What if there’s peace here? Singing in a tree + a free Summit on Inner Peace
What if there’s peace here? Singing in a tree + a free Summit on Inner Peace
From the Journal | April 13, 2024
For those new to this e-community, I periodically offer my readers & clients snippets from my daily writing (tidied up a bit ;-), intermixed with topical and Q & A articles. I haven’t published lately as I’ve been focusing on working with 6 beautiful spirits as part of a pilot program, The Joy Experiment, as well as with my private clients.
Below is a share from my journal & invitation to the Activate Your Inner Peace Summit.
It’s been years—Years! How’s that possible?—since I climbed inside the hollow trunk of a once-massive redwood below my home.
Lured down into the woods by a bright flutter of white in the shadowy understory, I’m climbing and tripping over downed limbs from waves of winter storms. After losing my shoe briefly in the duff, I’m crouching to love a flower.
Yes, it’s actual love, which always comes with a dose of gratitude, inseparable.
Here, one lavish trillium sways atop her tall stalk in pure solitude on a wet spring morning. “Hello, lovely one,” I whisper, “let me be you today.”
After snapping an image of her temporary, three-petaled face, after thinking trinity, then seeing my sister’s baby goat named Trinity bucking around within my busy brain, I start back up the steep path.
Pausing to breathe and hold the moment, I’m standing beside the more-than-30-foot-high redwood stump, a kind of tree-cave, blackened inside from fire (lumberjacks often burned the slash after logging these earth-elders).
If I close my eyes, I can see the flames inside, feel the heat, orange-red, the occasional flare of blue and green, so much color licking everything black.
My hair straw-dirty, my jeans holey, nothing to lose but possibly my shoe again by crawling inside this redwood cadaver, so I do.
What’s here?
Webs with different spiders, some uninhabited, others with insects spun into mummies, one tangled with a downy feather. The ground is crumbles of black, partially eaten redwood and spruce cones, a Snail-eating beetle scuttling for cover, scattered twigs and bits of lichen, the signs of some creature who came digging and another who’d rested in the tree rubble, perhaps taking refuge from hail-laden rain.
The light is muted, the air musty. There’s deep emptiness. Oddly, there’s also profound presence. Presence of what has been and what still is moving in and out of this seemingly sacred space, the legacy of a once-living entity.
This might seem macabre to say, but we always live within an envelope of death and dying.
The operative word is live.
From the moment of that first cry, some invisible timer is set. Beloved people and animals and places will come and go, as we go on. We. Go. On.
There’s an invisible thread that neither begins nor ends, each of us a tiny knot along the way. You can only see it indirectly.
Rotting leaves and desiccated bug wings feed tiny, subterranean beings called decomposers, as if life’s ending is a song to be undone. With sun and fog, the subtle-gnawing heat in soil, up comes a trillium. New flower-music.
Will I remember it after it collapses, after it’s crawled back underground? Another part of love is remembering.
I tap my phone, looking at the trillium. Yes, I will do my best, Trillium, to remember you with mind and photo, then turn you into a story, sending you out, a thought seed, to root in other minds.
Looking up through the hollowness, through tree crowns, fragments of bruise-y sky, I am this once-tree holding another within—my husband and his voice that I’m fiercely embracing.
Have you ever worried you’d forget the voice of someone you love? Oh, how many of his voicemail messages lie dormant in my pocket phone for later, when I’ll need them so much more than when they were left?
Two-plus years past his hospice diagnosis, bouts of pain and errant memory, he vacillates between wanting to go and wanting to stay. “Are you afraid of dying,” I ask. “No, only of missing you,” he answers in a whispy voice.
We grieve each other, and ourselves. I mean my husband I, though also the communal ‘we’ that includes you, too.
Sitting on the ground, holding my bent knees, I watch two beetles who seem to be dancing beside my right foot. Inky, they flash a purple sheen. “My husband was an excellent dancer,” I tell them, “rarely see a man who knows how to move his hips like that.”
Against the charred walls of the tree encircling me, I see my husband and I, dancing. I’m singing before I realize I’m singing.
