A Tale of Being Initiated into the Wisdom Circle of The Great Tree

"She (Wisdom) is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called happy." Proverbs

I am deeply moved by the 400 of us who signed up to Dance on Behalf of Peace. Dancing with others allows me to expand my prayer and engage my activism in healthy ways. If you read this between February 24 and 29 and want to participate at 5 pm Pacific time on any of those days, go to DanceonBehalfofPeace.org to register and receive the Zoom link.

I revised a section of my book Chasing the Dance of Life, which someone called “The InterPlay version of Eat, Pray, Love.” An admirer said, "These stories inspire me to move more ecstatically with the whole of my life and to find the joy in a time when carefulness monitors our every gesture. This is a counter-cultural choreography of hope!" I needed to reflect on my covenant with The Tree of Life.

Let me know what parts speak to you. It’s long…..

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On Being Initiated into the Wisdom Circle of The Great Tree

When I turned grey at age 35, I didn't realize my shiny grey hair was a hallmark of being an Initiate. I’d been given an assignment to hold dance and religion together and didn’t realize I would be pitched onto a wisdom path that asked me to heal my body in relation to my culture, leadership, and religion. It helped to be an artist and book smart, but I needed more. I needed guides, healers, psychics, and highly sensitive teachers who could help me navigate.

Like a detective, I prowled bookstores for those who knew the initiate's path. I found people like Flora Wuellner, Malidoma Some from Africa, Tibetan Lama Alexandra Neal-David, Edgar Casey, and Lousie Hay. When I read Drunvalo Melchizadek's The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life, I was glad I wasn't born in ancient Egypt as he commented on an initiation space where a novice was asked to face fear by going through something like this.

Instruction 1: Walk down a hall where you will learn to face your fear. Descend into a dark pool, then find a way out other than where you entered.

Initiate: Once underwater, looking for a way out; the initiate sees a passage, swims through, looks up, and sees light, a way out. See a crocodile. Swim past the crocodile and get out.  

Instruction 2: This is not the way out. Go back. Find another way. 

Initiate: Reenter the crocodile pool, descend, and seek another passage. Swim through and see the stairs leading up to "the other way out." 

Wisdom teachers of old required novices to master specific challenges, engage their shadow and fear of death, learn to wield their gifts and powers, and memorize, administer, and perform vast bodies of ritualized knowledge. This was called Secret Knowledge, and it was highly protected. The teacher's role included that of a trickster, leaving it entirely up to the individual to choose growth in the face of failure, the conundrums of humanity, death, and the Sacred Mysteries that unlock eternal power and connect people to the World Tree.

It didn't take me long to discover that The World Tree is universal. Buddha was enlightened under one. Sundancers offer the sacrificial dance around one. Celts worshiped amidst Great Trees. Indigenous people around the globe center the Tree in their ceremonies. The Jewish menorah is a tree. Even Christians activate a Tree as a Cross at the center of worship. 

The Torah opens at the foot of two trees, "Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every Tree that is pleasant to the sight and good food, the Tree of Life also in the midst of the garden, and the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil." After the snake incident, the Hebrew Bible continues, "God drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the Tree of Life." 

Unfortunately, Western, industrialized lifestyles have so demeaned and displaced indigenous, earth­‐body learning that it makes it doubly hard if you are called as an initiate of Wisdom. Many of us get stuck in a diagnosis or battle depression when we aren't seen, coached, and shown the path. 

Looking back, I'm profoundly grateful that the Tree of Life emerged from the mist to show me the way. I know I am not alone. Thousands of us around the world are being silently inducted into the Wisdom Council of the Great Tree. Vikki Hanchin, author of The Seer and the Sage: Revelations of a New Earth, was given this dream.

I dreamed that I was walking in the woods and saw ahead of me a tree, taller and more magnificent than all the others. I saw that there were youths gathered around it, and they had a ladder up against the huge trunk. I felt concerned and approached to look into the situation. When I got closer, I saw that they were angry adolescent males, climbing up and angrily shaking the branches of this magnificent Tree. 

