Talking to a Little Dying Leaf

Joshua Rodriguez

Occasionally, Reality Sandwich editorial director Daniel Pinchbeck receives an email that others in the RS community might appreciate. This article, which has been slightly revised, started as one.

I am young and I am American. Sadly, this almost by default means I am an embittered, angry, disillusioned byproduct of a coldly mechanistic society. For most of my life I have kept the world at arm's length, without understanding of my place in it and resentful that I was taken away from whatever cool, dark, haven I must surely have resided in once. I stumbled blindly through life, hoping for little more than to avoid as much discomfort as possible on my inevitable journey to the grave and oblivion.

My perspective has been changed by talking to a little dying leaf.

Mr. Pinchbeck's book 2012: The Return of Quetzlcoatl had taken me down quite a few roads, some very close to home, and it helped to trigger an understanding in me. I could no longer afford to try and escape from my world. I needed to transcend it. In order to transcend it, I needed to assimilate it. No longer could I run from reality. I needed to embrace it and approach it with a sense of humility and respect, knowing that it is full of lessons if only I could be quiet enough to hear them.

With all this on my mind, I made a point to walk home from work one night. I worked in a small bar and my home was several towns away. That sounds a bit rough, but really, it's only 8 or 9 miles. It seemed important to take time to do something like that, to see my town when it was quiet and dark and people's little dramas played out in hushed tones in dimly lit rooms. Normally, I would listen to music as I walked to make the time go by faster, but I turned off my little MP3 player and let my mind wander. A lot of ideas passed through, evolved, bore fruit, and moved on.

As I walked the last mile of it, something caught my eye. It was a yellowed leaf, all curled in on itself, sitting on the sidewalk. Interposed over it was the image of a tiny old man. Naked and gnarled, he lay there on the concrete looking weak and sad. I bent over, picked him up, and cradled him in the palm of my hand. He was so delicate and light, and I wondered at how fragile he was. Suddenly, overcome by a deep sense of gratitude I said "Thank you." I don't know where that came from, but at the moment I realized that I owed this little...spirit, I guess...a great deal of respect.

"What can I do for you?" I asked. A little voice in my head told me to put him down next to another leaf on a nearby lawn. It seemed that he did not want to fade on the concrete, but to be put on wet earth so he could more easily decay into darkness. I did so and moved on. As I walked back to my home I heard that little leaf speak to me. I suppose I should have been surprised, but it did not seem unnatural that he spoke to me in that tiny, quiet voice. In all fairness, I reminded myself, I did speak first.

Well, he said some interesting things. That he was happy his task was over and that he could be allowed to rest in the earth until he was carried back up to "Mother Tree" to aid her again when the spring came. He said that Mother Tree would carry on until it was time for her to rest in the earth and be reborn as several new trees. That her cycle, while intertwined with his, moved at a different pace and spun, slow and graceful, down a different path.

That puzzled me, so I asked if he could explain to me how one tree could be reborn as many trees or, how leaves could be reborn for all the new trees that grew. Surely there were only so many tree and leaf spirits to go around. He explained that all trees are one tree. Each one an extension of the need and necessity and gift that is a tree, but not necessarily and individual entity in the way that a human would think of himself. The leaf spirits were their helpers and partners. They were more like manifestations of the tree spirits and leaf spirits in the mortal world, some the home of several spirits, while some spirits inhabited several trees simultaneously. They did their work in their own way and while my curiosity was appreciated it was not important for me to know the specifics for I am not a tree spirit. I chuckled a bit at that.

He also said that trees and leaves and, indeed, much of the manifested world we inhabit understand the great cycle. That in order for there to be life, there must be death. That the breakdown and disassembly of one system through the process of decay meant that there were now raw materials from which something new could be wrought. That death is not an end to life, but simply the end of a long series of necessary tasks set before a being so that the next time he comes around he has something to build on. That all things fade, but all things are renewed. All things are eternal, but ever-changing. This, he told me, was part of "tree medicine."

Finally he said that the tree spirits had always been happy to aid man, but felt sad that their contribution to our world was no longer respected. That we wasted their gifts so readily and took so greedily. He reminded me that it was only with the aid of the tree spirits that man was able to build fires to keep out the night, and tools and spears to hunt for food, and walls of wood to keep the creatures we feared out of our communities. It was a tree sticking out of the water that inspired crow to drop mud into the ocean and build the earth. It was within Yggdrasil that mankind hid when the heavens shook, and it was in a wooden boat that mankind gathered up creation to wait out the great deluge that covered his world. We write on pulped trees using tools made of the compacted remains of trees long-dead wrapped in the remains of trees freshly cut. In short, without their silent, patient contribution, civilization would never have come into being. I thanked him again for his lesson and sat down in my home to mull over that intensely unusual experience.

I saw people that I interact with on a daily basis in a new light. The old embittered part of me that resented their constant demands, their blaring ignorance, was mostly silent. Instead of seeing these people in my community as antagonizers, I suddenly realized how lost they were. How lost all of us were. They weren't "filthy uneducated jerks," but intensely ignorant, perhaps intentionally so, of the impact of their actions. I realized that they had no tools in their emotional inventory that allowed them to fully comprehend how their actions affected others. They lacked them because the society that we live in does not value them. It teaches us to get "ahead" at all costs, where "ahead" is the accumulation of material goods and bigger houses at the expense of those around them. Community is replaced by accumulation. Learning with distraction. Love with empty lusts.

When a leaf forgets its purpose it does not fall to the earth to be renewed and reintegrated, it leaves Mother Tree exposed in a small way and robs a tiny portion of her internal reserves of life. When many leaves refuse to fall, then winter, a time of rest before the renewal, will kill her. In order for the tree to live, the leaves must fade, and be reintegrated at the right time. It is important that this process is not forgotten, for it applies to men as well as trees.

Then I wept to think that two weeks ago I didn't care whether those around me were alive or dead.

I do not normally talk to plants. I had always been under the impression that they'd be terrible conversationalists. But, still, this plant spoke to me. All I did was approach the world around me for the first time with a sense of reverence and thankfulness rather than the burning resentment that has defined most of my life. And that was enough to break open my head and let something new and still and rich enter in.

Thank you, little leaf, for your lessons.

Image by stebulus, courtesy of Creative Commons license.