Liberation

It comes to me like any other new thought, but with an urgency. Now! it says, and puts me in motion. In this case, "Bring this plant out now."

It has been perfectly fine to house and care for my Norfolk Island Pine indoors for nearly 30 years, but today, there is rain on the way, and for some reason now--right now--it must be rained upon. It is just as if the tree has spoken it: I must be rained upon. The urgency seems to come from the plant itself.

And so with a bit of struggle, with no one at hand to help, I muster my strength and manage, sideways because it has grown from about 10 inches to nearly six feet over time, gently so as to cause no damage to its needle-fronds and limbs, and in stages because of its mass and weight, to remove the tree from bay window, carry it from dining room to kitchen, through the portico, and down the back stairs to...liberation! That's exactly how it felt, how I feel it feels for the pine to be out here, ready to receive its first-ever (or in decades at least) raindrops. To be ionized, dusted by the elements, kissed by early sun and late sun and tousled by wind--to be, finally, free. "After 30 years in captivity," I hear myself say to a friend, "I liberated my Norfolk Island Pine today!"

It's not that it's never occurred to me to bring it out. In fact, each spring I put most of the house plants outdoors for summering. Come Autumn, they return to these rooms robust, thriving with a new vitality. Maybe because of its bulk, maybe because of its commanding presence in the household, the pine has remained inside. But no longer.

It's funny how a thing can work just fine for a time--decades even--and then all at once work no more. Within moments of registering the imperative now!, my hands were in motion, the transfer was underway.

I have heard the voice of the flowers, and now, the Pine. I did not know this sort of perception would come part and parcel with developing energy sensitivity. But it makes sense that it would. If I can read a human field, why not a plant's, an animal's, a stone's? Of course it would come to this--and continue beyond this. There are no secrets Life won't share with a sufficiently humbled heart, it seems.