It is odd, the tales one hears when ears are kept open. Yet odder still are the adventures that such tales can lead to.
Who am I to be certain of such things? I shall tell you; yet before I begin, I shall tell you something else. I write it more from obligation than desire; for it is advice that I never followed, and it was my disregard that sealed my own fate within this adventure. But if you are as I was, once, and wish to keep adventures far from your door, you will do well to heed my warning.
It is this:
Be careful what you listen to.
For if you listen long enough--
and deep enough--
Your heart may hear things that it finds are rather curious.
And once that has happened,
no matter how hard you try,
You cannot stop your life from changing forever.
* * *
For some while, I have heard of a legend. It is new enough for many to remember it, yet long-ago enough for more still to forget it; and I may safely assure you that I am among the remembering ones. For how could I forget what has changed my life? Yet I do not fail to understand how it could be forgotten -- its subject is not grand, nor its description clear, nor the telling of it readily understood.
For, you see, it is not the legend of a hero. It is not the legend of a romance. It is not the legend of a treasure, nor of kings or of slaves; nor war nor peace; nor of sadness, nor even of hope.
It is the legend of a Tree. And in that, it is the legend of all of them and none of them. Have I confused you now? Excellent. Then you will understand me, for I have understood you; and I have never understood you better than in the moment that I first heard of the Tree -- and felt, for the least fleeting and most confusing of moments, as though I understood nothing in the world at all.
I was not told of the Tree. That is to say, I was not told properly; I first heard of it in passing, the barest of mentions in the scarcest of conversations, of which I was neither a part, nor (I am certain) a welcome listener. Yet I could not help what I heard, for as I passed by with a mind intent on other things, the whispered words fell into the stillness and flung themselves against my heart, setting themselves to beat and batter upon its doors for all they were worth. This was not so utterly impressive, for at the time the words were not worth much: there were only three of them, and never for all of that had I heard more odd a pairing. Yet it was that which first kindled my curiosity, and those words which named to me the thing that came, at last, to consume me wholly and utterly with one tiny stirring of their flame:
The Love Tree.
I did not know why the words sparked an ember within me; all I knew was the warm, white flame that seared within my chest when first I heard them. I did not know what they meant, and much less if they bore any importance. Yet I knew, in a strange, half-certain sort of way, that the words were of some great importance to me. I, who knew them the least and the most lovelessly, caught swiftly by some deep desire to turn my least into greatness, and my lovelessness into ardence.
And so it was that I began to listen. You may see how ill I heeded my own advice: for as I listened, my heart was not long to latch itself; and as listening turned to asking and asking to seeking, I became more intimately acquainted with both desire and devastation than ever I had been in my short life. There was hope, great hope, that built itself into a tower of longing upon which I leaned more heavily each moment someone would offer me word of the Tree. And it was that tower that sustained me, its bricks which I molded painstakingly and stacked one by one with my own failing fingers. Ever the tower grew, ever it strengthened; yet each time it would fall, crumbling into a thousand heartwrenching pieces each time these three words tumbled out to counter my own precious three, piercing through the webbings of my hope-spun heartache and baring the wound beneath:
"I don't know."
No one knew. I did not know, and it was that which broke my heart each time I met someone the same. Yet what pained me was that we were not the same: many had heard of the tree, and in that manner I gathered some small amount of legend; yet no one knew. And though in that we were no different, we altered from one another in one matter at least -- the matter of wanting to know. No few believed that the Tree held some great meaning; still others spoke of its fruit, and the most of the many spoke of its great beauty. Yet though my heart raced and fell with each new thing learned and old thing respoken, it soon became painfully, blindingly clear that those who spoke of the tree had little desire, if any at all, to turn their collecion of tattered hearsay into anything more close to Truth, And I began myself to believe that I, as many others, would finish my days in the tumbled-downs of my tower, never finding nor laying eyes upon the beautiful Tree.
Until finally, I met someone who had.
So strange was our meeting—I knew, merely by looking, that if not the Love Tree, he had found something infinitely better. He said nothing at first, spoke of no pleasures or accomplishments, shared no deep happiness…in truth, I would not have called him happy at all, though it was clear to me that he held a very deep sort of joy. Ask me not how I knew this; for if you did, I could not answer. His manner was not extraordinary, and yet it was different; his face was not remarkable, and yet its expression captured my gaze and left me quivering where I stood, beneath the gaze he returned to me.
“Is there something you wish to ask me?”
His voice was not amused, nor harsh, nor tender. It was sincere. I wondered, fleetingly, how he could know my thoughts; and then I realized that if he had sought the Tree himself, he, too, had known the longing. Yet when I met his eyes, I wondered how this could be so. In his gaze was the opposite of desire, the reverse of longing: for the expression there was of such peace, I felt that he could not have known want or desire for ages on end.
