Reading Francis

This is my favorite tree, and I took several photos of it, none of which do it justice. It’s in the middle of a well-manicured garden that was right outside our window.

The trees around it are just like trees I would draw: straight line trunk, branches all straight at roughly the same acute angle, leaves where you would expect them.

But this tree has lived a life. You can see from the crazy twists and turns of the branches that whether by external pressures or faulty genetic instructions, its growth has been mostly off track. And that’s what makes it worth photographing. That’s what makes it beautiful.

In our own lives, but even more so in the lives of our children, we want the straight line paths. No drama. No pain. But maybe that’s the wrong wish. Maybe we should be hoping instead for the perspective to always see how the warping of external pressures and faulty instructions and off track choices don’t brand us as aberrant. They make us beautiful.