Today's Journal
HEALING SILENCE
John Keats (1795-1821) poet, wrote:“It is a perfect simile for the silence of the mind, when all personal conflicts are resolved, when all selfish desires come to rest. All of us are looking for this absolute peace, this inward, healing silence in the redwood forest of the mind. When we find it, we will become small forces for peace wherever we go.”
I know for some the term ‘healing silence in the redwood forest of the mind’ may not mean much or perhaps even understood. But I was born and raised within an hour of the Giant Sequoia Redwoods in California. Since I was a young boy and on into my adult years, I have been a recipient of the experience of being ‘in the presence’ of Redwood Trees. As mentioned before in this Journal, visitors to the Redwood Forest quickly go silent and whisper as they visit. There is ‘a healing silence in the redwood forest of the mind.’
The great naturalist, E. O. Wilson (1929-2021) said, “Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong.”
Redwood trees baffle because they go beyond good explanation. They develop our mind, body and soul in silence by visit or image. “With a height of 275 ft, (a football field is 300 feet) a diameter of 25 ft, an estimated bole (Stump from ground to first branches) volume of 52,513 cu ft, and an estimated age of 2,300–2,700 years, (about 1,000 years before Christ) it is the tallest, widest, and longest-lived of all trees on the planet.” (Wikipedia) That’s the ‘healing silence of the mind.’
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world.” Jesus