Ever wonder what it's all about? I need to try and work it out. I'll just begin with the deer.
This is about what and who and where strength comes from.
The oak lives long, when allowed to. The history of the oak can be traced back to the Ice Age, tens of thousands of years ago.
Where I live, not so far from Robin Hood's Sherwood Forest, lives the Mighty Oak, about 800-1000 years old. It began life somewhere between 1000 AD- 1200 AD, between the time when England became French under the Norman Conquest, and the birth of Simon Stock.
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The Mighty Oak, Sherwood Forest
While I was out walking, I picked up a stone. It was a piece of flint that had kept its colour, a kind of pale toffee brown, in the shape of a leaf. It's a stone age tool, estimated to be about 5000 years old.
When I picked it up, this little leaf-shaped scraper had not been in any hand for 5000 years, from the moment the maker had dropped it there. It was my good luck to walk in exactly the same place when the sun came out after the rain and the little stone was gleaming.
We walk in other people's footsteps all the time. The stone age makes the Norman Conquest and the return of the Carmelites seem recent . It may be quite a few generations for people, but it is in living memory for the Oak. The Mighty Oak's leaves still rustle in the breeze. And in the whisper of a zephyr, Elijah and we may hear the voice of God.
This Oak was here when Simon Stock was travelling past on his journeys to Northumberland. They heard the same sounds, felt the same weather, breathed the same air. Drank the same rain.
We don't have to use a tardis to time travel. We just have to look at where we are. Be aware of where we are.
As people have always done.
Oak trees mark boundaries of place, like large stones or rivers and streams, semi-permanent though ever changing. They cross enormous boundaries of time too, almost portals for the mind and heart. The ancient habit of sitting at the foot of the oak, the gospel tree, to think, and listen, and feel where you are, makes a lot of sense, feeling in yourself the tininess of the acorn, the great shelter of the tree, and yet the need to move outwards to fulfil the promise of the world within you.
When I gaze at the stars in the sky, or the vast endlessness of water flowing, it brings me back to my place as a speck in the vast majesty of the universe.
I have found a spirituality that I can feel in my feet, to live in conjunction with life around me.
So this is my gentle and simple epiphany. In looking over to the mountains of Carmel so far away, I have come back home.
It only took a week, not a year, to begin to see what was massively obvious to others and so hidden from myself. I will continue for the year as I said, exploring more stories, not with expectation, but with a waiting heart, a listening heart, for what I will find or not find. All is good.
