Tree Whispers

A brownie man named Edwin spoke with me this Friday morning.  Edwin is a red-haired fellow with bright green eyes.  He wore a green cap atop his red hair, along with a green vest over a yellow shirt, brown pants and boots.  We chatted while we sat on my front covered porch, I sitting in a chair rapidly writing down our conversation, while Edwin perched calmly on the porch table talking and peacefully smoking his pipe.

“So, what did the tree whisper to you through her trembling leaves the other day?” asked Edwin, referring to the day when I was sitting beneath the branches of the Tulip Poplar tree that looms over our back deck.  The wind suddenly picked up, rustling the leaves on the nearby trees, and the tree whispered to me.  “Well?” Edwin waited, puffs of smoke balls circling about his head like small planets.

“I’m not sure,” I replied with some hesitation.

“Not sure?” Edwin raised his eyebrows.

Clearing my thoughts, I tried to recapture the exact words I thought the tree whispered to me.  I think it said, “Why can’t my children love each other the way I love them?”

“The tree said that?” Edwin inquired.

“There’s more,” I admitted.

“Well?”  Edwin stared at me intently.

“The tree claimed to be God speaking.”

“The tree claimed to be God?” Edwin repeated back to me, his pipe momentarily forgotten.

“Well, no,” I responded.  “The tree didn’t claim to be God, but that God was speaking through the whispering leaves of the tree.”

“Do you have some doubts it was God speaking to you?”

“Well, yes, I do.”

Edwin waved his pipe about, “Why is it so strange to believe it was God speaking to you?  God is speaking to us all the time, if we just care to listen.”  Edwin paused. Smiling, he asked, “Would you have believed it was God talking to you if the tree was on fire?  Like Moses’ burning bush?”  Edwin paused, trying to keep from laughing, “Did the tree tell you to take off your shoes because you were sitting on holy ground?”

“No!” I replied indignantly.

Edwin raised his hands, his pipe still putting out gentle puffs of smoke.  “I am just teasing you, lad,” he chuckled.  “So what else did the tree have to say?”

I paused, choosing my words carefully from memory.  “Tell my children to stop hurting one another and to love each other and to show love for my Creation I made with my own hands.”  As I told Edwin the words of the tree, I felt myself trying not to cry.

Edwin placed a small hand on my shoulder. “The things the tree said sound like God to me, lad.  Like I said earlier, God is always talking to us, but do we ever care to listen?”  With a smile, Edwin faded away, taking his small galaxy of circling puff balls of smoke with him.