Life Span of Organisms

Those are two or three new aspen trees coming up. I am going to let them grow. You can see the white bark of the dead aspen tree behind them. I was so sad to see the two aspen trees in the corner of my lot die over the last couple of years. I will have them removed this fall. Aspen trees are very interesting in that they really are just shoots from a massive root system. The individual shoots or trees don't live all that long, but they are continually being replaced by other "trees" shooting up. I am constantly cutting down new trees popping up all over my property. And then, on occasion, I let one or two grow. (Some claim that the world's largest organism is an aspen grove in Utah.)

It reminds me of AA. We would like to be attached to those we love. Those we like to be around. Those we have become accustomed to, just as I really liked those two trees in the corner of my lot and would have liked them to live a lot longer than 20 years. However, life is not static. Things change. There is a healthy root system and there are new shoots coming up, I will nurture them along until there are new big trees.

People in AA age and die. They move away. Sometimes they drink. Sometimes they just leave us. That is not the way we would like it. But there are always new "shoots" for us to nurture if we have a healthy root system.

I am probably too tired and in too much pain to be writing such an airy fairy post, but here it is anyway. It is just what I was thinking about today as I was going to church and baking more pies and visiting with a sponsee. I hope to God I didn't undo the hundreds (if not a thousand) of dollars worth of work I had done at the chiropractor for two hours of work in my yard yesterday. I am hurtin' for certain. Tomorrow is another day.

God bless you all. Let's stay sober. Trees and shoots alike, OK?