I understood that they were angrily shaking the branches, trying to make the Tree give them apples- only it clearly wasn't an apple tree—it was the Tree of Life!! They had no idea they could get so much more from this Tree than apples…they could get the Life Force itself! As I understood this situation, the scene of the dream changed. 

Now, I was witnessing thousands and thousands of women emerging out of the woods, like a flooding river of women flowing forth, a river of women. I could "zoom-­‐in" to observe particular faces as the women poured forth from the woods. 

Watching, I understood that, as women, whether we were ready or not ready, whether we understood or did not understand, whether we had contributed or had not contributed-­‐-­‐-­‐it didn't matter…it was simply time, and we all were streaming out of the woods in masses of thousands, simply sufficient as we were, responding to a call. 

We all began gathering in a huge parking lot bordering the woods, connecting hands in a great circle, as women naturally want to do. But there were too many of us for the parking lot! More and more women were still arriving. The circle we were trying to form could not be contained by the man-­‐made parking lot. 

Then, one of the women opened the circle and began leading the women single file, all still holding hands from the circling process, and we came to an adjacent vast, open field. As we arrived in this Great Field, it was set up for us, ready, with thousands of ceremonial masks, painted in red, yellow, and blue-­‐-­‐the primary 

colors. The two 1/2-­‐feet high masks were propped upright and were adorned with brightly colored, beaded necklaces. These masks and necklaces covered the ground of this enormous Field, and we poured into this Field, each woman taking her place with a mask. 

I understood that this Field was the "Force and Field of Life" of the Great Mother, the eternal Sacred Feminine, holding the archetypal ancestral collective Wisdom of the feminine from all time. This vast Field was an energetic vortex prepared for us from the legacy of ancestral Feminine power, and it was able to hold all of us together. All we needed to "do" was to be present in this Field together in celebration.  

I understood that simply showing up en mass, with open hearts, and responding to the Call was sufficient to ground and anchor the Mother's Life Force energy for the birthing of the New Earth. Anything else we did was "icing." The Feminine was sufficiently anchored into the Earth for the necessary Shift because we showed up, responding to the Call. 

Then my alarm went off! The power and presence of this dream has stayed with me vividly! 

My first vivid encounter with the Tree of Life happened in 1979. On my first day of seminary I landed a part in a musical called OmegAlpha, a theater piece on The Book of Revelation. After rehearsal one day, a friend who was a reluctant visionary, Carol, told me she'd seen the Archangel Michael hovering near the ceiling at the back of the sanctuary. I believed her. The Archangel Michael is assigned to guard the Tree of Life. At the end of Revelation, the writer prophesies about a New City, at the center of which stands a Tree "with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations." Beneath this Tree, the book promises, "There shall no more be anything accursed." The Tree offers a new way of Life. I hope the angel was pleased.

The Tree of Life is more than a representational image. The Tree is Life itself, showing humanity how to bend, be grounded, hold our form, propagate, bear fruit, provide shelter, offer beauty worthy of praise, connect heaven and Earth, offer medicine, and die. The Tree of Life is in our implicit Design, dancing in everything. Psalm 1 would have us sing, "Blessed is the one who shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; their leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever they doeth shall prosper."  

To this day, the very last words of the book haunt me…. "and the leaves of the Tree are for the healing of the nations." 

What are these healing leaves? A Buddhist meditation teacher says that all the leaves in the forest represent the whole of knowledge, so much knowledge. A teacher gives the student just a handful of leaves and says, "This is all that I can give you, and this is all that you can hold. What is it in comparison with all the knowledge that there is in the whole forest! But this handful of leaves is enough. With it you have the key to the whole forest. You have all that you need." 

"We belong to Earth. We are alive. We are in balance."

Those carrying Tree Wisdom do not need to shout or go on and on about what is essential. They dance. An ecstatic song sung by the prophet Isaiah promises,

You shall go out with joy and be led forth in peace 
The mountains and the hills will break forth before you 
There will be shouts of joy and all the trees of the Field, 
The trees will clap their hands! 
The trees of the Field shall clap their hands 
The trees of the Field will clap their hands 
The trees of the Field will clap their hands 
When we go forth in joy. 

