What if you just believe in it?

Inspired by Arboreal Intelligence.

This squirrel is a paid actor. The one who planted our walnut tree was ‘busy’. ©theupstairscreative

My name is Jo and I’m an over-thinker. So naturally, I’ve been getting all twisted up in the details of coming back here. How do I ‘do Substack’ properly? Am I ‘qualified’ to write about this? What even is ‘this’? Should I have a system or a framework? Why would anybody care? The world is on fire and I’m busy. You’re busy. We’re buried under a never-ending avalanche of ‘content’.

Then a few days ago, walking back down the garden from the bins, deep in thought, I was stopped in my slippered tracks. The walnut tree (seriously, it was the tree) asked, ‘What if you just believe in it?’.

Oh.

Good question.

Very good question.

Back inside, I looked up Walnut in my flower essence books. Dr Bach described it as the remedy ‘for those who have definite ideals and ambitions in life and are fulfilling them, but on rare occasions are tempted to be led away from their own ideas, aims and work by the enthusiasm, convictions or strong opinions of others.’

Well, of course. Of course that’s what a walnut tree would have to say to me as I stand in my garden, spiralling about qualifications and frameworks and wondering how someone else, much cleverer than me might do it. The tree basically said, ‘You know what you’re doing. Just get on with it.’

So, what if I just believe…

… in this way of relating to the world - animist, devotional, direct. No intermediaries, no dogma?

… that the Earth loves smart old women who know stuff and are happy to learn more, much more?

… that when we reconnect with the living world - really listen, really relate - we again become part of something alive? Not followers of a path, but co-creators with the land itself.

For me, this looks like stories, handmade things, messy experiments, and simple ceremony with my home, this place. Yours will be entirely different and that, my friend, is The Whole Point.

I’d been catching myself wanting to perfect things before trying them (lifelong issue); wanting to imagine an entire framework before testing a single piece; know all the answers before asking the questions. Round and round and round.

But that’s not how this works. My practice is me out here trying things - talking to trees, making essences, reading signs. Getting it wrong, trying again…

Morën and her fictional world is just one of the ways I’m suited to processing all this. Yes, it’s a blueprint of what devotional living might look like if I really committed to it, but it’s illustration, not instruction. I can tell those stories and you can take what resonates and discard the rest. Or not.

The actual work is simpler: reconnection. Learning to hear the land. Trusting that the Earth speaks and that you’re allowed, even needed to answer back. So much of humanity - my culture for sure - lost the experience of being just one embodiment of spirit amongst all the others. We were taught, and often willingly believed, that we were superior and separate. Luckily for us, the rest of Life just waited for us to remember, knowing that we prodigal children will one day have to come home and speak our mother tongue.

That journey can start with small steps - a moment with morning light; a question from a tree; noticing when the air shifts and feeling its message. And we’re free to travel home any way we like, together or alone.

I’m 62, and not only am I still looking for meaning, I’m finding it at the exact right time. I’m finally old enough. I wasn’t ready before. I didn’t have the space, the audacity, or - frankly - the stillness to do this properly. So, as it turns out the Earth has excellent job opportunities for smart old women (even us slightly prickly, overly independent, eldest daughter types), I’m on the best career ladder ever.

If you’re here too - done with performance - then you know what I mean.

I think we can figure this out together. I’ll keep showing you what I’m trying; you build your own version and tell me about it if you want to.

The Earth is hiring for her A Team, and I love it when a plan comes together.