Teachings from a Branch

Last year, in the awakening time of Maskwa (Bear 2022) I picked up a stick because it made me it think it had something it wanted to teach me.

This stick has fallen from the tree - probably not where it wanted to be. It's got skin peeling off and I could see the tender insides - some of them dried out already from the sun and the wind. Some of them are still wet and raw. As I think about this stick - maybe I'm like that stick.  Maybe I wanted to be up on the tree this year. I wanted to have branches and leaves and become part of foundation of that tree. I wanted to have the birds to come sit and the squirrels - but that wasn't for me and that wasn't my path.

 

The stick is on the ground and it's waiting. Maybe it's worrying – maybe its mother tree is welcoming it back, but it's hard and it's gonna take a long time for the Earth to bring that stick home again and to be with the rest of his relatives.  But maybe that tree didn't know and now it's in my hand. Maybe that branch has a whole different path - a path that it couldn't have imagined while it was on the tree.  A path to become a part of something beautiful – a toy or an art price or even just a stick for one of our canine brothers. Maybe this stick didn't know how much of a lesson it had to share with us. Ho.