Unfortunately, in urban living, Tree Knowledge gets lost amidst technologies we create to manage and control Life. But, as Viccki's dream foretells, many are still finding the path that calls on the Great Tree. We find it in The Kabbalah, The Enneagram, and in indigenous wisdom like that of Lamedeer, who, in 12 principles, summarizes the Native American teachings of the World Tree. Each principle is a gate opening onto a path. He says, "It is for the traveler to step through the gate and begin the journey." "The only source of failure on a journey will be the traveler's own failure to follow the teachings of The World Tree." 

Megan Wagner wrote Awakening with the Tree of Life: Seven Initiations to Heal Body, Soul, and Spirit, guiding initiates to attend equally to all three systems of the Tree of Life, to ground our roots, strengthen our trunk, and reach out our branches for healing and wholeness. 

The roots represent the body with its physical and instinctual needs that must be honored and nurtured. They also represent the family matrix that undergirds and feeds your Tree from an underground source. Healthy roots stabilize the entire Tree, building a platform for a healthy trunk and branches. As you root your inner Tree, it is important to clear out the negative vibrational energy of the subconscious mind, heal trauma states, let go of negative thoughts, and shift out of ego consciousness. 

The trunk represents the individual that arises out of the complex root system. It symbolizes the heart and our need to express our truth and passion. With a robust individual focus, this sturdy trunk can become an effective vessel for Spirit, holding the weight of the branches as they fan out to a broader vision of Life. As you grow your trunk, it is essential to affirm your self-­worth, clear out any self-­‐doubt, and invite prosperity and abundance to come to you on all levels of being. As you send out positive, life-­‐affirming thoughts, you broadcast a frequency that attracts success and abundance into your Life. As you build a strong trunk, you utilize your gifts and discover your life purpose. 

The Tree's branches represent your wise, spiritual self and your yearning to branch out and connect with the Divine source and all of Life. Your branches can only flourish if healthy roots and trunk support them. Well-supported branches need spiritual practices, such as meditation or devotional chanting, to help your Spirit awaken fully and experience a deep connection to God, the Source, and the Divine. This can occur in many ways, depending on your chosen spiritual path. The Tree of Life model leaves it open to each individual to select a path to facilitate mystical union. Some choose a contemplative path, others a devotional one, others still, a body-centered path. 

The path is always embodied, ensouled, actively engaging imagination, dreams, and teachers. 

Looking back,I lacked an organic, unified map to navigate Life's unpredictable spiral. Although I went to seminary, studied, and taught others, I became a seeker so that I could grow out, up and down. Though I started in rocky soil, my gifts (branches) and creative will (trunk) still drove me toward the light.

"You were once wild here, don't let them tame you." Isadora Duncan

I was in my forties when I recognized that my purpose was to foster freedom. That is when visions and messages from the Tree of Life accelerated. I feel lucky to be open to creative pathways like dance, voice, image, story, and breath, portals that key initiates into the Motherboard of Imagination. (See Chapter One in The Art of Ensoulment Playbook)

There was the day in my dance studio when I playfully visualized that I took the institutional church out of my body. A huge medieval building appeared. At its cornerstone, I saw a Tree grow like a giant burl, The Tree of Life.  

Not long after, I dreamt that a Chinese master introduced me to my new teacher, a woman about my age named Kathy. As he departed, he gave me a final exercise. "Lean backward, past the point of holding yourself up. Then return to standing." I tried, but it was impossible. Then Kathy demonstrated, and I tried again. I leaned back and found muscles I'd never used, muscles outside of my body. As I pulled upright, the monks who were witnessing said, "Ooooh."  

Weeks later, at a retreat center dedicated to the Goddess Isis, artistic wildness splashed itself across the walls. Before waking, one morning I dreamt I heard someone knock on my bedroom wall.  

"Who is it? I asked the wall.

