Photography as a Spiritual Practice: Time is a Tree
“—time is a tree(this life one leaf)
but love is the sky and i am for you
just so long and long enough.”
— e.e. cummings
Guest Writer: Eve Turek
Here on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, winter comes late and usually leaves early. Snow and ice are rare winter guests; our weather in the coldest, darkest season runs more to the dreary, with gray skies or chilling northeasters rather than blizzards. Sunnier, warmer days sprinkle themselves throughout winter’s weeks, reminding us that spring is coming, and all that a busy resort area season implies. We do well to heed winter’s brief call to pause and rest while we can.
The trees in my yard are just losing their leaves in showers of gold, raining down with every gust of wind. We had gale-force winds right before Christmas, and I went outside hoping to catch one of those showers from below. Instead, subtler images snagged my attention. A tall gum tree was shedding leaves singly or in pairs rather than all at once. A native-born Outer Banker would call the winds that day “squirrelly” as they came from multiple directions, swirling the leaves upward before finally releasing them to the pull of gravity and their inevitable drift to ground.
I realize this is not the way I typically let go. I tend to hold on tightly, rather than trusting, as the tree does, that new growth will come—but only by releasing what has been to make necessary space for what will be. The tree didn’t shed its leaves in a fit of petulance. Rather, each leaf celebrated its final moments with amazing aerial acrobatics, dancing upward to the heavens as if in gratitude and tribute to the tree that provided its life. Once on the ground, the leaf will eventually nourish the soil, enriching the next season’s growth. I know this from a naturalist’s perspective. Watching the individual leaves fall one by one gave me a deeper spiritual lesson.
As we cross into a new year, I am asking to be open to what I should retain, as the sturdy trunk of the tree; what I must allow to rest and wait, as the tips of the branches; and what I could release in a dance of gratitude, free as a leaf on the wind.
Eve Turek