An Autumn Retreat Invitation: Listening to trees in a world on fire
“What does it feel like to survive through centuries upon centuries on Planet Earth, planted in this same place, witnessing the world go by...especially now, when so much seems to be falling, burning, changing?”
The Redwood elder gazed upon me with weathered wizard stripes, earned from the burn they were made to survive.
My eyes drew down to the baby cones scattered at their base – tiny offerings toward generations still to come – and deeper still, beneath the soil, into roots woven with a community of trees and mycelial magic.
Without saying a word, this Redwood reminded me it was made to move through change by standing steady, and that no matter how wise and tall and brave and strong this one Redwood tree looks, its survival relies on the village beneath. Their generosity emerges from elemental relations. Their strength rises rooted as a celestial instrument for Earth, drinking in starlight like songs for the soil.
“Time to you means something that can be measured and lost,” the Redwood said. “Time, to me, means Tending and Befriending.”
I left an offering of water and walked deeper into their village with a new yet ancient remembering of time as told by a Redwood tree:
Tending with friends♥
**
I had this conversation with a Redwood (pictured to the left) a few years ago in one of my favorite forests in the world – and years later, I can still feel myself there, standing within the wings of a wise elder.
In a time when so much is endangered, divided, burning – why does listening to Earth matter? Or said another way: When the world is on fire, what does it matter if we can hear the voice of a tree?
This question lives at the heart of my upcoming autumn retreat, Nature Communion: Awakening Earth Intuition, gathering at Kripalu October 25-28.
For me, listening to Earth has never been about collecting more information. It's about experiencing relationship – allowing the wisdom, mystery, beauty, grief, guidance {and often silence} that arises between us to change us.
I can read that trees communicate through underground networks – and then stand beneath a Redwood and feel myself changed by a conversation with one.
I can learn the medicinal actions of a plant – and then spend enough time with the essence of that plant to recognize their presence as I would recognize a beloved old-soul friend.
I can know intellectually that I am part of nature – and then experience a moment of communion that leaves me in awe of how the natural world knows how to transform the mundane into something miraculous.
Over the past 12 years of sharing classes about angels, saints, plants, dreams, breath and Earth, I keep finding Communionat the heart of the heart of it all.
When a plant moves from being an “it” to a presence you have spent time with and befriended, the way you meet that plant changes.
When a Redwood becomes someone whose words resonate inside you years later – returning to their forest feels like returning to a dear friend's home.
When an angel is no longer a mysterious presence of light and instead an embodiment of Love you have come to know, call upon, and feel lovingly guided by – the unseen becomes intimate.
The feathered dreamer within me would love to tell you that this kind of relationship offers shelter from hardship, yet that's simply not the reality of being a feeling human. Relationship does not spare us from the heartbreak of being alive right now. If anything, it brings us closer – to what is burning and blooming, to what is dying and regenerating, returning, beginning again.
Perhaps this too is tending and befriending: staying close enough to life to be changed by what we Love.
Nature Communion Retreat is an invitation to come closer - to listen, befriend, and be lovingly changed by the natural world.
Through our time together at Kripalu, we will:
Write with the natural world: bring our questions, uncertainty, heartbreak and hope into conversation with Earth
Breathe: melting into Earth, receiving what is felt & called for beneath the noise of daily life
Experience herbal plant meditations: meeting plants through direct sensory experience and listening
Explore sensory awareness & intuitive listening: noticing the subtle ways our bodies perceive, receive and communicate
You can receive all the retreat details and sign up here.
Perhaps one of the deepest callings of these times is not for more information… perhaps it's for the lived experience of remembering how to hear the symphony we are already a note within.
Whether that calling is met by joining this retreat or simply stepping into your neighborhood and befriending a tree - the conversation can begin right where you are.
Love,
Madeline
Hello, World!