Brother Oak and Sister Pine
I walk through a winter scape of hard and soft woods. The Oaks and Elms are defending their place and holding space.
Barren, angular forms, tense and tight-celled inside. The old ones thick with wisdom, trunks gnarled with knots, covering past wounds.
Their presence commands respect, and deep down they go, into the ground of truth. Deciduous, discursive, defining the forest space.
And by their side, the warm green conifers with their rounded, softer shape, create beauty in the barren space, and freshen up the place.
They receive the wind, allowing it inside them and it bends them low and vulnerable. Their brown needles cling together forming a warm nest, to nurture the forest floor.
All the winter-while, the leaves of the Oaks blow far and wide scattering in winter, as do their seeds in spring.
As I walk, I feel the forest coming together in me. The light with the shadow, the hard truths with the softer mysteries, the immanent earth and the transcendent sky, and sister pine with brother oak.
In the winter of my fatherhood I learn to walk with mother nature too.
A comment on the above Poem–
The feminine and masculine are in each person, and held together in a beautiful balance. Strongly masculine men as they grow older need to discover the feminine inside them or they don’t fully mature spiritually and discover their full humanity. If they are fathers, as their kids age they are called to discover the compassionate mother within them. To become more nurturing more accepting of the frailties of humanity that are now more noticeable within themselves and also reflected in their adult children. Nature shows us both the contrast of masculine and feminine and the mature integration. In nature we witness the pastoral beauty and goodness of God the Father.