What my maple tree is teaching me!

I’ve been blessed to live in places where the time of fall is magical. It is during my travelling years that I have come to notice this season, yet its this year that the soul connects on a deeper level - through my(the) maple tree I planted late last year. 

During my recent week of blindness ‘without lens’, I was listening to many audio books to keep the brain from wondering. One of them was a story about a young girl coping with homelessness. It was during this story she explained that green leaves are because of chlorophyll. It is chlorophyll that gives leaves their distinctive green colour, and it is - along with sunshine - the key ingredient in the magical, life-producing process of photosynthesis. 

The hidden secret of fall; the leaves don’t actually “turn” colours. With the winter season coming, and the process of photosynthesis being without the key ingredients of warmth and sunshine, trees begin to break down chlorophyll. With the ‘free’ gone, the other colours that have been there all along - the magical reds, golds and oranges - begin to express themselves. 

That’s the secret; there is no turning, no changing. There’s only the death of what has been masking the colours inside. The beauty has been there all along. And we as human beings are like this. Each one of us contains hidden jewels inside. 

It is these little red leaves from the maple that dance across the pathway and lay under the arch. As I observe nature the swirling leaves stirred by the wind, I am reminded that they display an important lesson for all of us to follow suit in a way. Just as the trees don’t stubbornly hold on to their dead leaves, so we shouldn’t hold on to any unnecessary weight in our lives. When we long to enter a new season, the old can easily inhibit the new if we allow it. 

But the trees…… 

The trees know winter is coming, and they’re preparing fro it from the inside out. 

I’m not quite sure how to process this knowledge that the trees have, but it feels important, kind of enormous. The trees flourish even in their dying. God has built Truth and theology into the leaves, and I want to sit at their roots and learn from them. 

How do they know when to drop their guard of green and give into the process of dying to themselves? Why do they trust the timing, each and every year? Do they learn into it, or do they fight back, unwilling to give into the blaze of colour?

The weather only slightly indicates a change. It’s cool, the breezes still, but deep down at their roots, the trees know major change is coming. They know they are to be robing themselves in colour, preparing for a brand-new season of beauty, yet some remain green. Are they the ones fighting back, against what they truely are deep inside?

Sounds senseless, to fight to stay dusty and tired instead of bursting gold and red and orange. Casting off the wilted end of summer green. Embracing what is deep down in the core, the beauty He’s placed there to reveal in His time. 

Maybe in the middle of my own everyday mess, mixed right into the frustration and feelings of being dried up and struggling to keep above water, He’s preparing me for something. Maybe He wants me to choose to take hold, to dig deeper, to look beyond the mess and frustration. 

I’m tried of fighting back. I want to yield to Living colour, the kind that only comes when dying to self came first. 

May the change quietly filling the air spark the same in my heart. May I allow it to wash over my life, bolding and brightening each nook and cranny, sweeping the corners clean of staleness. May the cool breath of air fill my lungs as I breath in His grace, breathing out the old and allowing the new to take over. 

What beauty there is in letting go and accepting. 

What wonder there is in embracing the colours inside. 

What loveliness there is in the death of one colour, and the shinning through of all the divine colours. 

How lovely is this human creature when the divine colours of compassion, kindness, mercy, justice and forgiveness shine on through. 

May we learn, embrace, marvel at what the tree know.