6^th May, 2024 • Søren Aas

The Sea and the Cherry Blossoms

The sea is ever changing, it asks us for currage to accept what it is and is not. A cherry blossom asks us for patience to let it bloom, and to wait for it until next spring.

Living life can be done in many ways, indifferently, with passion, with pride or what have you. But the life of the mystic can be lived like the ocean. A life that is ever changing, reflecting, merging, accepting and swelling. Such a life requires a curious mix of bravery and patience. Yes the sea is mighty and can splinter, crush and destroy, but it can also be supple, gentle and birth life. It never stagnates though, only sea water cut off from the sea, say in rock pools on the coast lines, the water is separated from its source and soon festers, creating more life. The sea can caress with warm and gentle waves. It can take you home, or to a watery grave. It is fickle and constant. We can learn a lot, but we must first cut our mooring lines and allow ourselves to drift out into her vastness. This is bravery, accepting what may come.

But we are not the sea, we are humans who are busy humaning. We can only be changeable if we accept that we can be like an ocean still, currents, run deep, but changing, adapting and overcoming, loving and hating. So how exactly does this relate to cherry blossoms? Please bear with me.

There was a cherry tree in the garden, it created beauty in May when it blossomed and its cherries where sweet and plump, often times when bitten into, their juice would dribble out. The seagulls loved it. But it was cut down. Trees are cut down all the time, some for good reasons and others for other reasons. It still breaks my heart. Still, this felling was harrowing not for the action itself, but for the timing. It was cut down only a few days before it would have blossomed.

It's dismembered trunk, boughs and twigs scattered in the dirt. The buds almost fully formed, a hint of lush green life starting to appear on the dark barky tips. Their promise cut off from the source, denying them their bloom into delicate white, pink and pale blossoms.

Standing under a blossoming cherry tree in the first warm days of spring is hard to describe after the desolate, dark and numbing cold of the sub arctic winter. The winter that seems to take the sun hostage and only reluctantly lets him again warm the darkly frozen earth. To stand under a canopy of blossoms, it is a moment that must pass, but just then, right now, they blossom in their subdued, delicate and soft colors. They are a instant that can keep us warm from within.

How cruel to deny them their last blossoming, would some patience have made the sacrifice of the cherry tree more bearable? Or was it precisely the insistence on felling the tree at that particular time, when it held its utmost potential for beauty that made the sacrifice more significant, a greater gift to the Gods, for is not love both blind and cruel?

She comes and goes, like the tides of the sea, at once approaching and then retracting. Led by the pale moon in the night sky, back and forth, lead and follow. At once teacher and pupil, wise but foolish. The oceans rage, yet they stay still. The ocean is not going away or indeed anywhere. This is both terrifying and inspiring. For would it not be equal sacrifice to cull a wave that is cresting, or wallowing or rolling? Is it in any meaningful way different from cutting down the cherry tree? Or is there no difference at all?

Is life just energy, at once waves and particles? Can we feel the eternal in the finite. Do they balance or do they dance. Or do we not need to know, can we just accept the loving grace of existence. Blossoms and waves. There then gone.

Or, does love start now and last forever? I have always looked for my love, but I could not see. Only later would I realize that lovers don't meet, they are in us all along. As we grow we define each other, but to continue growing we must risk it all, every day, we must face the fear of growing apart. To survive we must have faith, we must believe and accept that though our paths run together now, they may part later.

Temporariness it brings out the flavor, but too much can spoil it. Can we ever be as raging and changing as the sea or are we just blossoms on a felled cherry tree?

Bravery and patience.