Defile

Definition: to make unclean or impure. To spoil someone or something so that thing or person is less beautiful or pure.

The trees are FINALLY talking again today.

I was able to feel a more complete connection to the

grandma-sister tree cluster in the forest next to my house.

I can’t touch them from the road and it is hard to pause too long without seeming like a crazy person, but, I sent love

and felt a response today.

The response felt like waves of grieving.

I thought maybe I got the message wrong.

Last night was hard to sleep.

After watching a few episodes of Outlander (spoiler alert) in which the main male character: Jaime, is defiled by the villain.

Jaime is a young Scottish man.

He is strong and beautiful with a pure, brave, uncomplicated heart

He is also a warrior and has killed.

His strength of being able to defy anything had also been his weakness in the other episodes.

But in this one, his love for his wife makes him vulnerable and he has to let down his defiance.

He is tortured and raped by a sociopath, who takes pleasure in the defiling of both the beauty of what he is and of what he holds most precious.

Even though we forwarded the show through the parts I just couldn’t watch, it wasn’t enough.

My mind can fill in the details.

I couldn’t fall asleep with those images in my head.

I fought it until I finally surrendered to the cat’s warmth at my back and cried it out a little.

I awoke with it still on my mind.

And so, I thought maybe the feeling from the tree was just a reflection of my inner state.

Another group of them reflected back a similar feeling, except more like the loss of a war…the sadness of many at once.

As I was coming back home, the trees that had first greeted me when we moved to this house were talking again too.

At first it was the same. Great loss.

I tried listening harder, past my own limitations.

I heard, “it’s going to be okay.”

A woman I knew died this week.

She was feisty and sometimes difficult.

Part of her story was having been molested as an infant.

Safety had always been hard for her after that.

And she lost many that she loved over her life.

Often we would be working on her desire to be

on the other side

And wondering why she was still alive?

She was active, ate well, built relationships,

had a beautiful garden.

But it seemed like it was work to keep her heart in life.

A heart attack.

I will miss her smile and her eyes.

But I still feel her way if I try.

She kept everyone on their toes.

She promoted the telling of truths just by her presence.

The Hafiz poem this morning was about the idea that

any moment could be seen as every moment ever lived.

The defiling of the beautiful man, or an infant.

Maybe they are not so different from me looking in the mirror with disgust at my body.

Am I seeing clearly?

Or calling myself fat, a failure, worthless, etc.

This, too, is at the least disregarding and, in a way, defiling the beauty of me.

Maybe it’s time to accept the gift of looking at the

hard truth of this.

It is a massive grief.

The loss of so much time I could have spent loving myself.

So, feel it.

And, it’s going to be okay.

In the show, his wife has to get him to fight her, to see her, talk to her and wake up his defiance again.

And she is pregnant with his child.

A purpose to keep them going.

As they journey to the next thing.

The sociopath gets trampled by a herd of cattle.

And she takes confession from a priest who sees her journey as miraculous, and her sins as forgivable.

His blessing is given, and despite being outside of her religion or culture, is accepted.

Thank you trees.

I am listening.