I’m not an arborist, or a tree expert of any kind, but when I walked past this tree I had the sense that it was rather old. Call it the power of observation. It was tall, gnarled, and most striking to me it had a hole through the middle where it had obviously been damaged and yet survived, grew, thrived, was a home for creatures and was able to give shade on a very hot day. You cannot see the bottom of the tree but it is just one tree, not two twining together, one tree split, and recovered.

I was thinking about this tree and thinking about myself, my over fifty years on the planet, which as Paul Simon might say is “older than I once was, younger than I’ll be*,” and the ways in which I am rooted and solid, the places where I have been asked to split and shift, and the ways in which I have been able to come back together to continue in whatever purpose I am asked to serve in this time of my life. When I stopped to take this picture, I commented to my husband about how I loved that you could see the earth beyond through the window of the trunk. Somehow it was a reminder to me of how we need to understand our rootedness even if we can’t see our roots. Maybe that’s a little too esoteric – but it made sense to me as I stood feeling that truth.

We are of the earth, we are in the earth, we are made from the earth. Knowing that is what humility is, remembering that, keeps us humble. The root word for humility and human is the same: humus, earth or ground. It can be translated as lowly, but that’s a later etymological development. The root really takes us back to the ground, not to nothingness, just a reminder of our earthly nature. The fact is that we are something that must grow, that must change, that is subject to seasons; we can be worked and we can be hurt and we can be healed and we can produce beautiful things that nurture the people we come into relationship with.

When I was younger I was very sure of a lot of things. I knew how I felt and could declare that I would “always” or “never.” I was quite sure that if you did X or voted for Y or drove Z you were a certain kind of person. I am embarrassed by this now, you could say I have been humiliated, because I have been reminded of my earthliness, my grounded simpleness in recognizing how I should not have judged or been so certain, when I too was just a growing thing that was, and is, always in the process of changing. I recently decided to do something that I used to say I would never do, and I admit I judged others harshly for doing this thing. I never bothered to be curious and wonder why they did this, I made up a story and a personality all by myself without taking the time to get to know someone. To admit this is indeed humiliating. And it also feels so deeply good to allow myself the honesty of being human, of being of the earth and knowing that getting it wrong, making space to grow, surviving the damage to my ego is just a part of what makes me the unique thing that I am in the world.

I sincerely hope I learn from all of these moments. This particular incident is not the first time I have experienced the opportunity to explore humility. I’m not great but when someone asks me what I think I am better at saying, “what do you think?” before I just launch into my declarative brilliance. I am also a little better at qualifying my statements by saying, “at any rate this is true right now, who knows what the future holds.” I’m not perfect, maybe just a little better, maybe just twisting a little more in the direction of the light and remembering to look at where my roots are too.

“When arrogance leads the way, shame follows. But wisdom follows the humble of heart.**”

* The Boxer, Paul Simon

** Proverbs 11:2 First Nations Version

Plug for the new book: The Giving Bitch is now available on Kindle, paperback is coming out on September 4th. Check it out!