New Tree, Old Tree

Trees have it tough in Arizona. The wind blows dust around them, wind gusts are high, the ground is hard, roots are fragile. Trees often topple in our monsoon season. Often, they are left to dry out before they are cut flat and removed.

This tree was left to die, but still had a life to live. You can see the cut end in the right of the photo. But the tree had other ideas. It started growing again.  Created a new tree right out of the old one, using what was available to create a whole new tree.

It was a lesson for me: Yes, I have fragile parts, and yes, I’ve been felled before. But giving up is a choice, and it doesn’t have to be the only choice.

It’s what I teach my coaching clients: you get to decide. You have a choice. Even when it doesn’t look like it, you have a choice. Build on the answer you want.

–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach and is working on a book: The Invisible, Visible World.

Blessing for the Autumn Equinox

Relief from the burning sun is a blessing.
A blessing, too, is the bounty from the garden, the plants that bloom as proof that life is generous.
Bless the food that grows and stores the sun and makes the light delicious.

The balance in your life as night equals day, then slowly lengthens the shadows, that is a blessing to you.

To understand that your time walking on this earth is limited is a blessing;
as is your chance to be kind for another day.

Bless this night for everything that leaves us, that grows dark, that we can release into the mystery of the moon, the stars, and the sun that will rise into another day.

Bless the cooling pavement, the sidewalks that do not radiate heat to the knees.
Bless the waning heat–no longer hot enough to stand on your skin like a knife.

May you harvest the heat and use it in the darker months to brighten life,
to shine your goodness onto the world,
to let it be a dot of light in the dark night to comfort the wanderer
who sees it in his distance.

The wheel of life has moved through a year to this point,
and you are here again.
Blessed is this sacred time we walk on the face of the earth,
knowing there is a dawn to come.
–Q. McDonald, © 2018

Dust You Are

You see something, and your brain doesn’t quite understand it. Your brain, trying to be helpful, makes up information for you to believe. You not only believe it, you will defend what you are sure you saw.

About a dozen people have seen the photo above. Most of them guessed it was some sort of archeological dig, showing a partial skeleton. Some decided it was a sketch of a skeleton using pastels. I can see that.

But this is much more commonplace. It’s truck tire tracks into a construction site. The dirt mixed with rain to create the look.

–Quinn McDonald is writing a book on The Invisible, Visible World. It takes a look at commonplace things that have a more interesting story to tell.