to be a tree

A tree is not afraid to grow.  Beginning from a single, tiny seed, with time she towers over the world beneath her.  She puts down roots; she stretches out her legs deep underground to say, "I'm not going anywhere."  A tree is strong enough to hold climbing children and wooden forts, but flexible, yielding,  willing to bend with winds and rain.  And if she is lucky enough to have some, she doesn't cling selfishly to her fruit, but lets us pick apples from her boughs, dropping a few to the ground for hungry squirrels.  A tree is a shelter, a home to nests of bees, badgers, and birds, a safe haven for a stranded picnicker.  Her skin is tough, for she lives in the wild, you see, but underneath the defense lies soft, tender wood.  She flows with sap and water, her branches are coursing with life.  A tree doesn't raise her voice, but gently whispers with rustling leaves to her family around her.  How I would love to be like the trees that grow outside my window!  To live with grace and dignity and patience, a true observer of the natural world.  To take everything in stride without complaining, whether rain or its lack, scorching heat or chilling winters.  To know that even when my leaves are changing orange to red to brown and falling down I am beautiful beyond measure.  To stand bare and vulnerable before God and the universe for a whole season, with branches unprotected but still reaching proud and strong for the heavens.  A tree never ceases gazing upward, never hunches her shoulders.  She remembers always the green promise of springtime.  She knows she is the Queen of the woods, the backbone of the forest, the foundation of the earth.  Even when  attacked by weather or by men with axes,  she doesn't fight the death that comes to all of us.  With open arms she gives her life away, and she lives on in our dining room tables, in the soil to which she returns, in the memories of the children and lovers who danced beneath her branches.  A tree is not afraid to die, because she has known the beauty of a life truly lived.