Margaret Cheasebro

Now is a good time to search on the ground around trees in your yard or on public pathways through your town to find pine cones and other things that have dropped from trees. They make wonderful art work for anyone who has the patience and skill to create original pieces.

Many years ago, a friend of mine gathered some small pine cones she found and crafted them into a Christmas tree ornament. She gave it to me, and I have hung it on my tree every year since then. It reminds me of our friendship and of her ability to create lovely things.

Start close to home by walking around your yard to see what you can find on the ground. Twigs, pine cones, pine needles, dried autumn leaves, and little stones are among the many things you might find. If you want, you can invite family members or friends to join the fun.

Drop the items you collect into a paper or plastic bag. When you have enough, take them inside. If necessary, clean them off in whatever way seems most appropriate. If you choose a way that damages the item, don't worry. Just go out and find something else.

Once the items you collected are clean and dry, spread them out on a table or on the floor. Give them a discerning look. What item could you create with some of those pieces? If you think of something, move those pieces to one part of the table or floor and begin putting them together.

If what you create doesn't look like you hoped it would, set it aside and look at the remaining pieces. What could you build from them? Use your imagination. You can use anything to help you build your idea, such as a glue gun, cloth material, string, or colorful paper.

Keep working until you run out of time or want to take a break. There's no need to use up all the pieces. Anything left over you can deposit outside in your yard. Set the pieces you have completed aside.

Look at all the items you have created. Are there a few that you really like? Keep as many of them as you want. The others would make good gifts for friends. If you don't like some of the things you created, throw them away or give them to your cat or a neighbor's cat for a toy.

A tall wooden fence separates my back yard from my neighbors' yard. In their back yard grows a majestic, towering pine tree that drapes some of its branches over the fence. They provide shade for flowers that grow in my back yard.

Every morning the branches create a shadow design on the fence. They form especially artistic patterns between 8 and 9 a.m. If I wait until late in the morning to observe them, the shadows have become too big to create much of a contrast with the fence.

When I watch those shadows, I sometimes think they are a bit like the shadow within us. "Our shadow is made up of the thoughts, emotions, and impulses that we find too painful, embarrassing, or distasteful to accept," said the late self-help author, coach, lecturer and teacher Debbie Ford. She believed our shadow is one of the most valuable gifts available to us. Ford is perhaps best known for her New York Times best selling book, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers. In it she shows readers how to use spiritual practices and modern psychology to deal in a healthy way with their shadow.

Ford explained more about our shadow in The Shadow Effect, the book she co-wrote with Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson. "We have all hidden away and repressed pain-filled, shame-filled moments, and, over time, these emotions harden into our shadow," she wrote. "These are the unexpressed fears, the horrifying shame, the gnawing guilt. These are the issues of the past that we have never faced."

In the mornings, I enjoy looking at the shadows the pine tree forms on my side of the fence. If I want to see the shadows at their most visible, I have to do it at the right time. Noon will be too late. In the afternoon, everything is in shadow without any patterns at all. I must deliberately choose mornings to see the display of light and shadow on the fence.

In the same way, if we want to examine the painful shadow within us, we must do it in a deliberate way. "You have to confront the very parts of yourself that you fear most to find what you have been looking for, because the mechanism that drives you to conceal the darkness is the same mechanism that has you hide your light. What you've been hiding from can actually give you what you've been trying hard to achieve," Ford wrote in The Shadow Effect.

Our shadow contains both fear and potential healing. It isn't easy to face what's in our shadow, especially what we fear most. But it is well worth the effort if we want to heal the pain and shame we've experienced in the past.

I am constantly amazed by how the simple act of observing nature can lead to thoughts that provide me with an opportunity to heal. No matter how old or wise we get, we will always be on a journey toward continued healing. I am thankful for trees and for Debbie Ford and many other wonderful teachers who help us find a way back to wholeness.