Dad

I was blessed to be born to a very ordinary, loving family. My father’s gentle humor and loving presence in my life meant that this lifetime would be grounded in laughter…still there underneath any burden of philosophical weightiness added on top of it in later years. Nearly blind, even when young, he was a natural woodworker with the gift of “seeing” with his hands. This was for me, a profound teaching, which came together with his incredible love of wood. He would go on to build furniture all his life, including most of the timber frame houses we grew up in. One of the most memorable pieces of furniture is the Early American pine table he built for my mother as a wedding gift…..the heart of the home, as it still is, where we gathered for scrambled egg breakfasts, home-baked dinners, two against two games, lots of fun and lots of homework!

Later, in my life, whenever a magnificent tree, like this rock maple, came into my life, I couldn’t resist trying to breathe the spirit of my own life into it. This rock maple made such a spiraling gesture both to the heavens and down into the earth that all I had to do was take one exquisite Japanese chisel and follow lovingly and patiently the rhythm of the tree itself.

It felt like the many noble heads of the spiritual teachers in my life were emerging there, each in its own unique way. With twenty coats of tung oil which I then burned off with a torch, it now stands rooting the timber frame house my husband and son built around it.