MEDITATION AT KEITH'S TREE

 Breathe on me, breath of God; fill me with life anew… ~ old hymn

For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. ~ Colossians 3:3

The atoms of  Keith’s ashes now vibrate

in every root and branch and needle of

the tree we planted in his memory

eighteen years ago.

Ashes no longer, but bark and sap and

the green energy to urge another

two feet of growth this year

onto what is now a twenty-three foot spruce—

Its brave, fragile spire reaching straight up

into the universe.

There is a kind of religious parable in this, I suppose,

But “Take away from me your religion...”

I find my faith’s basis in the organic actuality,

natural meaning,

and, yes, cosmic mystery of it.

Not a metaphorical Mandala-Wheel

of repetitive circularity:

around and back and around again,

but the real linear movement of life

and death—and life—through time;

time with infinity at each end.

The thrust of root through soil, water

into capillary, chlorophyll into energy

into growth into the soft glide of the dropped cones—

the tree’s children—

gently lowered

from branch

            to branch

                        to branch

                                    to earth.

A tree at the center of the world,

whose lithe yet grounded trunk is this moment

swaying before me,

moved by that invisible force that can be translated

in Hebrew as “wind,” or “breath,” or “spirit.”

A tree that will die.

Like Keith.

Like “a grain of wheat that falleth to the ground….”

Like this:

When it is struck by lightning or caught up

in the great blaze Keith’s Tree will become

ashes; its ashes, atoms; it’s atoms,

the particles of all that has been or will be:

earth and oxygen and the tip

of a butterfly’s antenna

and the ink for the tiny font in which

the latest upgrade of DNA’s genetic software is written,

and all the other things that await

that last infinitesimal quarkish piece

to click into place in order to be.

Until that day when time’s linear arrow

reaches the sun’s heart and its final flare

curls around the earth,

and the same particles, released, will rise

to become, again, the material of stars.

And the starfires themselves will cool to embers

and ash, and the delicate grey dust of

bodies that once formed the galaxies

will float on the spirit-wind of space,

to be swept into scattered satchels of

ever-expanding gossamer fabric,

until these black holes burst their sacs full of

the ashes of atoms--the last stuff of matter--

to be--with the faint flutter of the last energy--

breathed in and out with the sighing of

a weary universe;

the last outbreath of the sigh caught up into

the inhalation of

                                            another breath…

into a bright eternity that waits like love

to enfold all the dying and all the cold

darkness in the arms of the original light,

in the warmth of the original breath,

into that which was before there was anything.

Into God.

There never has been nothing.

There never is an end.

In Memoriam ~ Keith Rohr
1958-1997

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Paraphrased Bible passages (in quotes) ~

Amos 5:21-23
John 12:24