Messages from the Trees That Fall

This post was actually inspired by a post from my my For Your Writing & Creative Inspiration Series as well as my #31Days Series: Silence - One of Passion's Greatest Secrets

It is just an example of how experiencing these prompt and personal growth blog posts even help their own creator.

I hope you'll take a few moments to read this post as well as the others. My guess is you'll be inspired as well. -- JJS

“When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder.”

Maya Angelou

September 30, 2011 was the day one of the Giant Sequoia trees at the Sequoia National Monument fell, much to the surprise – and fear and horror and delight – of tourists who were visiting the park that day.

I didn’t see it until the following Summer. I was touring about with a brand new friend and couchsurfer from New York. There it rested, across the carefully constructed path. I was at first very upset to see people climbing on it and poking at it and prodding it. This giant tree was “born” only a couple centuries after Christ.

This giant tree had been living at this spot since centuries before the Magna Carta was signed or the Vikings sailed toward this undiscovered to Europeans world. It lived through the dark ages, the renaissance, the revolutions of France, of America, of Mexico. Its fall was not predicted by scientists or naturalists or scholars.

It simply happened.

Nothing could have prevented it.

Nothing could have created a safety net for hikers and sightseers from around the world.

The people who were there were able to get out of the way. They were able to grab their cameras to at least capture the aftermath.

I would have loved to have heard how it sounded.

In the Valley below, my life was shuddering from its roots to the tips of my ears and on the hair down my back that day. It was one of the absolute worst days of my life. I usually avoid thinking about it and yet ever since I made the connection I have been slightly in awe and am reminded, always, of the divine orchestration of events which seem to coincide with a message especially for me.

I feel rocked and cradled in these messages: the tree fell so that I would feel at peace with what I felt was my own failing.

I feel loved in these messages: when trees fall, others learn what to do. They don't condemn, they say, "Wow, I never imagined this... and now, what is the best way to handle it?"

I only know and integrate these messages when I am aware. I only know and integrate these messages when I step out of my normal routine to take a detour into “something different.” I only know and integrate these messages when I make the space for them to come through, outside the loud bickering of “to-do-lists” and the “there-is-never-enough-time” demons.

“When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder.”

Allow yourself to hear and feel these events that want more than anything to press upon your heart and spirit, to reach into your life and beg you to take notice and then take action, passionately and differently than you have in the past.

You are new now. You are changed. You are fine tuned to the divine love which is always there, with you.

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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

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