The Mystery of the Dead Tree

My wife and I live in a moderately-sized garden apartment complex. The landlord provides two garbage dumpsters for tenant use. Some curious objects end up in these receptacles. Baby furniture, books, and obsolete electronics find their way to their green metal coffins for disposal. Today was unusual, in that someone left a young, and quite dead, tree next to one of the dumpsters.

The tree had no leaves, no buds, but some significant branch development. Had it remained in the earth, the tree would have been at least two heads taller than I am. That the tree still possessed its shallow root system surprised me. It's not easy to uproot a tree, even one with a precarious hold on the underworld. In my walks around the apartment complex, I had not noticed any trees perpendicular to the ground. The winds had not seemed especially severe; recent heavy rain might have softened the area where the tree grew, but I don't think it was swept away by watery forces.

A few weeks ago, landscapers tidied the complex's lawns and shrubs. They would certainly have disposed of a tree marked for elimination. OK, so for now, the dead tree's presence remains enigmatic.

Over the years in the complex, some tenants have used trees as expressive conduits for their emotions. One woman found some stray branches, put them together, and proceeded to indiscreetly pray over them. While no one quizzed her about the inspiration for her religious fervor, the complex's super firmly told her to move her shrine out of the parking lot's sole driveway.

I wonder what the woman would have done with today's dead tree. What spirit, what source of mystic revelation, would have been her reason to pray?

A Spiritual Message on Thanksgiving

Ritual Bathing in Ganges River, India
(Photo: PBS)

During this evening's Thanksgiving dinner, I spoke with a West African woman who has found opportunity in the United States. Our conversation flowed into a consideration of spiritual matters. She said that many of her country's people believed in the existence of spirits. As I understood this perspective, each element in our environment -- trees, sun, moon, plants, rivers, and other things -- has a spirit. Each has something to say, if one is truly psychically open, able to be still, and willing to listen to the world in which we are immersed.

I thought this was a beautiful and an entirely appropriate message for Thanksgiving Day. Later, as my wife and I drove home, I looked at the half moon in the southern sky and wondered what it was communicating. I thought about a river, and how its symbolism has moved philosophers and mystics from India to Egypt to produce profound thoughts. I considered Native Americans and their assertion of the natural world as a collection of living spirits.

I wondered what spirits I could hear, would hear, might hear, if I only tried.

Margaret Runyan Castaneda, ex-wife of Carlos Castaneda -- RIP

Once upon a time, Carlos Castaneda's writings mesmerized a generations of readers for whom the exploration of mysticism was akin to an enchanted journey. It's hard to imagine today, when the current deities are tech wizards and untouchable celebrities. Whatever Castaneda's faults -- and there were some whoppers -- at least his books attempted to touch something eternal and immaterial.

Ironically, one got the sense Castaneda was close to few people. Among them was Margaret Runyan, who met the author when he was an obscure deliveryman and she worked for a phone company in Los Angeles. Their story is a turbulent tale, and includes ambiguity about their marriage documentation, and the interposition of a legal organization which appears to have been something of a "keeper of the flame" for Castaneda.

The LA Times' obit of the former Mrs. Castaneda, who died over a month ago, offers intriguing details about the life and times of Margaret Runyan Castaneda and her famous husband.