This, Our Tree of Life

The Celtic tribes lived in a world of endless forests, which to folks of magical mind were another race filled with a strong, slow wisdom.  A towering oak was a sentient thing. It connected the ground to the sky and reached deep into dark, secret places with its roots.  But for the Celts, such a tree was only an earthly shadow of the mighty Crann Bethadh, the Tree of Life, which spanned heaven and earth, and whose branches sheltered all life and stroked every star.

Today the forest are gone, and most of the magic is too.  But if we look deeper, there's truth in this tale even now.  All wisdom traditions describe a mystical center around which everything wheels; an axis that rises from the deeps and the darks and the realm of the senses all the way to angelic dimensions and the realm of Everlasting Light.

This is our Tree of Life then, right here at the ground of our beseeching, at the center of our own being, high beyond knowing, deep beyond showing, the Tree of Life Universal, the One around which the Many are dancing.

-- Michael Green, Celtic Blessings, June 2012

[Note:  This excerpt is quoted entirely from M. Green's Celtic Blessings calendar.  I offer it as a celebration of the summer solstice 2012 (and because I think it's an excellent piece of writing).  Mr. Green's website is Amber Lotus Publishing. 

-- Marge]