Being in Sacred Relationship with the Land

“I’m having a lot of feelings about trees.” I texted my friend this SOS. “Like, are these oaks in front of my house Mother Earth’s strands of hair?? Or are they the CHILDREN of the Mother Oak that’s by the lake??”

Being in a sacred relationship with your land is tricky. I can see how easy it would be to numb out and just prioritize having a bigger yard and cut everything down without feeling.

But to me, these trees have been a part of our family, and they belong to the land and the animals, and I also believe we are cohabitating, and I do play a role in whether they stay or go… but I struggle with what that role is exactly.

I wanted Becca to tell me what to do, but of course, she just asked me to drop in deeper.

“What do you think mythmaker? Steward of this land?”

I dropped in even more.

There’s a group of Pines who told me

“We’re so old! Cut us down because we’d rather be in your house than on top of it!!” These trees will become the floors, walls, and ceilings in our guest quarters.

There are a handful of older Oaks in our backyard that were clear that they were going to stay and they will.

And then there are about 10 teenage oak trees that could go either way. They told me, “we are happy to stay, but really we just want to be a part of your family. We could be your dining table or your kitchen floor. We will be a part of dance parties and future grandkids crawling underfoot. We would love to be at Christmas Dinner and hold space for homework. We just want to be a part of it all.”

One tree has held our kids’ swings. I went up to mark it today and just threw my arms around it in gratitude and sobbed. This tree held so much. So much healing after feeling so distant from my kids before we moved here, and so much joy.

When we decide to lead a Sacred Life, it’s not convenient. The level of “things” that are now animate that I can feel and communicate with requires time to slow down, listen, be intentional and risk looking like a weirdo. But I receive so much from my deep relationship with this land, and I am deeply filled up by this role and the complexity of it.

Go listen to the trees 🙂

Love,
Sarah