Mrs Metaphor

I was thinking the other day in the car about how I have always viewed my spiritual life as a house that I’m building. I started with a certain foundation (Roman Catholic in my case) and have moved up from there. Always seemed like a natural progression to me. I’m a person, I need a house right?

But this new idea came to me. I wonder if our spiritual lives are NOT a house we build but a tree we plant and care for.

Houses are somewhat expendable, really. We don’t live in one house all our lives like generations past. We are transient folk. Movin’ on up. All that.

Trees, though are alive…and rather than foundation they rely on roots. Foundations are stationary, staid, as permanent as we can figure how to make them. Roots, though, roots are alive and moving and digging in and getting deeper.

Roots go down as the branches go up; reaching and pulling and blooming…and shedding too.

Trees in winter, bare and empty. I know what that feels like in my spiritual life. It is a season. Winter. It is as necessary as Spring. I can live in my house and never feel the Winter but also never feel the Spring. If I don’t know the scarcity of winter how will I ever understand the richness of spring, I wonder.

So today, I’m shifting my thinking and starting to see my spiritual life as a tree, planted and rooted. Alive because something OUTSIDE of me exists…not because I was able to discover how to pour cement and pound nails and paint drywall…you know?

I’m sure there’s more here. It’s a start though. A new way to see things, like getting glasses I didn’t know I needed.