Into the Woods: Petrified Trees

"When we obey the feelings of hesitation and separation more powerfully than those of love, we start to experience numbness and depression.  This is when we start to live like statues, believing that all we can do is watch."

This made me think of several trees in our woods....

They have been dead for so long they've lost their bark and look like statues.  This is an area of the woods that the crew had already started clearing of brush.  It was an area you couldn't get into so we didn't realize these "petrified" trees were even there.  I only just discovered and marked them to be cut after the tangle of brush was removed.

Mark Nepo says, "The line between living and watching is very thin."  How often do we just let life flow around us until it becomes like the tangle of brush surrounding the "statutes" we've become. We become well hidden from others as well as ourselves and we become observers rather than participants in our own lives.  He says it begins when we hesitate to reach out to others until we eventually stop altogether....when we don't pick up the phone to make that call or stop in to visit someone as we pass by.  For me it's often seeing a neighbor down the grocery aisle and taking a different aisle because I haven't seen them in years and I don't know what to say to them--a neighbor! Our busy-busy society makes it too easy for us to hide behind that busyness until we lose the connection that would have enabled us to interact freely and easily with people.

Clearing out our woods is helping me to visualize all that I've been missing.  I think it's time for a neighborhood party!

Father, thank you for helping me see how I've become "petrified".  Please take away my uncomfortableness--help me to see that as all the brush is removed I can start moving about more freely and easily because I have Christ as my Comfort.

Link to scripture:  Galatians 5:1

Take action:  Ways to Get to Know Your Neighbors