On The Felling of Trees Essay

Mar 14 2009            

It takes a thousand years to establish a forest kingdom.

Long winters bring on the prophet's gloom. I know it well. I've been hours and nights and days, years, traveling through the minds of the seers; those who speak to the One, and listen. They go off to lonely places and sit under trees, whose long thoughts come spinning down like wing seeds, spinning down around the seers. And the light shows it's own galaxies of dust and pollen and mites, all slowly spinning down around the seers like the long old well travelled light of the stars.

They listen. Their minds become long, too, and ancient, and from before, as they listen to the still small voice of God; and when they come back to the city they are filled with grief. What are you doing? they cry, What are you doing?

For they can see forward as well, from the place of the Spirit, which is not bound by our paltry calendar, our little nicked rocks.

It is deep sorrow that the seer carries always within the breast; since, as a population, we live topside in very shallow soil. The seers have much warning, warning of destruction because of stupid folly, because of refusal to listen, because of desire to have rather than willingness to be. So they show, and they warn, and are shouted down and hounded off.

In the fulfillment of the dream of the seer, who is walking back and forth on the trail of the mind of God, there is cataclysm across the board; social, political, natural, and spiritual, and finally, a restoration. This is the dynamic homeostasis of creation; and, the ingenuity of the ancient of days. For lands are apportioned. In the ancient scripts, which in part speak of things that have not yet come to pass, whole swathes of land are forbidden to humankind. They are reserved; such bitter acts were committed there that an indictment is laid upon the land, and it is forever relieved of humankind, given to salt marshes and owls. The millennial reign the seers saw was one of a thousand years.  I can hope that this “thousand years” really means, a very, very long time.

I have read that the Bible is really the story of the conquest of the indigenous peoples by foreign kings. The story was preserved by nomads and shepherds who tended flocks.  Is this not ironic?   Throughout, God pleads with his people, “Do not become like your neighbors, who have chosen themselves a king!  He will take your children, your lands, and the tithe of your labors.  Rather, stay as you are, and be blessed with milk, and honey, and blessings you cannot contain, and my words to guide you.”   But they will have themselves a king.  Yes, we will set ourselves up a king.  Even today, I hear Abel’s blood crying out from the ground, and Cain protesting that he is not his brother’s keeper.

In the final apocalypse, the World City is brought down. The Great Harlot, she is called. The systems of mankind which have ruined the earth and overlaid magnificent creation with worthless veneer are themselves laid waste. And all those who have put their hearts into lifeless systems wail and roar and curse for such calamity, and in their arrogance, they cut down trees, and array themselves against the Creator.  It is a final chapter stunning in it’s scope and declaration.

Odin hung nine days on living Yggdrasil, the great Ash Tree, to learn of power in the worlds, even with a wound. Was he like David in that he could see with the long sight?

Jesus hung on a felled tree only a few hours.  What portal there did he find?  It is said he became a doorway.

In my listening, I have heard of a Spirit City, a living, breathing City. 

Fantastic, isn’t it?  That a nomadic tribe would birth such a vision.  I can see it now, more clearly than before.