"Biblical logarithms," came the answer.  

That day, I asked everyone, "What's a biblical logarithm?" A guy talking to his wife on the phone in Minneapolis asked her," Honey, do you know what a biblical logarithm is?" She answered spontaneously from two thousand miles away, "That's easy. It's the sound of trees singing. Log-­‐a-­‐rhythm. Get it?" 

Consulting my friends about the dream, one suggested that people are the exoskeletal muscles that help one stand upright. Another wondered if the muscles outside our body are ancestors or ideas in our hearts yet to be birthed. She wrote, "Whatever the muscles are, they connect us in prophetic ways." A friend coincidentally named Kathy suggested that "being pulled upright by outside strength is a transition from power over introduced by masculine masters to power within demonstrated by feminine Wisdom. This requires trust." 

Anita, a Mennonite minister, downloaded the most prophetic words of all. 

Institutions and trees growing side by side are both organic living creatures, one more clearly organic from the Earth, which, for me, is a matriarchal, earth/body-­‐centered symbol. The building is more patriarchal, yet still organic, formed of and by people, a symbol of information, logic, reason, and intellect. We need both, that which is coming (the ancient body wisdom, the sacred earth traditions) and that which is beginning to crumble, because it doesn't work on its own anymore.  

Your work in institutions is not overtly confronting to the powers that be, yet subversive and powerful, nevertheless. They let you in the door to balance the yin/yang, masculine/feminine. Students are sent out into the "medieval" world of religion (the forms of institutionalized religion haven't really changed since then; even the Inquisition still goes on, maybe in more subtle ways). Starving for more earth/body-­‐centered ways, they, too, must find ways to become Bridgers. The next millennium will be the arena for powerful shifts in how we do religion/Spirit. 

The muscles outside the body strike me as what Gary Zukov, author of Seat of the Soul, calls multi-­sensory perception, the development of our eighth chakra and  beyond. It is the ability to communicate faster than our body can, a highly developed sense that allows people to become very advanced spiritually. If it were my dream, it could mean I'm moving into uncharted territories with lots of information about living in a world where reason, logic, and intellect are failing (how far we THINK the body can bend). We need to rely more on our extra-sensory spiritual muscles for the truth. If it were my dream, it could indicate moving into a place to receive information about the collective vision, dream, and hope for spiritual survival. 

Cynthia, it's a place you've been prepared for well. Bridging body-­spirit information in a world that doesn't know where to begin because they only know what they see, feel, and touch. You know both." 

The Tree of Life started showing up in my lungs, my brain, my hands. A midwife's daughter named Amber, who lived among Santa Cruz Mountain redwoods, enlightened me about the Tree in the placenta. 

On my windowsill, I have a placenta print. It’s a print on paper that my midwife made shortly after my daughter's birth. She pressed paper to the entire placenta, and the artwork was miraculous. It is a tree. The cord makes the trunk of the Tree, the veins are the ex-­‐tending branches, and the tissue becomes the leaves. The placenta is the most powerful organ known to humans; it has more functions and capabilities than any other, yet it is the only temporary organ. It triggers a momma's body to do what it must for the baby; it sustains the baby, while in the Mother, it carries all of the cellular communication between mom and baby. It then triggers lactation, and then its work is done. It creates, teaches, supports, sustains, nurtures, and then dies. We all were connected to this Tree. This Tree is where we came from. It was the first Tree to feed our bodies. I believe it carries psychic communication between our mothers and us. Is it any wonder I live in the Big Trees? Redwood trees grow in families and circles. The "fairy rings" of Redwood trees are held up by a community of roots. Underneath the ground, in the moist darkness, the roots of all the trees in the ring intertwine and weave together. Redwood trees also have the ability to grow from their wounds. When a tree gets a wound, a broken limb, or a cut in its' trunk, a swirling mass of wood forms over the wound called a "burl." This burl gives birth to new trees. Entire trees grow from wounds and support the trees they come from. 

