9-20-11 grateful for today

1. Trees, the Name Tree
2. My adorable dog
3. My free creative job
4. Endless Possibilities
5. Exercising
6. Water
7. Gentleness
8. Forgiveness
9. The present moment
10. Courage

When I was young my family went to a camping resort place several times during the summer. At this place was a huge old oak tree. It's trunk was so big three adults were needed to hold hands around it. It's branches spread up out and around and grew so long that the ones on the bottom spread out and touched the ground again 20 feet away from it's trunk. It was called the Name Tree becuase it was hard to find any inch of the tree where someone hadn't already carved their name into it. It was easy to climb and a lot of the kids would be in the tree for most of the day. You could literally walk up a branch from the ground into the tree. A popular game was Tree Tag. Yes, it was high speed chases through the branches looking like a bunch of monkeys. The only rule was that you couldn't touch the ground. I was too scared to go too far up or around the tree. There was a long thick branch wider around than a person and at the far end of that branch it split into 5 more branches, and this place where it split and grew looked very much like a hand. That's where I loved to sit, in the Hand of the Name Tree. I would watch those zipping through the tree playing tag, leaping, grabbing, climbing, and I learned by watching the paths through the tree. The kids would use the same paths going up and around, knowing if they walked far enough out on this branch, it would bend and connect to that branch and another path. I still know the paths, I would run through them in my mind, but never physically, I was always too scared. The sacred symbol I choose to represent my heart is this Name Tree. And I'm now aware that there are paths through my heart. Paths that are begging me to climb and explore and know that the more paths I take in my heart, the deeper into my heart I will go. Now to let go of fear and move.
Love and Light.