on trees & slow learning
there’s a tree that I love that I live a nine-hour car ride away from. I met this tree in the beginning of 2021, a beautiful redwood that had its base burned out, carved open so you could sit inside it and look up at its bark. I’m still so young in my relationship to trees. But I’ve heard from folks who have a much more established relationship with trees and with fire, that fire can actually be quite good for redwoods, that the burn is part of the regeneration and the growth of something new.
(this wholesome ass photo of me, Reva, Irma and Khaleb and a different tree)
In my own spiritual work, something that I’ve been really learning about is how the plant kingdom and trees are some of our oldest living relatives. How deep their knowledge base is, how much they elder us, how much wisdom they have. And we, humans, do things like press cement and concrete to their roots, limit the space that they are in, box them in and tear them down. To me, it’s very reflective of the ways that dominant society treats our elders, our keepers of the most sacred knowledge—as an inconvenience, something to be ran over and caged to make life easier for everyone else. And it’s so incredibly sad.
When I first met this tree I was so struck by it—it’s majesty, its capability to hold its scarring as well as its new growth, to make a home for so many creatures to live, and how long it had been on this earth—living, learning, being. I felt really comforted in being around the tree, in spending time near it, praying with it and near it, and visiting it. I was near it for a few days and then I left.
But I still thought about the tree a lot. And in some of my deep prayer and trauma work, I would think of that tree when I needed comfort, and also when I needed a portal to the upper worlds, to some of my journeys that lay beyond this realm. From afar I continued to develop a deep relationship to this particular tree. And for most of the time that I was developing that relationship, I thought that it was one sided relationship of adoration—that I was thinking about the tree, using it in prayer, and loving it from afar, but that the tree perhaps hadn’t really registered me, had forgotten about me, wasn’t really checking for me.
At the end of last year, I was back on the land where the tree lives for a week. Leading up to the week I envisioned that I was going to spend a lot of time with the tree, as I had the last time that I was there. There was a ritual that came to me in a dream that I was supposed to do for the tree—I imagined it as long and ornate and deep. However, when I got there—this time was different. I was on the land for a program and had less free time than I had thought, it was raining and very cold so my time outdoors was a bit more limited, and I was there with my partner and friends, and moving in relationship with them as well. It got to the point where I didn’t really spend any time with the tree except for when I was on my way out, when I ran to it and spent a somewhat distracted five to ten minutes with it before driving off. My ritual was fast and a bit rushed.
When I got back to LA, I was struck by how sad and disappointed I was with myself for not spending more time with the tree, and how even when I was with the tree how distracted I was—worrying about leaving, worrying about if my partner and friends were okay with me taking some time to go do something that I needed to do for myself, just worrying about a list of stuff that kept me distracted from this moment, and being present with this beautiful being that I had spent two years building a relationship with from afar. I felt, in a lot of ways, like a bit of a failure. I cried to my partner and my friend Reva about how I was feeling, and both of them were very supportive. They also offered me their own beautiful stories of engaging with loving elders, and how sometimes as young people we’re meant to go live our lives and joy and be, and that is what our elders want for us, even as they love us with such deep sturdiness and steadfast care. It was very beautiful and helpful, and made me think about what it means to love with such deep rootedness that it removes anxiety or the need to prove anything about love or the need to control how you love someone or how they love you—loving someone with enough freedom to let them (and you) live your life to the fullest.
At the end of January, I was in Peru, with entirely different trees. I touched one and then I saw the image of the redwood I love so much, and felt like it was speaking to me so clearly on an energetic level. It was showing me how to root down, how to stand tall, how to love with an ever-present sturdiness even as change was moving all around me. I was so moved that this tree chose to try and share this knowledge with me, that even when I was in a completely different country, it found a way to get through to me, to love me with such spaciousness and sturdiness. And that my relationship and kinship to this tree wasn’t one-sided, that it too had loved me, had felt me, thought of me, and could feel my love for it, even with such distance and distraction.
For the last two weekends, I’ve had the beautiful opportunity to sit with holding space, and being held in space, with a loved one in an entirely different way than I knew how before. These moments were so sacred and healing in ways I’m still in awe of, and still trying to find the words for. In preparing for this moment, my teacher told me and the other person involved something along the lines of how we wanted to approach this moment loving like a tree—with half of us rooted deeply in the earth, and half of us standing tall in our own sky. As soon as they said that I saw the image of the Redwood again, and felt what it had been showing me energetically in January. It was almost as though it knew I was going to need this knowledge, and that it had, very slowly, over the course of months, been gently showing me and getting me ready to do this journey, to love in this way.
I’ve been so struck, in the moments where I’ve been lucky enough to develop relationships to plants, trees, mountains, water, and nature, the different speeds at which they communicate. How slow and rippling they can be. And how my impatient human self tries to move faster, quicker, analytically—when really so much of what I perceive them to be teaching me and communicating with me is energetic, spiritual, and of the body—not of the mind.
When I was in college, I had a professor (shout out Professor Corey Walker) who would talk to us about decolonizing philosophy, and the world views and biases inherent in philosophical thinking. And how one of the premiere ideas in western/ colonized (re: white) philosophy is Descarte’s idea of ‘I think, therefore I am.’ How deeply that privileges the mind and the conceit of analytics as the basis of humanity. And how, so much of western cultures are oriented around this, to the point where the idea of who can think is policed, limited, and debated in order to control the status quo of who can be a human. Because if dominant society can limit who has the right to think, they can also limit who has the right to be seen as human.
An alternative in decolonization theory, is Fanon’s idea of – “Oh my body, make of me always a man who questions!” And this idea that from the body, from the spiritual and energetic knowledge of the body, comes the hope and longing of the practice of thought, and specifically, the practice of questioning. That to question is central to our evolution and growth, as is they deep prayer to always value and put into practice that questioning, and that is only possible with a body. So with a body, we actualize our humanness, our spiritual evolution, our ability to change, our ability to grow.
Of course—there are so many debates from dominant society and also policing in dominant society of who gets to have a body, and what bodies count. But there’s also deep historical evidence of colonized societies extracting labor and resources from the bodies of those they colonize—therefore recognizing their value as bodies and labor, but not as humans who can think. And Fanon’s articulation subverts that hierarchy, by saying that only from the body can we muster the courage to question and to think, and to practice a sustained prayer and value structure where we return to this value or questioning.
Recently, my friend Irma shared with me and my partner a quote from her mentor, Wayne Shorter (rest in power). In discussing the spiritual practice of value creation from their Buddhist practice, of actively practicing the values that you say you believe in at every moment you can (even when it’s hard), he stated, “if you’re not practicing [what you value], then what’s practicing you?”
In my own spiritual work, I’ve often been struck by the deep ways I’ve been humbled by how overanalyzing or overintellectualizing things isn’t going to get me where I need to go—it often only results in mental entrapment, self-policing and suffering for me. Instead, I’ve been shown again and again that I need to lead from the body, that I need to move from my energetic and spiritual center to do the work that I’m being asked to do. Something I’m humbled by, is it seems to me that the trees and the earth know this too, that they’ve been so patient with me in trying to show me this, over and over. Oh, my body, make of me always a them that questions. Ya, Allah, make it so.