A Sylvan Quest

My very being is a sacrifice.  A service to the human race.  I feed them, shelter them, warm them.  Without me, they are a suffering lot indeed.  I give everything I am, even unto my own death and cremation.  Not complaining, not resisting, no objections at all do I offer.  I cool them in the summer, break the winds that slap their faces in the winter.  I give them beauty and I invite them into my bounteous arms for their sheer recreation.  I bring them closer to their Creator and mine, testify of His goodness and love.  Wordlessly.  I don’t have to preach.  I can’t preach.  I can only offer myself to them, to their lives and their spirits, hoping that they will hear my silent gospel.  Hoping as I reach towards them, that through their racing about they might slow long enough to notice me, to notice Him whom I point to.  It’s painful sometimes, to be trodden, to be abused, to be, worst of all, ignored, taken for granted.  But just as I can’t preach, I can’t complain.  I have a job to do, and without me, it won’t get done.  My humans will die, and their options will be extinguished.  They will perish often before they have fallen to the ground enough times to look up and reflect.  If I am to carry out my duty, if I am to be a beacon for them, leading them to the light, I need to sustain them long enough for them to see me.  To really see me.  To see through me and into reality and truth.  So I grow, and I shade, and I give my very life breath as theirs.  I open myself to them, I call to them in the night, I beckon to them as they pass me by.  And as I fade, I yearn for them to exhaust everything that I am, to make me still a part of their lives, a reminder from inside their walls, or under their plates, or even from inside their hearths, to be so totally used up that there is nothing left of me.  To be transformed into light itself.  Light and warmth, to their bodies, and I pray, to their souls, as my incense rises up, taking whatever small parts of them with me that they allow.  I pray that they might join me in my death, and find their own resurrection stories through mine.