VIEW FROM A TREE

José has come this morning to cut down an 180’ tree that looms over our cottage, blocking the sun as it beams its morning light through dense branches and out over the water to the geese, impossibly loud in their frantic conversation. It’s as if they know that something is coming or perhaps that it has already transpired. Something to shout about, apparently. Something worthy of commotion.

I had thought last night that I should like to be absent from what is coming, the anticipation and something like dread welling up inside me—

as if I were the one making the climb,

as if I were the one facing something simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.

Yet, José is not only willing but seemingly eager to get on with his inevitable task.

I catch myself imagining that his is a frame suited for climbing, muscular, but only as much as necessary for the strength and endurance it will take.

I fight the urge to ask him to port my cell phone with him for taking pictures at the top. I envy that his eyes will take in the vastness of unending pines, the places where eagles nest, where spindly branches meet eternal sky.

His is treacherous business. I wonder if he, like me, had difficulty sleeping last night. Anticipation, good or bad, is agony and I wonder if his is more sickly or sweet.

To suspend, up where few have been. To gaze, out where chaos melts away.

A solemn joy. I imagine this is what it must be like.

What. It. Must. Have. Been. Like—

Did He glance down at his familiar leather sandals? No, those would have been removed when they drove nails into his feet.

Did his eyes hungrily seek out those of his mama’s? Or was he too agonized to think?

Would he have admired those last glimpses of cascading meadows, or in concentration over breath?

Would he have hung his head in disappointment, or sought the view of Heaven in His death?  

Few people in all the world deny his existence. Or that he hung from the pieces of wood lashed together in perpendicular fashion of the day.

But for what purpose? The limits of our own humanity make it nearly inconceivable to imagine or even say.

How extraordinary that I must will myself to simply remain.

Yet, I am not the one climbing—

I am not the one inching my way to the heavens with every breathless gasp,

I am not the one splintered and bloodied,

I am not the one questioning my stamina,

I am not the one designed for the task.

But can I simply remain?

To be brave enough to watch? Brave enough to stand?

Today, the battle will be forged in a towering Pine that has seen 100 years of comings and goings—of lake and eagles, sky and dirt.

In another lifetime, it was Dogwood that cradled the labor and struggle of a different kind—

how remarkable that the Pine symbolizes immortality

while the Dogwood signifies rebirth.

I may never experience the view from the top of a tree.

But I promise to remain. To experience the loss. To celebrate the gain.

And through the experience I will be changed. Forever changed.

1 Corinthians 1:18—For the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.