roots

"The farther the outward journey takes you, the deeper the inward journey must be.  Only when your roots are deep can your fruits be abundant."  - Henri Nouwen

I did a pencil drawing of a tree a little over a week ago, out of nowhere-- I was just reading and then felt like drawing, so I drew a tree.  And thinking it was a pretty fine-looking tree, for being drawn just from my head, I started looking at the drawing from different angles.  I turned it upside-down and noticed that what had once been the branches also made decent-looking roots (although they grasped the earth more deeply than the former roots) and the roots from before made okay, but kind of shallow or broad, branches.  

Then, a few days later, I picked up the drawing again and thought there must be some kind of metaphor about a tree's symmetrical shape.  I don't know why I couldn't think of it at the time, but now it seems really obvious.

What Nouwen describes is two journeys that mirror each other-- one outward, and one inward.  I am on both those journeys.  And in searching myself-- I've been thinking a lot about this blog lately, and how who I am, or my root structure, has to determine how I use it-- I'm finding that to grow, I may need equally as much not to share as to share-- or to find a balance between the two.  To learn where the ground is between the branches and the roots.  

These are significant things to learn for me.  

In this time when we're growing so much, a blog is at risk of letting the outward journey take on a semblance of an inward one-- as in sharing what is not yet part of the root structure-- or of exposing the inward journey, trying to find its value by making it outwardly visible.  I struggle with this a lot.  There is a lot I'd like to say, a lot I'd like for people to know about me-- sometimes disclaimers, sometimes fears, sometimes hopes.  But somehow when I stretch out my hands with too much of it, I find myself empty.  In wanting to show all of our journey, do we try to uproot ourselves?  Is intimacy, and trust, partly knowing where the ground is?  And trusting what is beneath it?

The nature of roots is that they are hidden in some deep place from which they draw nourishment.  Their strength and structure should be evident in the health of the tree, as it's seen from above ground.  Their strength is inherent in their hiddenness.  

What is unseen is still there.  I trust and hope that others will understand that about me, just as I do about them.  This journey will continue, both outwardly and inwardly.  

Let's dig in deep.