And yet I knew… it was not the look of someone who had never longed. It was the look of one whose deepest, most desperate longing has been gloriously fulfilled.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, there is.”
* * *
When I left on my journey, I knew not what to expect. All I had been told was that I would face miles and days and years of seeking, of danger and of pain, of joys unspeakable and sorrows indescribable. All this I faced, and more. Yet still I went on. For inches and miles, days and years, mornings and evenings that rose and fell in their never-ending, glorious, dizzying circle, I kept on. And though I could not say the weariness did not pain me, and that the loneliness of the journey did not stab at my heart like a never-dulling knife—for it did—less than that could I forget the words of the man who had told me my way, or the peace upon his face when he had said them.
…And now, finally, my journey has ended. What I faced in it I cannot tell you, for each one’s story is his own. But I will tell you this: what I encountered on the last mountain, risen to a height above all the others I had climbed. It loomed before me, a cruel, leering mockery of my weariness. I could not see the top of it. All I knew was that it was there, and I must go on; and somehow, that was all that mattered.
So I climbed. For days and years I climbed, and for days and years again. By the time I had reached halfway, I knew I was utterly spent. This theory, however, was disproven when I had climbed half the remaining distance: I knew then that I had been stretched to the limit, for my strength was gone. Once more after this I paused to reevaluate my perspective, and discovered that I must again prove past reasoning faulty: now I really could go no further—and, by then, I had reached the top.
The summit may have been beautiful. I surely noticed at the time, but I cannot remember it now. Yet this does not bother me. For what I do remember, and which is emblazoned upon my memory, is what stood before me there. I did not recognize it at first. And when I did, my heart lurched with pain.
It was not a beautiful tree. It was beaten and rugged, weatherworn and old. Its bark had been hacked from it, its leaves and branches stripped off and crushed underfoot. Never had I, nor have I since, seen anything more abused, more broken. But still it remained, enduring there at the end of my journey: the tree I had sought for so long.
Sorrow. My insides were twisted with it: deep, wretched, lurching sorrow. But my sadness was not because the Tree was any less than I expected it to be—no, this could not be, for as I looked at it, I knew that it was far, far more. Suddenly I realized that everyone who had told of the tree had been wrong; desperately, awfully wrong…and yet, they had also been right. For the treasure of the Tree was not the meaning of one thing alone—the Tree was all-encompassing. Every blessed, sorrowful, lovely, wretched matter of life traced a trail back to the shadow of the Love Tree, where life itself truly did find its meaning.
And it was this meaning that I, finally, had found.. The realization brought forth a torrent of emotions within my heart—joy, wonder, and exultation, still tinged with the grief I felt at the tree’s utter brokenness. But even this was being tugged at, as if being urged, begged, to change. And as I looked again, I realized—if the tree was not so broken, it would not be so beautiful.
My sorrow slipped away into the well of delight that burst forth in my heart, being swirled off into nothingness, along with every ounce of hatred and fury I had ever known. For a few glorious moments I knew the cleansing as the ugly and the beautiful dissolved into one torrent of whiteness, of brilliance, and then—
Peace.
* * *
My journey ended that day. And, at long last, my life truly began.
For finally I have seen the Love Tree for myself. And beneath the ancient, rusted nails that once pierced the hands of the greatest lover of all, the wood is stained crimson with blood.
- Penned by Sparrow
October 11, 2010
October 11, 2010
4 missives:
That was beautiful, Dear One. It's different for all of us, as you said, but the point isn't so much the journey as the result - the place where we are brought to the Love Tree and fling ourselves upon it by the grace of God, and where the Lover, the Saviour, becomes all in all to us.
Dear'st Sparrow... You have done the sweetest, kindest thing one person may ever do for another - you have taken my face in your hands, and gently turned it towards Christ. I love you - and that's not just the "d'aww, ain't she cute" sort of fluffy love - but Love unending and overflowing and unstoppable in its fierceness and tenderness - Love that makes all things new - Love that was not of my making, yet I may call my own... By watching you grow, I myself am grown a little more - how good the Father is to us! How skillful His hands!
"It was not the look of someone who had never longed. It was the look of one whose deepest, most desperate longing has been gloriously fulfilled."
Awwsh. My heart. It aches.
Really at first, I expecting some fantasy tale or the like. It was that good! But then, I traveled along and I began to see what sort of story? Post? this was. And the tree... It was beautiful, beautifully broken. I think I shall give this story some time to think upon it. Then come read it again I'm sure I get even more of out of it next time. I love you this story, thank you most heartily for gigging it to us, and for the beauty of it.
Lilly
This is a truly special story. I loved reading it. It reminds me of how Max Lucado writes. Thank you.
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