For The God Who Lives In The Apple Tree

God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars. ~Martin Luther


High above the ground I had climbed. Green leaves hiding me from view. Legs stretched out, resting on separate branches. Bum wedged tight between branch and trunk. Lap full of apples. The air scented and rich. Lightening bugs resting on plump fruit glowing red-yellow as they turn on then off. Old apple tree holding me the way good mamas hold their babies.

Mother calls me in. I lie quiet, unmoving until the screen door bangs shut. I have eaten to many apples and there will be a belly ache soon but down on the ground something in my soul ached to be fed and filled and the end of my search was a high place whistling me up.

An empty bird nest hugs a lower branch. Birds long raised and flown. Summer will end soon but not quite. I am, after all, writing about a fine summer night these fifty-five years later. Bum wedged into a tapestry covered chair, apple in hand. Wishing for fireflies.

Sacred places hold us. They remember us even as we remember them. Their memory sweet and green and beckoning. I never saw a church more beautiful than an apple tree. The chancel is near the top where children find sanctuary and God, and celebrate a communion of sorts with pippins.

The God who lives in the apple tree still lives in me. When I need to hide, I still climb.

-Kat

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. ~John Muir

I thank you God for most this amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. ~e.e. cummings

If there were no apple trees in your past, it is not too late to climb one. Poems and paints are good climbing tools.


Berthe Morisot, In the Apple Tree 1890