Like Ezekiel's dry bones, my inner Tree was returning to Life. I witnessed the extrasensory communal muscles take on flesh. I couldn't see the Tree, but I felt more open to its Truth.

Another dream came where I was given a new spine. The Tree of Life wanted to me to stand in a new way. My body responded. For a while, I could barely open my legs as my scrum contracted. The connective tissue on the bottom of my right sole grew inflamed. In this season of holy legwork, I had to pay attention to grounding and support. My pelvis, legs, and feet changed as my spine and groin shifted. I leaned on trees for guidance. As the energy flowed through my legs and hips, my groin released. I was weightier but standing strong.

A Chinook Indian prayer says, "May all I say and all I think, be in harmony with thee. God within me, God beyond me, Maker of the Tree." Standing like a tree, roots dug down, branches wide and open, is more than good posture. Right relationship comes through the stands we take.  

The Latin word for stand, sistere, is found in consist–to stand with; insist–to stand in; resist–to stand against; persist–to stand through; and subsist–to stand under. These are all power stances. My favorite "standing" word is solidarity, meaning to stand alongside. That reminds me of the redwoods.

Gradually reborn as one fully herself, releasing illusions and memories that tie me to limiting promises of structure and security, I was on the path of freedom, standing down into my soles and legs in order to withstand Life's pain and pleasure.  

The initiations continued.

I was offered a psychic reading from a woman so sensitive that she had to live high on a mountain far away from people. She told me that when she looked, she saw an icy woman inside me. "A spirit from a northern lake is in you, perhaps summoned for protection." I noted the chilliness at my center. She suggested I rely instead on the dozens of little birds she saw surrounding my aura. She didn't know my primary community was the performance ensemble called Wing It!  

As I released my cold-shouldered too-coolness, the woman said, "One more thing. I am to tell you to follow a little green man into the woods to a large stump. Take amber. Eat mushrooms and sit on the stump for as long as you need." 

She was not hallucinating. Should I?

It wasn’t long before I recalled a family fable about the early ancestors who arrived in the U.S. and were said to have stayed in a fallen tree. The family name was Stumpf, German for stump. 

Another family story recounted a grandfather who fell from a beam at Delco Electronics in Indiana. To avoid the hospital, he went to the mountains. They say he never got "out of the woods after his fall." His tombstone reads, "He loved mountains." Meanwhile, his son, my dad, took as his favorite occupation, running through forests, clearing trails, and directing 100-mile mountain races. 

Tree medicine is in my bloodline. Ancest-TREE!

Seeking freedom, I found myself in the living room of Selah, she of The Body Electric. Selah restores Kundalini energy, the life force that runs up and down one’s trunk. Early trauma and "good girl" training still deadened the sexual center in my hips. Selah invited me into a breathing exercise called "the big draw," where you let yourself fall down into a long inhale, exhale, and follow that with twenty quick breaths. Ending with a long hiss, contracting into my pelvis, I released and offered love to my groin. Laying still, my arm resting over my face, I looked up and saw The Great Tree above, sheltering me in its roots.  

"You shall go out with joy and be led forth in peace, the mountains and the hills will break forth before you, there will be shouts of joy and all the trees of the Field, the trees will clap their hands."  

Trees singing. Trees dancing. If songs were jewels, I'd hang Betsey Rose's folk song around my neck and never take it off. I've taught it everywhere I go, as it gives people relief.

Standing like a tree with my roots dug down 
My branches wide and open 
Down comes the sun, down comes the rain, 
Up comes the Life to a heart that is open to be 
standing like a tree. 

In the summer, teaching at an organic apple farm in Mendocino County called Oz Farm, I was awakened in the night by a bat. In the pitch black, my cabinmate, a Benedictine liturgical artist, and I found a broom. While she waved it around, I began to ruminate on another bat flailing around in my mind. 

