This morning, I draw a card from my Faeries Oracle deck (this is a very cool deck by Brian Froud). It is The Oak Men, a lovely card, telling me to go speak to a wise old tree. I happen to have one of those. It’s a spirit tree—an oak in fact—that lives in my back yard. Notice I said spirit tree—only I can see it. I climbed up into its generous branches and lie down. I think, everything I need is right here. My tree always gives me gifts and shelter and insight, consolation, protection—what more do I need?
Well, my tree says, that’s true, but there is something I cannot give you—ordinary life experience. Physical reality. That is the world you live in, and you must engage with it and live it and trust it to feed you things I cannot possibly give you.
I look up into its beautiful curly-cue branches. The ground shakes, the wind blows. The branch I rest on reaches its finger-like ends around me and pulls me snugly against the trunk. Then, the wind subsides. The earth calms, and all is quiet.
So here is the message—another hidden secret: I am here in this physical world—for now. And I must live it to the fullest with all its ordinary frustrations. And when the winds blow wild and the earth rattles below me like a train that’s left the track, I will have this place of consolation, this refuge to run to. And there I will find all the protection, insight and strength I need to go back and try it all over again.