My story is woven in your story.
Because our paths crossed,
connected, carried on in step,
diverged,
I have become a bigger story.
If we are each of us streams,
then the place we flow into each other
is our rushing river, our brimming over,
our rich heritage.
We have become a grateful history.
And the place we flow out of each other
to put down sweet roots,
our offshoot from the branch, our fertile bush –
our turangawaewae –
is where we stand separate but together.
I am glad to be in this river with you,
your blessing is my drink,
my sustenance your pleasure, twin streams
in differing directions.
We become a waterway of many branched tributaries.
Our stories intertwining, dividing,
becoming bigger.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
September 2020
‘Turangawaewae’ – A Place to Stand (our place of belonging, sacred spiritual place)
“Nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity … that God makes [God’s] self known to each of us most powerfully and personally.”
—Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets
Living Tree Poetry 