As some of you know, every Friday I post a short video on Instagram created in Nature from Nature’s inspiration. I used to ponder and plan, then enter Nature to find the imagery that would support my planned message. True to Mother Nature as messenger in Her awe-filling magical way, what would happen is I would enter an outdoor space with a preconceived idea; Nature would decide there was a better thought to talk about. Now, when I am outside on Fridays, I ask, what is our message today?

Blueprints for a Hope-Filled Life is following a similar path this time. Instead of having an idea or theme and then finding a picture or pictures to support the message, I began with a picture and am letting the message(s) reveal themselves as I write.

I will start with a quote that crossed my path by Kahlil Gibran. Trees are poems the Earth writes upon the sky. I love to stand at the base of a tree and look up through the branches and leaves into the sky. I’ve even been known to provide a tree-hugging assignment in a class I teach. (Smile) Based on my own tree-hugging experiences, of course. (Smile).

I remember as a little girl standing at different trees in our yard eager and determined to climb them. Some I couldn’t, their lowest branches beginning much higher than my capability to reach a limb and hoist the rest of me up.   Others I could, at least to the first branches. I don’t remember looking up once I successfully climbed into a tree.  I remember a feeling of being home in their outstretched arms, nestled safely inside the shelter of their leaves.

This quote by Kahlil Gibran elegantly expresses the beauty I see when I look up and into and through the outstretched branches of a tree. Poems the Earth has written onto the sky.

As Collin’s Dictionary defines a poem, a piece of writing in which the words are chosen for their beauty and sound and are carefully arranged. Collin’s defines a poet as a person who has the gift of poetic thought, imagination, and creation, together with eloquence of expression.    

The Earth the poet, the trees the arranged beauty and sound on sheets of the sky’s blank pages.

Alice Osborn, author, editor, and poet writes poetry teaches us how to live. Poetry is like the Windex on a grubby car window – it bares open the vulnerabilities of human beings so we can all relate to each other a little better.

For us, the “readers,” as we behold the trees in all their shapes, heights, and uniqueness. No two trees exactly alike, even a stand of pines lined up like twins, quadruplets, or sextuplets. Individuality still abounds amidst the identicalness as pine trees.  Or oak, walnut, cherry, apple, willow, birch, redwood. And the extensive list could go on.

Much like nationalities and cultures throughout the world. Individuality abounds amidst the commonality of being human in the forests and wooded acreage of French, Dutch, Vietnamese, Jewish, Australian, Italian, Nigerian, American, Irish, Japanese, Yanomami. And the extensive list could go on.

The extensive list could go on with all the classifications and labels we have given to identifying as a specific tree in the forest of humanity. Toddler, teenager, millennial, baby boomer, elderly.

Entrepreneur, “high-potential,” “Straight-A student,” CEO, Executive, “Fast-Learner,” Professional, MBA, PhD.

Or Veteran. Minority. Survivor. Patient. Downsized. Unemployed. Underprivileged.

Retired. Majority. Child. Parent.

One of my favorite talks courtesy of TEDx is by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Danger of a Single Story. The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

And of course, as you know, I love life stories! (smile) 

What if we entered the woods, not to compare the mighty oak in its regal height to the maple sapling just starting to grow?

What if we stood at a tree base, looked up into the outstretched branches filled with leaves, and saw a collective poem of diverse beauty instead of a mass impediment and blockages to the sunlight?

One of my favorite quotes (and you know I have many!) is by Anothony Douglas Williams. When I look into the eyes of an animal, I do not see an animal. I see a living being. I see a friend. I feel a soul. Though I do this imperfectly as the human being I am, this is how I strive to view humanity. When I look into the eyes of a person, I do not see [only] a person…I feel a soul.

One of the individuals I am privileged to coach shares her wisdom often. We are losing our ability to be humanity.   

We are losing our ability to connect eyes to eyes, ears to ears, heart to heart.

To feel, in the vast forest of a thick wooded land, we are still seen, heard, and valued for our part in the whole.

We are challenged to look past the descriptors of our doing as humans to see the souls of who we are that show up each day.

In that dance of grace between opposites is something else the trees whisper. We don’t need to try to fit into the forest. We already are a part of it.

Just like the Friday videos in which I enter Nature unaware of what message Nature has, I didn’t know where the picture of this tree would lead.  It seems to have wanted to speak, we are more than we initially see.

I believe the sun and the leaves are also whispering.   When you look, what do you hear and see?

I will leave you with this last quote for reflecting and pondering.

Trees exhale for us so that we can inhale them to stay alive. Can we ever forget that? Let us love trees with every breath we take until we perish. -Munia Kahn