Searching for Roots
Sometimes, as I tramp along edges of limestone bluffs searching for cedar or walnut roots, I think my entire life is echoed in what I'm doing. I poke here and there, look under leaves, scan each stick protruding from the earth, and examine any root with quiet patience.
Have I been doing this all my life? Is my literal pursuit for old sculptured roots merely a metaphor for my entire journey? It may be.
While still a young boy I carefully studied the bits of theology presented at my local church. In my mind, now, I review pictures of myself engaged in reading books in the empty sanctuary, of old arguments about seemingly-at-the-time significant religious issues, of inquiring from older people their answers to perplexing questions. I was searching for roots. It took me years in college and several graduate schools until I realized that it was philosophical presuppositions that set the entire tone of each rhetorical system and, unless I dealt with the root assumptions, everything else was a house of cards. I finally realized that if a system was not empirical, it was mere huff and puff.
Then, during my next evolution, I researched psychotherapy's basement in search of what system would match empiricism with actual help for humans. Psychoanalysis came closest. It was Transactional Analysis, a sprig off the Freudian tree, that afforded me an actual place to help people. From that origin, I kept digging until LibPsych (libpsych.com) was developed.
For twenty-five years my predominant activity, via hundreds of questions, was digging for the roots of why people wound themselves and have poor journeys. It was a grand privilege to dig into personal histories. It was revealing to find the sources, to come up with the early decisions (and 'luck of the draw') that set the course of a person's life.
Roots. All my life. Now, my search is to find the soul of the tree, that elemental and basic root structure that, during all the seasons, provided nurture to the tall being above it. When I discover a root lodged in dirt and cracks of limestone, I am exultant - as happy as a boy finding the secret treasure of the universe. As soon as I find a gnarled root, I study it with the patience of a laboratory scientist, turning it in my hands until I see all aspects of it. I want to discern how it provided a living base for a tree, how it sent life force energy up to the furthest branches and most outreaching leaf. I identify with the root until I feel it in my heart, my blood vessels, my inner soul. I love these old roots. Is this a metaphor of my entire journey? I think it is.