I told my cabinmate that a Jewish woman had taken me aside that day to tell me she resented me, saying that InterPlay felt more Christian to me than many churches. She wanted no part of a Christian group! I didn’t yet understand why this was so offensive. But, knowing I’d deeply offended her, I wondered out loud, "Is InterPlay my church? My co-founder and I intentionally avoided theological language and imagery in creating InterPlay. As artists, we wanted our approach to be useful to anyone who wanted to put body, mind, heart, and Spirit together again in a creative way. Still, we were products of our culture, and I was ordained.”

My cabinmate peered under my bed, bat broom in hand, and responded, "So, you think of yourself as ordained?"

Her question took me further off guard. Sure, I taught at a protestant seminary and led church conferences, but I usually worked in sweatpants or dance shoes, not in a clergy robe. Most of my friends were theological gypsies in search of wisdom that is hard to come by in most religious institutions, especially if you are queer, a dancer, or a sensitive outcast.

Was I ordained? 

I never wanted to be set apart. Ordination seemed like a male invention designed to decrease mutuality in relationships. As a minister taught not to befriend church members, to keep my hands off people, and to avoid being too poetic or personal when preaching, I rebelled. For me, ordination was a union card that helped authorize me to share my message about reuniting body and soul in the church.  

Nonetheless, the question of ordination turned on a light. The church might not be a suitable container for InterPlay. The world was. Ordination did not embody the common ground I needed. Was I willing to create common ground? If thoughts like "I am a pastor" or "my work is ministry" are codified in my flesh, could I take them out? I put my "psychic fingers" around the thought of ordination. Pulling it out of my head and placing it in front of me, I saw Gothic arches, altars, and inscriptions. Once my head cleared, I invited a more personal spiritual architecture to show itself. A lanai appeared, an airy, tropical, unenclosed shelter open to land, leaf, and sky. I took a deep breath as my head and heart began to breathe again.

The bat finally flew out from under the bed, and my roommate swept it out the door with a pragmatic whoosh. Why not sweep outgrown identities out the door like bats?

I began to change my Christian vows. I traded in words like pastor, ministry, call, protestant, Christian, and church for friend, community, work, playmate, and humanity. I staked out a playground that stays closer to the body, nature, and Life. But, ordination was still in place. The whisk of a broom can't undo something God and the community bind together. 

I love the divine irony of altering my relationship with Christian ministry at an organic apple farm called Oz. Like Isaac Newton's apple, a thought fell from the Tree on a particular day and changed my view of reality.  

I grew uncomfortable in church. Reading Susanne Langer’s masterful work, Philosophy in A New Key, she reminded me that the power of architecture is that it creates an "ethnic domain." Worship isn't just personal. It is a communally embodied culture. 

Where is the culture that instills the values of the Tree and Dance of Life?

Visiting the Swiss church of Protestant reformer John Calvin, one witnesses the resulting ethnic cleansing of Catholic imagery from the building. He stripped the gilded, baroque images from the sanctuary walls. Color was banished. He installed pews so that people could hear the man preach his sermons in his effort to return biblical authority to people. New forms of idolatry were instituted in a monotheistic, monotone monotony. Mono. Mono. Mono. Dance and pageantry got banished to the streets, woods, and that welcoming venue, the pub. Protestants lost their sacred dance, oblivious to the fact that, in Hebrew, "Word" means enfleshed action. Incarnation!

Meanwhile, St Francis, the Catholic saint, abandoned his buildings altogether. Earth was his Mother. Simplicity was his path. So it was with the Franciscans, at least for a while.

I moved my spiritual practice outside to Redwood Park in the Oakland hills.. There a walking path meanders along a stream at the bottom of a ravine and arrives in a redwood grove where the sign says "Old Church." Nineteenth-century loggers decimated the old-growth forest there and set up a logging camp. The remains of the logger's chapel, a concrete cruciform foundation, was next to a footbridge that crossed over to an amphitheater with elegantly arched California bays and redwood spires.

