The Acorn and the Oak

“In a human life, something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this ‘something’ as a signal moment in childhood when an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation; This is what I must do, this is what I’ve got to have. This is who I am.

 

If not this vivid or sure, the call may have been more like gentle pushings in the stream in which you drifted unknowing to a particular spot on the bank. Looking back, you sense that fate had a hand in it.”

 

This quote, from the beginning of James Hillman’s book The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, announces his modern interpretation of an ancient idea: that we each are born with a particular destiny in mind, a defining guiding image that begins like a photo in the darkroom chemical bath, blurry and indistinct at first and then gradually coming into focus. Called the Daimon in ancient Greek thought, the Genius in Roman, the Guardian Angel in Christian and countless other names in spiritual traditions worldwide, it is a powerful force that gives shape and meaning to every individual life, if only we heed its call. For no matter what we call it, it requires our conscious attention, our determination to listen to that voice over the countless others pleading with us to ignore it and go shopping at the mall instead. It asks for our sacrifice by refusing to blindly obey the handed-down dogma, to shut up so we can fit in, to drink the Kool-Aid. 

 

Hillman reframes it as the “acorn theory,” noting that within each acorn, the blueprint for the magnificent oak to follow is already there in seed form. In one of my colleague James Harding’s most brilliant simple canons, he wrote:

 

Round the oak tree, round the oak tree, walk with me.

In every acorn, every little acorn, there’s a tree.

Something great, is inside of me.

 

Re-reading my journal from 1973, I’m astonished by the first hints of my acorn’s blossoming. In the Spring before that summer, I had taken my first Orff class with Avon Gillespie. Following Hillman’s description, it was less a euphoric annunciation with the heavens parting and the trumpets sounding and more a “gentle pushing down the stream” toward the bank of my life-to-be. Though I never mention that class or the word Orff in my journal, I note some proclivities that found their perfect home in the Orff approach. In one entry I wrote:

 

“Beginning to see myself in terms of conducting, that impulse I have for organizing, conducting, choreographing events and people. I feel comfortable with groups and confident of my ability to channel people’s energy into a harmonious gathering. That is something I would like to develop further. And equally to work on gathering the various energies and impulses within me into a harmonious whole, to choreograph the dance within, to direct my inner music.…”

 

Well, there it is. The outer conducting indeed developed in the 40,000 classes with children to follow and the few thousand adult Orff workshops. The inner work proceeded with Zen meditation, piano practice, walks in the woods, reading and writing. And there it all was in that acorn from 50 years ago, ready to sprout.

 

And the writing seed as well. After a month of writing that first journal, I paused and read it over and wrote:

 

“Re-reading this journal this morning, I feel pretty good about my writing. My biggest task is to find new adjectives, new ways of expressing my truer feelings so that it can transport the reader, communicate something of these experiences. I would like these writings to sing of marching bands and people dancing in the streets, the magnificence of an organ resounding through a hushed cathedral, the plaintive wail of the solitary street vendor, the raucous boisterous song of a barful of people spirited away by liquor, a mother and father tenderly singing their child to sleep. I would like these words to evoke the crunch of a rice cake, the sensation of air passing through the nostrils, the sweetness of two boys walking arm in arm, the flutter of wings in the early morning, the rain pounding outside the window, of any single thing that helps us know. May these words preserve the mystery.”