I’m reading through my blog for the second time. Often I see something I didn’t see before. Frequently I am amazed at the amount of pain I went through, that I survived, that I have even, in some ways, gotten better.
In January of 2020 I posted “Stunted Tree” where I quote Howard Thurman, a Black minister and writer. It’s from his Meditations of the Heart:
It was above the timber line. The steady march of the forest had stopped as if some invisible barrier had been erected beyond which no trees dared move in a single file. Beyond was barrenness, sheer rocks, snow patches and strong untrammeled winds. Here and there were short tufts of evergreen bushes that had somehow managed to survive despite the severe pressures under which they had to live. They were not lush, they lacked the kind of grace of the vegetation below the timber line, but they were alive and hardy. Upon close investigation, however, it was found that these were not ordinary shrubs. The formation of the needles, etc., was identical with that of the trees further down; as a matter of fact, they looked like branches of the other trees. When one actually examined them, the astounding revelation was that they were branches. For, hugging the ground, following the shape of the terrain, were trees that could not grow upright, following the pattern of their kind. Instead, they were growing as vines grow along the ground, and what seemed to be patches of stunted shrubs were rows of branches of growing, developing trees. What must have been the torturous frustration and the stubborn battle that had finally resulted in this strange phenomenon! It is as if the tree had said, “I am destined to reach for the skies and embrace in my arms the wind, the rain, the snow and the sun, singing my song of joy to all the heavens. But this I cannot do. I have taken root beyond the timber line, and yet I do not want to die; I must not die. I shall make a careful survey of my situation and work out a method, a way of life, that will yield growth and development for me despite the contradictions under which I must eke out my days. In the end I may not look like the other trees, I may not be what all that is within me cries out to be. But I will not give up. I will use to the full every resource in me and about me to answer life with life. In so doing I shall affirm that this is the kind of universe that sustains, upon demand, the life that is in it.” I wonder if I dare to act even as the tree acts. I wonder! I wonder! Do you?
This passage brought to mind something I had written and I found it in my blog in May 2018:
Written in Davis, California, at the time of my breakdown and hospitalization.
This poor tree is hanging at the edge of the abyss — its roots have no soil and are trying to press into crevices in the rock, a powerful wind blows its shape all stunted; and it knows that it could create soil if it really wanted to — out of blood and sweat and tears and rotted hate — and it knows that it is the source of the wind…
And it is trying desperately to flower.
The pain of reading this again is seeing myself take responsibility for my pain. I could “create soil if I really wanted to…” What a totally crazy-making belief. I did NOT have the power to create soil by myself. Repeat NOT. Crazy-making because if I believe that I am holding on to my misery, I “should” be able to make it go away. But no matter how hard I try I can’t make it go away. But then I must really want it, otherwise I could make it go away, right?
What I see today is that Thurman, a Black man, saw that the tree was stunted by the poor environment it was living in. At the time I wrote my piece, I thought it was MY FAULT that I was unable to live as big a life as I knew I had the capacity for. Now I know that I was wounded by early events in my life, and that I still managed to do some of what was in me to do.