I began leading monthly pilgrimages to the Old Church. In small groups, we walked silently, soaking up the nourishing quiet of trees, birds, sky, and dirt. Upon arrival, we rested for twenty minutes until we reacclimated. Then, I led a simple warm-­up with an invitation to walk, stop, run, dance, sing, breathe, and tell stories. We created shrines and portals among the trees to reconnect our hearts to Earth. Through the seasons, we attuned to nature's synchronous offerings. Once, a hummingbird played on my shoulder. On another occasion, when we were joined by an indigenous student, an eagle flew five feet over our heads. Even in December's pouring rain, we met Earth where she was, muddy and wet. The honest beauty of animals, leaves, and weather convinced us again that nature is a divine sage. The Old Church became a sacred home. Each time, after playing, we walked to our cars, sharing casual talk and friendship. An easy stroll amidst nature's beauty. Is this not an image of the Garden of Eden? Why don't we do this more often?  

Finally, the psychic's instructions happened, "Go into the woods and take Amber.” I headed off to the Redwoods with my friend Amber, who wanted to show me a mother tree that lived on Redwood Empire Timber Company land. Locals referred to her as The Blessing Tree. 

I gathered several beloved companions and drove to meet her off a highway near a Timber Company sign that said, "No Trespassing." My thoughts flashed on Julia Butterfly Hill, who took up residence in the limbs of an unprotected redwood tree. I admired her. 

The group followed Amber, trudging down hills and jumping over muck. Then, around a corner, we saw the mother tree standing and waiting, vast and silent. Like many great redwoods, she had lived through fire. On one side, she was open, black, and hollow. One by one, we entered her trunk, saying, "It feels different in here."  

We sang songs and shared our reason for coming. When it was my turn, I blurted out, "I came to be ordained by the tree." As I stood at her massive base, overcome, afraid of the trouble a vow can cause, I wondered if I was ready to be another Julia Butterfly Hill. I got on my knees and asked the Tree, what should I do?

"It doesn't work that way," I heard. She only wanted connection.

The covenant with the Tree was all grace. When I told Amber this, she said, "You were called into the tree, quiet, very quiet, boundaries blurring, the sound of the trees singing, merging, one strong body, becoming the body that stretches between earth and heaven." 

Then Amber entered the Tree and squatted inside, feeling the energy fill her up. Flowing upward into infinite dark blue, arm branches reaching upward outward, Amber received this blessing. 

This is a safe, loving, wise, body 
This is a safe, loving, wise, mother 
This is a safe, loving, wise, father 
Embrace. Breathe. Welcome home. 

Months later, Amber told me that a pre-­harvest inspection team of timber operators, foresters, and Fish and Game employees planned to inspect the land around the Blessing Tree. Local people were increasing their visits and prayers at the Tree. In a small niche inside her, on my behalf Amber hung a rosemary herbal heart with a small heart inside. There was already a tiny circular candle, a rune stone meaning gateway, a scroll of prayers, a goddess, and a shell. Flower petals pooled and spilled from The Blessing Tree onto the ground.

When the day came for the inspection, the team approached the Tree. Someone gasped, "There's a shrine in one of these trees! We can't let these trees be cut down." There was no further discussion. The inspection team took their report to the Board of Supervisors, and in front of hundreds of local people, miraculously, the Redwood Empire Timber Company agreed not to cut in that area. 

You shall go out with joy and be led forth in peace 
The mountains and the hills will break forth before you 
There will be shouts of joy and all the trees of the Field, 
The trees will clap their hands! 
The trees of the Field shall clap their hands 
The trees of the Field will clap their hands 
The trees of the Field will clap their hands 
When we go forth in joy. 

Creative Prompts

Take a moment and draw your body as a tree. What do you notice?

Using the Motherboard of Your Imagination, notice, journal, and ritualize ways you

• Root your Tree in good soil 

• Root your Tree in instinctive soil 

• Root your Tree in ancestral soil 

• Grow the trunk of your Tree 

• Strengthen the trunk of your Tree 

• Grow the branches of your Tree 

• Bring forth fruit 

Imagine yourself before the Great Tree as you read Lamedeer's summary of the Native teachings of the World Tree. 

Next, read them aloud to the Tree. 

Read them once again as a promise to your body. 

