An earlier version of this essay was shared on integralawakenings.com

There’s a mighty old oak on the corner of Zeeb and Joy in Ann Arbor. I visited it many times during my seven years in grad school and I became fond of it over time. To say that grad school was a difficult time is an understatement. Experiments failed, progress on the doctorate was slow. And after an initial spiritual awakening, my heart was no longer in the work. So, when I had the time, I would take a break from the world of test tubes, beakers and enzymes by driving a large loop from my apartment in downtown Ann Arbor into the countryside surrounding the city. And every time I drove the loop, there was this majestic oak. Standing there on the edge of a farmer’s field. Standing. Radiating its oak presence into the world.

When I really drop into the moment and take in the presence of a tree, I can sometimes feel it communicating to me. So it was with this oak. Its message came wrapped in different words on different occasions but seemed essentially to amount to a mighty “Dharma shout:” I am life! I am alive! At one point during grad school, no doubt on a day when my thoughts turned dark, I imagined my ashes being scattered under that tree when I died. The thought gave me some peace. That oak represented some bigger than me, something in the presence of which I could rest.

Soon after that initial spiritual awakening the turmoil of those early grad school days morphed into a full-scale dark night of the soul. I was living at 317 East Ann Street, in an old house. Downtown. And though my occasional country drives continued, I began to take comfort and draw strength from the trees in my immediate neighborhood. There was the maple tree out front with which I had a non-dual moment in which self and tree suddenly merged in oneness. And there were oak trees too, on the corner of East Ann and Division. Great tall trees surrounding an old three-story home on the corner. I remember walking home from the lab where I was doing my doctorate in tears some days. Such was the pain of that time. And there these great oak trees were. They had a constant message of encouragement for me. At its worst that dark night seemed to be asking “not less than everything” (to borrow a phrase for TS Eliot) and I made a vow to see that time through to its completion, no matter what it asked of me. I vowed to keep at it as long as those trees remained standing. All these years later, they are still there.

Those days are deep in the rearview mirror of my life now. It’s been thirty plus years since I finished my doctorate and moved out of the old house on East Ann. These days, my life is a great deal easier. Of course, there are always new challenges: friends and family are suffering from illness and old age. And the entire world is embroiled in profound challenges that we know all too well: war, climate change, a lingering pandemic, racism, and the political culture wars are constantly in the headlines. I find myself in a new stage of my life, concerned that life conditions are going to continue to decline for all but the wealthy. Are we perhaps headed toward a global dark night?

At our home in Chicago, there is an old elm tree outside the dining room window that often keeps me company. Somehow it escaped the Dutch elm disease that killed most North American elms and has grown to maturity. This old elm has been here from at least 1910, when our building went up. With a little luck it will be here after I breathe my last. It provides a home to squirrels and birds and makes its presence known by refusing to let anything grow in the soil near its roots. Today I am open and listening if it might have a message to share. Unlike oaks, which are rugged and knotted, there is a particular grace to an elm tree. In my mind I picture the great elms of the law quad at the University of Michigan, tall trees arching upwards towards the sky. This gracefulness suggests to me that I ought to be present to my life with the strength of an oak and the grace of an elm, and perhaps a sense of deep time.

Breathing in, I feel my body and my beating heart. Listening, I hear cars driving past and the sounds of distant conversations lacking coherent words. A plane is flying by overhead and a gentle breeze is moving the branches of the trees. I drop into the experience of the moment: softening and opening. Dropping the worries and opening the feeling senses, I open into a state of timeless open awareness. In this place, there is no time or space, yet all time and all space are also present. There is no birth or death, but neither are they absent. Awareness is aware of only this moment, and this moment, and this. I am present to life’s grand display, witnessing the beauty and the barbarism, the goodness and the horror of our human drama. Like the great old trees that have inspired me all these years I too can stand still and strong, witnessing life.

I am reminded of the poet Rilke’s words:

No, my life is not this precipitous hour

through which you see me passing at a run.

I stand before my background like a tree…

I am the rest between two notes

which, struck together, sound discordantly,

because death’s note would claim a higher key.

But in the dark pause, trembling, the notes meet,

harmonious.

And the song continues sweet.

I pray that we all may find tree helpers to strengthen and guide us. And may they help us find a place within where we can be with everything that is - with the whole drama and life and present to it with a deep sense of strength and grace. May we each find a way to be part of this world: loving, dancing and being with it all until we are ultimately entirely consumed by love’s great dance.

Here’s to our great ongoing awakening,

Bill