Visiting the woods

As my husband and I sat in worship before bed, I nodded off and dreamed that I was the main character in the book The Chosen. I was in a powerful scene near the end of the book, and my father was gravely explaining that when someone asks to speak with me, it is very important to honor the request. I felt ashamed for failing to do this and woke up with a jerk of my head. Disoriented from my tiny nap, I found myself promising that I would do better, and that I would visit the woods that had been asking to speak with me. It took a few moments to realize the full implications of this. By that time, I was fully awake and able to dismiss the message as a strange dream.

A couple days later, I woke in the morning wrapped in the memory of another dream. A very patient and fatherly figure told me that while it was true that I could hear God in the woods, and that it was wonderful, I wasn't actually very good at it. The only thing I do really well was to love. I am not certain that I became a more loving person because of the advice, but I resolved to visit the hundred-acre woods across the street from my house.

The next day, the wind chill was well below zero. I worked around the house and kept postponing the time when I would bundle up to stand among the trees. Finally, I went out to get the mail, but almost without deciding to, I walked right past the mailbox and across the street. I crunched over the top of deep snow that lay on the meadow, and tucked myself just a few feet inside the border of the woods.

There, in a charged silence that I have only experienced in the presence of many trees, I stood and breathed. I smelled the light scent of snow which draped over darkened branches and blanketed the ground, imprinted with tracks. I felt tremendously grateful, and then I began to feel other things as well. Like I sometimes do during meeting for worship, I began to shake and then cry. I felt the presence of people who knew the woods and who had been colored by its charged silence and by its patterns of branches until the people and the woods were married with a bond more powerful than death. Then the woods burst into a violet radiance all around me, as though they were suddenly filled with a glowing mist. The delicate branches that form the upper canopy seemed especially bright.

I had to leave. I stayed away for many days, but often thought of the woods and their purple treasure. Finally, I went back a couple days ago and stood again within the fringes of the trees, peeking over my shoulder so I would know when the school bus pulled up in front of my house to drop off my children. I did not see violet light again. Mostly, I felt the tremors of my own busy life vibrating all around my body and running interference. I just stood and watched the snow fall in the woods, quiet and holy.