The Healing Tree

It wasn’t the tallest tree, nor was it the stateliest. It was just an old, crooked oak nestled in among poplars and pines. On its gnarled trunk, wooden footholds rotted away that had once led to a tree house where childish laughter had once been abundant in the summer of my grandfather’s youth. Its branches were silent now, except for the cheerful songs of finches and robins. But this silence was not a sad or despondent one but rather that of tranquility and peace, a holy hush like that found in a church sanctuary.

And perhaps it was like a sanctuary for peace was always found in this place. Not just peace, but healing as well. Here could be found a deep reservoir of feeling and memory, some good and some bad but whatever saddening thoughts transpired in this lonely glade were more then compensated by the healing touch that seemed to originate within the old oak tree. As if God himself was sitting there on the knotted trunk, smiling, arms outspread, reminding the hurting that he can do anything if they let him. And I believe he was.

It was a secluded place, situated on the back acres of my grandfather’s farm, though my grandfather was dead now and his children only kept the place because they couldn’t bare to see it torn down and commercialized. But these days, not even the family visited the place. They were all caught up in the rush of the world, so busy with their everyday lives that they didn’t even have time for their own children or themselves, and certainly not this old tree.

As children, they spent hours climbing the old tree’s boughs, giggling and squealing with delight whenever my grandfather would return from the store with ice cream. But as time passes, children grow up and go off to college where they study just so they can keep pace with the world, and the things that were once irreplaceable as children tend to be replaced. The things that as children were black and white tend to blur into gray and matters that once seemed so simple become so complex you wonder if anyone has ever found the answer.

But the old, crooked oak has always been there and it still is, its roots running deep. Though the laughter of better days has long since vanished, its healing power is stronger than it ever has been. Sometimes it takes the pain and stress of this bleak and dismal world to fully appreciate it though. But it has always been there. It always will be.

I contemplate all of these things silently as I sit beneath the shade of the old tree, leaning against the trunk and allowing the warm breezes of a lazy summer to caress my face. I am one of the few who still return to this place. But I always will. As long as I am breathing. Because here, this secluded glade on my grandfather’s farm, is the closest to God that I will ever be on this earth. Though my family has forgotten this place, I won’t.

As children, everything seems so simple and yet as we grow older we forget all of that. Perhaps it is not because our childish faith was wrong but because we replaced it with something more materialistic. Perhaps the answers are not as difficult to find as we think and maybe healing is not as faraway as we fear. Maybe the answers are just where we left them and the healing is still at the source.

And all we have to do is find it.


Word Count: 604