Poetry Diary: / The Light Tree...

     It was only a dream, but it seemed so real. I turned a corner in a park. I passed another flower garden then came upon a large grassy place. It was early, a huge golden sun rising above an azure horizon, and my heart, in truth as open as this place, found before it a splendid gift. A widely spreading tree stood alone, and the sun was shining through it, through the very heart of it, and it seemed as if it were made entirely of light.   Its leaves, shaped like the leaves of a flame tree, were vivid green, shining like emeralds upon which were writings. The tree pulsated with light and life, every part of it, alive, energized, and complete! It was a picture of a glorious destiny, a promised end; and before the beginning of it had even begun! I do not know how I knew this.   As I looked, I was drawn nearer, and I saw it more clearly. A great golden ring of light circled through its branches and down through its roots. In the tree was a door, open; through which one could only yearn to enter, and live! Out of the door and from between the roots of the tree a river of living water was flowing.
   A wind came. Little by little some of the leaves were loosed from the tree. They went hovering around it, but staying close to the tree, not leaving its environs. Though these leaves were indeed severed from the tree, the light went all through them as though they were still joined. They were as broken pieces from the heart of the tree where the light shines through; where pierced by the truth and torn asunder, it had learned its secret lessons, found its hidden treasure.
   I could hardly breathe. It was as if I had never seen anything more beautiful. Everything within me yearned for the light of the living tree so great was the love which was in it and flowed from it; and it was imprinted within my own heart as living burning truth.
   I gasped. Suddenly the tree became so vast I could not comprehend it. The light so bright I shut my eyes. All in one split second, I had heard and seen all I could and turned my head away. Received of all it needed in the instant, and all of everything! But to know what I could not know, for fear of bursting at the seams, yet find it was all contained within me, and as though it were nothing, and of no consequence, words fail to describe so strange a thing it is beyond me.
   Through the years the remembrance of the light tree was a comfort. But sometimes when I was far away and in darkness the form of its impression as ‘a tree’ would fade and I forgot it as such. But then, so present was its formless substance of light and life within that it just had to break out somewhere, and in other forms, and in other dimensions. Its influence as water, which seeping out through even the tiniest crack in me, and evaporating into thin air, could somehow quench my thirsting thoughts for meaning in my life, while ever enthusing my inner being to search for more. And it did so, by my making things. Things which appeared beautiful to me; but which now, looking back I know were only my half-desperate efforts to make sense of what I could not yet understand! But, by making something beautiful, that I could see, and touch, and hear, which somehow spoke to me of the lost light tree and embodied it I found I was comforted, in an outer sort of way. But, oh, I knew there was so much more… further, and deeper, and beyond it.
   Beauty enchanted me. It drew me onwards. Because somehow I knew it connected with truth. Something beautiful and true was effectual. It transported the heart to a place where it could hear. Opened it so that it could see. To me beauty and truth had become inseparable. When I found one I had found the other. One was a path leading to the other. Where they met there was a simplicity which delighted. Where neither sought their own profit they could please, and in all things. Made one . . . there . . . there was love, true peace and freedom.
   The simple things I made were always out of broken pieces; and those things through which the sunlight could shine or reflect, and which the wind could sound in. It seemed appropriate to describe the light in terms of fragments and broken things. Why, I do not know. Perhaps, there could be several different reasons. Because as physical things mingle with heavenly things truth becomes layered in different levels of understanding as the foreshadowing of it gives way for its substance. But the simplest reason why is probably because the light is utterly vast, and I am not, and being broken in pieces myself I can only think of one part of a thing at a time! For just as the leaves of the living light tree, were many, and each one, expressing only the tiniest part of the whole, at any one time, so I!   I can only grasp one ‘story-leaf:’ one ‘living-letter:’ one chink of light, one portion of living truth from the tree of life, as and when I have need of it in my own life. And from it learning anew, as I give up something of my own selfish self, I am renewed in that vacated place! It becomes a ‘further’ truer part of me; and my eyes and ears, see and hear, where once they didn’t! Then I am set at liberty to describe what it is I see; picturing it, in part, either in the natural realm, by a physical work of art, or in the heavenly realm, by the ethereal written word. Both can bear the light: both do. Because the light is everywhere and pieces all things together! Making complete: a seamless whole! Even making ‘me’ whole: binding my every crack it seeped or shone through!   And so the fruit of my life: whether it was in artworks, or written ‘story-leaves’ and ‘letters,’ all were caught up, and loosely held aloft by a central thread of light, going turning about in the wind of the Spirit, as it was blowing gently upon them giving them life and light…to truly... see!

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