It’s all just a theory until you know it in your bones. A storm blows through a neighborhood and photos of destruction show up on tv.  Who is that?  Where is that?  It seems distant and unreal and we send out prayers and blessings to the people we see on the screen and the ones we imagine to own the home that is now a pile of debris. We may give thanks that our house is still standing and the winds chose to spare us this unfortunate lot.  How do we connect?  How do we truly empathize and be with a neighbor whose life is the one in the news?  Those who felt the tornado, lived through it, are cleaning up after it and hope to tell a silver-lining story about it, they are the ones who know.

To be witness is to experience, too.  To drive along my everyday route, just blocks from my backdoor, the streets will never be the same.  I see.  I feel.  I hear the losses. Trees are down.  Gone. Uprooted before their time, having witnessed all the human activity of their neighbors for decades, or even centuries. Nature’s wisdom in these trees has slowly become knowledge because they have stood witness.  To us.  To you.  To all the passing of time.  What will we do without them?  Do they take the knowledge with them?

Now it is our turn. To be witness, to stand with our neighbors, to share our wisdom and let it grow into knowledge of the fragility and power in this human experience on Earth.  And to thank the trees for their steady stay in our midst and bless them on their departure.