Tigerlily, Planted: a.k.a, Great Blue Heron and Oak Tree Speak to Me

I’d been searching for homeplace for years and years, struggling with where I was meant to live. 


After google-mapping every city of every job opening,  after years of contemplating every potential location’s geography, topography, local ideology, ethnic diversity, creative opportunity, I had decided, with certainty, that the place I was meant to live and call home was New York City. Yes! New York City. I was ready for the gritty. I was ready for the city. It was time for a serious life shift.


And then springtime came to Southern Illinois. The lilacs intoxicated me with their fragrant cliché. The tulips screamed neon announcements that they survived the deer. A friend gave us truckloads of sandstone. I laid pathways, planted trees. Just when I thought I had successfully detached from our land, here I was with its very soil under my nails.

It was April 2010. I had recently completed my Ph.D., and I needed a job. The economy was in the thick of its notorious downturn, and the redbuds were in bloom.  I walked the country roads where poverty and beauty collided.  I loved the pasture with the old horse whose cockleburs I removed from its black mane.  I loved the big Victorian with the sign out front that said “Haircuts.” I loved the trailer with the life-size statue of Kwan Yin standing beneath the tree guarded by the two lions.

I didn’t want to leave Southern Illinois! I realized it with a surge of passion. But how could I stay? How could I make a living here? My mind returned to an old vision I’d been refining in my imagination for years.  Mandala Gardens. My idea for a creative retreat space where activists, artists, scholars, healers, people could come from all over and walk through my gardens and share inspiration. My heart quickened as I realized I could stay in Southern Illinois. I could make this work! I returned home from my walk, euphoric with my realization, and minutes later, my phone rang. 

 

“Dr. Tigerlily? I’m calling from New York City. We received your application for the full-time tenure-track position. Are you still interested?”

I froze. “No,” I was about to say, but I caught myself in time to realize this was about a real job in New York City and that I had to say yes, “Yes.”

“Okay, that’s all we wanted to know. Thank you.” And she hung up!

I stood there shocked. My heart beat from the adrenaline surge and reality shift. 

My thoughts quickly returned to my new ideas for Mandala Gardens, and later that day, I told Greg about how I wanted to make it work.  But he just shook his head. “We don’t have the space for parking, and we really need another building.”

Undaunted, I went for another walk, and I saw a Notice of Foreclosure taped to the house next door. The house had been abandoned for a year. The couple had divorced and gone their separate ways. They must have stopped making payments. It felt clean to me that they chose simply to walk away from this symbol they no longer shared. 

The Notice said the foreclosure became effective April 21. That was tomorrow! 

The timing was serendipitous. 

This wonderful house on three acres that attached to my gardens, this long driveway with ample parking, this huge vacant building—this is what I needed to make my vision come true!

I returned home, excited, and opened my laptop. Sitting in my inbox was an email that had just been sent from the college in New York City notifying me I had been selected for a phone interview for tomorrow or the day after that.  

The house going into foreclosure at the same time as the New York City job interview was the mother of all convergences. 

The phone interview went well. They told me they would contact me in the next few days to let me know either way about another interview. 

I hung up the phone excited about this full-time tenure track position. To choose this job was to choose academia coupled with the world’s greatest city.

But…to choose this job was to reject Mandala Gardens, just when it was seeming like a real possibility. 

I marveled at the truly coffee and granola moment this was for me: New York City or Mandala Gardens. It was the ultimate life-path-decision. Whichever I chose would be significantly life-defining, not just for me but for my family, too. 

I told myself sternly, surely it would be lofty and unwise to turn down a real job with real benefits in the field of my training, in a city I love, to follow a vision I was only imagining.  Right?  

But I was getting ahead of myself.  They might not even offer me the job. 

I decided to put all of it out of my mind. 

But in those next days, I found myself unable to stop thinking about all the new mandala gardens I would build on our new land.  I was imagining a giant labyrinth, children’s gardens, heirloom gardens, a pumpkin patch, honeybees. I was picturing pathways lined with white stone that glowed in the moonlight and a hidden bench with a wooden box that contained binoculars and a butterfly identification book. I was thinking about creative retreats, conferences, workshops. I was imagining haven, enlightenment, sustainability. 

I confided to Greg that I didn’t want to move to New York City, I didn’t want the job. I wanted to stay right here and buy this property and build Mandala Gardens. I felt that to choose Mandala Gardens was to choose the life I wanted. 

Greg and I started crunching numbers.  We didn’t have the cash for a down payment, the house was in serious disrepair, I only had one more guaranteed paycheck—and it was a half-paycheck, and I didn’t know if I would be re-hired. I felt fear and self-doubt creeping in. What if we found ourselves with a money pit and growing debt? What if I failed?

I went to the center of my spiral garden until I was rooted in centeredness. Then, I walked the land. At the very back corner was the giant old oak tree. I’d never stood beneath this tree, for it was fenced away on the neighbor’s property--the property that we were now thinking about buying. So I walked across the property line and stood beneath the old oak tree for the first time ever. 

I placed my hand on the tree, and I heard a clear voice say, “This is where you live.”  

The clarity and the truth of those words crashed over me, fast and unexpected. I was overcome with recognition. This was where I lived. This was my home, where my dreams had taken root. How could I have ever doubted? 

I hurried back across the property line and ran up to my house to get my sage stick. I needed to protect this property from anybody making an offer on it. I needed to connect the two properties so they were sealed as one.

I walked the outside borders of the two properties to connect them. I reached the portion of our land I had designated as spirit sanctuary, and a rush of gratitude swept through me, as though the spirit was thanking me for giving it sanctuary. 

Aloud I responded, “Thank you for all you’ve given me.”  

And I exhaled a long exhale and said, “The two properties are now bound. May they forever be protected.” 

As soon as I spoke the words, a bird squawked overhead. I looked up and a Great Blue Heron, symbol of self-determination and self-reliance, flew right over me and across both parcels of land, physically sealing them as one, while reminding me of my strength and ability to manifest this dream.

The Great Blue Heron and the Oak Tree affirmed for me that I had nothing to be afraid of. They answered the question I had been asking for years. I was on my life path. 

We bought the house and land, and in the end, I never heard from the college. I was neither formally accepted nor formally rejected. Rather, I had made the decision on my own.

Months later when I sat down to write this story, I wrote the words, “Great Blue Heron and Oak Tree Speak to Me”—and just as I finished typing those nine words, something caught my eye. I looked and saw a great blue heron fly right outside my window, soar majestically, and then land near the top of the very oak tree of which I speak, and of which spoke to me. 

Affirmation is everywhere, always. 

And this Tigerlily is planted.