Harbouring life

I have had the most amazing week on retreat in the Aberdeenshire countryside. I was promised a few days of loving and feeding. And that is what I was served - and more. Hosted by folk who know the real meaning of hospitality, days were filled with love, with laughter, with floods of tears and with profound wisdom and teaching.

On one of my early morning walks I came across this dried up bough of a tree. It had split off from the main trunk. Lying in the ground, detached from its source, it was exposed to the elements, vulnerable, unprotected. Yet it harboured life. It had become the home of moss and lichen and some interesting fungi. Maybe not the most welcome inhabitants but signs of life none the less. I felt I was witnessing a living metaphor. Even in our lowliest states we can harbour life. This bough will not grow again as it was. It will not be reattached to its trunk. But it has a new purpose to fulfil, a new life to undertake. I need some more time to process all that I discovered this week, but the parable of this tree will do to be going on with.