2

                                                                  *



                    The Light Tree Journal

 About the Author and her Journal;

 J. R. Fynn 

   "Buoyant, light and airy, skipping across the stepping stones of a river of revelation and personal insight, the author shares her life as she gleans it from the living world, all around about her.  From the oyster-clad rocks of a lake-like sea... from harbour hugging roads and tidal creeks... from west coast beaches wild and windswept to the calm placid waters of Whangaroa harbour: the ‘Jewel of the North’ the author is alive to her surroundings and makes the most of her place of refuge, turning long standing illness into opportunities for joy and effervescent delight.  

    "‘Stargirl,’ as she is affectionately named by a close friend, takes us on a journey of personal surprises through twelve months of her extraordinary life.  She has a difficult story to tell, and she does so in the most intriguing way... in short pearled cycles of enlightenment, new every month... gathering daily in her story-journal new inner discoveries to share with other sojourners along the path of light and life. One who has suffered much and all with joyful overcoming she is able to identify with the living world of creation, finding parallels in nature which reveal inner light and wisdom. And in doing so, she has been able to weave beauty into her mysterious challenging of the status quo of traditional spirituality; which she does completely fearlessly through a deep compassion and overflowing love. 

    "Her illness caused no blight on her life, but rather the opposite as she rises above it; for it lifts her to new heights unobtainable had she not the impetus of necessity urging her along, soaring upon the wind of the spirit, to new realms of healing light, rarely glimpsed; seen only by those who dare to enter the dark interior of the Unknown within them. 

  "Judith's book is a joy to behold. It is beautifully illustrated throughout with photographs of her ‘leaf letters’ in their shoebox ‘tree journal;’ all of which she has designed and made, herself. Her watercolour painting of the complete picture of ‘THE LIGHT TREE’ is a mystical wonder; leading the reader to enter in through the lost door in the tree to the land beyond. She has also bright little paintings of each of the twelve ‘fruits’ of her ‘Light Tree,' new each month, decorating the title pages of each month: the book’s twelve chapters. Also, on each title page is a brief synopsis of each month's journal entries written as a poem. 

  "Altogether filled with a startling light in intimate flights of the imagination, this book is fully autobiographical, yet its genre, ‘creative non-fiction,’ has been taken up here to its broadest dimension, moving across the boundaries entering new territory. 

   "In desperately wanting to convey the way to self-discovery through observation of the natural world all around us, Judith has repeated herself over and over; but she explains this in her Introduction to the book and asks us to bear with her: there was a reason! But all in all this book is a must-read for every seeker of light and lover of love and truth."   -  J. R. Fynn

                                           

                                                                     *

                                          THE LIGHT TREE JOURNAL

                             A Twelve Month Story Journal: Portrait of a Lost Door

                                                   

                                                           *      

__________________________________________________________________________

The titles listed, below, are of the next four 'ragged writings' of Amethyst Poetry.  

Taken! And the Wings of the Dawning

Jacob’s Ladder and the Dead Tree

Angel Wrestling 

Rainbows Round this Ripening Field