Sycamore Musings

My tree - Sacred Sycamore… symbolic tree, touchstone, warrior, testament.  While young, the sycamore with her smooth tight bark, looks like life hasn’t marred or scarred her, no.  Some of us start out our lives that way, looking like all is well, as it should be.  While that may or may not be the case, it appears so to the world.  Destructive forces chip away at us, untold physical violations, spiritual, emotional, and/or psychological erosion may be altering us, but the world sees what it wants to see.  That sweet young sycamore with her tight bark, as she nears her equivalent of puberty, changes take place in her.  As she stretches her arms to the sky, and she must stand against wind and climate, her smooth skin begins to chip. With each chip that falls, a space of white brilliance is revealed.  Life is like that, as we begin to experience more and more challenges, sometimes they begin to show themselves on our physical form.  She is a determined tree, she roots deep. She stands. The patches of light and dark are her yin and yang... she knows about the dark times, and the dark places.. but says "look at THIS!" and like a great Tree Goddess flasher goes wa-BAM - and dazzles us with her brilliant whiteness so unexpected!  She is Ghost Tree... along the riverbanks, she looks haunting with her white fingers rising out of the morning mist... the spirits sit in her branches in the cool of the predawn... sharing their stories. Check OUT Lady Sycamore - Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm!  Let your gaze begin at the ground and follow her form skyward.  At the base and a ways up the trunk, that smooth bark of youth is tight.  As the trunk ascends... follow her curves... the bark begins to get patchy, pieces fall off revealing a splendidly white, fantastically beautiful underbark. The random patterns of peeling green-grey overbark, juxtaposed with brilliant white underbark is strikingly beautiful.  For the sycamore, and for me - when we seem to be falling apart, something dazzling - our Truth perhaps -  shows its radiant brilliance to the world - shining out from our inner core. I have BEEN a sycamore – I know this first hand – err – branch…