Those were the days, my friend We thought they'd never end We'd sing and dance forever and a day We'd live the life we choose We'd fight and never lose Those were the days, oh yes, those were the days Dai-dai-dai-dai-da-da Dai-dai-dai-dia-da-da Dai-da-da-da, dai-da-da-da-da **
If my neighbor is out bushwacking in his woods right now, what might he think of this singing emanating from a tree carcass? Wood sprite? Organic radio? Quirky nextdoor poet-lady … again?
No worries.
To sing is a form of alchemy. Longing and sorrow can’t persist when your very own body is an instrument, your life composing itself breath by breath, becoming and becoming, always playing a new strain of You. Besides, who doesn’t love a good song?
Beyond this tree are acts of war and politics, despair and indifference, broken people who do horrible things.
Beyond this tree are countless acts of art and kindness, reparation and collaboration, whole people whose broken places are constellations of light and meaning.
Still, no worries. In this moment, unless you are truly in the path of harm, you and I are okay.
There’s peace here, simply sitting inside this old tree-body with it’s scarred belly and jitterbugging beetles, lingering in what is, the is-ness of this moment and the way every moment past and future coalesce in now.
Breathing in, now. Breathing out, now.
What if we hold on the to real possibility that someday we will look back on this moment, with all its wanting and imperfections, and realize, these are the days, my friend?
** From the song, “Those Were the Days.” Lyrics by Gene Raskin, adapted from a Russian folk tune. Promoted & made into a 1968 hit by Paul McCartney, featuring Welsh singer, Mary Hopkins.
Join Me at the Activate Your Inner Peace Summit | April 22-26
It’s online. It’s free. It connects you with 15 gifted leaders in the well-being space.
“I get those fleeting, beautiful moments of inner peace and stillness - and then the other 23 hours and 45 minutes of the day, I'm a human trying to make it through in this world.” — Ellen DeGeneres
Peace feels illusive, doesn’t it?
The good news is: It really is possible to expand that feeling of “inner peace and stillness” for more than just a few fleeting moments per day.
That’s where the Activate Your Inner Peace Summit comes in.
Recently I sat down virtually with Summit Creator, Erin Leigh, to record an interview for the Activate Your Inner Peace Summit. It’s one of the 15 deep-insight sessions happening April 22-26, 2024.
Erin originally came into my world in 2021 after the death of someone she loves and reading my book Grieving Us: A Field Guide for Living With Loss Without Losing Yourself.
She’s a story in herself about how you can grow through grief to become someone you couldn’t have imagined before your loss.
The Activate Your Inner Peace Summit is one meaningful way she’s turned her pain into helping others navigate all kinds of loss, depression, anxiety, and broken relationships—or, as she puts it, “connect to the nature inside you.”
How does this free Summit work?
When you register for the Summit using your email, you’ll then receive a few of the speaker sessions each day in your Inbox, beginning Monday, April 22, 2024, through Friday, April 26, 2024.
You’ll be able to watch or listen to the sessions anytime that works for you within 48 hours of each daily email. While the Summit is free, Erin offers the opportunity to purchase the full Summit for a small fee, including all 15 sessions, along with a range of additional self-care resources.
What will the Summit cover?
Through the 15 expert speakers Erin has brought to the Summit, her aim is for you to “reclaim peace in your mind, body, and relationships,” so you can:
wake up with a calm mind & an abundance of energy
break free from overwhelm & living on autopilot
be truly yourself & make deeper connections
Who are these 15 Inspired Speakers?
The lineup includes a diverse gathering of authors, mindfulness & meditation teachers, psychotherapists, podcast hosts, intuitive & spiritual guides, breathwork and embodiment mentors, and more.
These are noted individuals who’ve been featured with TedX, The Oprah Magazine, Psychology Today, MindBodyGreen, InsightTimer, and other major outlets.
I’m honored to be a part of this speaker series, bringing insights and ideas for living with greater peace and well-being right to your computer or smartphone 🌞 Join Us!
Or use this Link: https://www.activateyourinnerpeace.com/kimberley