“When I Was the Forest” by Meister Eckhart (1260 – 1328)

CATEGORIES

• Awakening 2
• Awareness 2
• Being Human 1
• Bible 2
• Buddhism 8
• Christianity 4
• Compassion 1
• Consciousness 5
• Ecumenicalism 1
• Egotism 1
• Enlightenment 2
• Fear 3
• God 7
• Grace 1
• Heart 1
• Heaven 1
• Keith Basar 2
• Koans 1
• Listening 1
• Love 10
• Meaning of Life 1
• Mysticism 5
• Native American 1
• Parables 1
• Philosophy 2
• Poetry 62
• Relationships 1
• Religion 3
• Spiritual Teacher 13
• Spirituality 16
• Suffering 2
• Taoism 26
• Theology 3
• Truth 1
• Wisdom 3
• Wisdom Stories 80
• Wisdom Story 31
• Zen 29

When I was the stream, 

when I was the forest, 

when I was still the field,

when I was every hoof, foot,
fin and wing, 

when I was the sky itself,

no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, 

no one ever wondered 

was there anything I might need,

for there was nothing
I could not love.

It was when I left 

all we once were that
the agony began, 

the fear and questions came,

and I wept, I wept. 

And tears I had never known before.

So I returned to the river, 

I returned to the mountains. 

I asked for their hand in marriage again,

I begged—I begged to wed every object
and creature,

and when they accepted,

God was ever present in my arms.

And He did not say,

“Where have you been?”

For then I knew my soul—every soul—

has always held Him.