1. Wholeness -­‐ All things are interrelated. Everything in the universe is a part of a single whole. Everything is connected in some way to everything else. It is, therefore, possible to understand something only if we can understand how it is connected to everything else. 

2. Change -­‐ All of creation is in a state of constant change. Nothing stays the same except for the presence of cycle upon cycle of change. One season falls upon the other. Human beings are born, live their lives, die, and enter the spirit world. All things change. There are two kinds of change. The coming together of things (development) and the coming apart of things (disintegration). Both of these kinds of changes are necessary and are always connected to each other. 

3. Changes Occur In Cycles Or Patterns -­‐ They are not random or accidental. Sometimes, it is difficult to see how a particular change is connected to everything else. This usually means that our standpoint (the situation from which we are viewing the change) is limiting our ability to see clearly. 

4. The Seen And The Unseen -­‐ The physical world is real. The spiritual world is real. These two are aspects of one reality. Yet, there are separate laws that govern each of them. Violation of spiritual laws can affect the physical world. Violation of physical laws can affect the spiritual world. A balanced life is one that honors the laws of both of these dimensions of reality. 

5. Human Beings Are Spiritual As Well As Physical 

6. Human Beings Can Always Acquire New Gifts, But They Must Struggle To Do So. The timid may become courageous, the weak may become bold and strong, the insensitive may learn to care for the feelings of others and the materialistic person can acquire the capacity to look within and to listen to her inner voice. The process human beings use to develop new qualities may be called "true learning."

7. There Are Four Dimensions of "True Learning" -­‐ These four aspects of every person's nature are reflected in the four cardinal points of the Sacred Circle. These four aspects of our being are developed through the use of our volition. It cannot be said that a person has totally learned in a whole and balanced manner unless all four dimensions of her being have been involved in the process. 

8. The Spiritual Dimension Of Human Development May Be Understood In Terms Of Four Related Capacities 

  • First, the capacity to have and to respond to realities that exist in a non-­‐material way such as dreams, visions, ideals, spiritual teachings, goals and theories. 

  • Second, the capacity to accept those realities as a reflection (in the form of symbolic representation) of unknown or unrealized potential to do or be something more or different than we are now. 

  • Third, the capacity to express these nonmaterial realities using symbols such as speech, art, or mathematics. 

  • Fourth, the capacity to use this symbolic expression to guide future action – action directed toward making what was only seen as a possibility into a living reality. 

9. Human Beings Must Be Active Participants in The Unfolding Of Their Own Potentialities 

10. The Doorway Through Which All Must Pass If They Wish to Become More Or Different Than They Are Now Is The Doorway Of The Will (Volition) -­‐ A person must decide to take the journey. The path has infinite patience. It will always be there for those who decide to travel it. 

11. Anyone Who Sets Out (i.e. Makes A Commitment And Then Acts On That Commitment) On A Journey Of Self-­development Will Be Aided -­‐ There will be guides and teachers who will appear, and spiritual protectors to watch over the traveler. No test will be given that the traveler does not already have the strength to meet. 

12. The Only Source of Failure on a Journey Will Be the Traveler's Own Failure to Follow the Teachings of The World Tree.

Would you rather be a tree? Kierra N. Toney shared her Tree Poem in Spoken Black Girl Magazine. The third section reminds Initiates in the Wisdom Circle of The Great Tree that for all of us "She (Wisdom) is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called happy."

I think I’d rather be a tree. 
To stand in my bareness, effortlessly secure. 
Remarkable in any light. 
Enriched by the world in the way it ought to be for each living thing. 
Embellished by my age and experiences. 
To give and to receive without expectation. 
To be nurturing and nurtured without doubt. 
To have a place that is mine in the world,
in a system which knows it needs me and I it.
To be timeless. 
Rigidly planted yet open to entertain the push and pull of the wind.
Rightfully proud to be as big as I am meant to be. 
Earnestly believing that when my time is done, I’ve done all I was born to do. 
Expecting when that season comes, as it inevitably will, to 
elegantly fall back into the earth to await my next assignment.