"Surely you, too, have fallen under the spell...Suddenly there it is in silhouette-a single, noble winter tree, black against the pale sky. You stop because you must.
You fix it on your eyes so that it cannot get away. What is so compelling here?
What catches you and holds you in this common sight?
There is a magnificent, creative loneliness in it -the way it stands isolated in the wide reaches of the fields, darkly melancholy.
There is struggle in the twisted, writhing branches, as if growth and survival have not been easily come by.
There is strength in the way it has been exposed mercilessly to the storms, with no barn or house to break the blast. Yet it has endured, taking on dignity with the visitations of frost, snow, and ice.
There is acceptance in its open display of imperfection...
Most of all, perhaps, there is honesty in the starkness of the winter tree.
Stripped of all pretense and embellishment, nothing is there but the tree's truth.
Before the eyes of all it lives the way it is - nothing more.
In its utter, exposed openness it is a kind of prayer."
Mary Jean Irion, Yes, World
A tree is a lens, a viewfinder, a window. I wait below for a message of what is yet to come.
Rochelle Mass, "Waiting for a Message"
