The Oak Men Cometh

JonFairies, Shamanic Healing

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.