I heard the phrase “Deeply Rooted”, more than a few weeks but less than a few years ago, and it connected with me.  I am not sure of when was the first time I heard it but it probably was in some yoga class as it is something a yoga teacher would say.  It was one of those phrases you first hear and it just passes through, in one ear and out the other, but something about it passing through connected with me and lingered in the back of my mind.  When you hear it a second time and then yet again is when that it starts to float up, you become aware that you have been thinking about it.  Deeply Rooted, it is just a phrase but yet it means something to me, it connects to me, but what does it mean?  Deeply, as in feeling deeply, rooted as in an ancient tree roots that extend deeply down into to the earth.  To survive the wind, the storms, the drought a tree must be deeply rooted. 
 
  I recently moved back to my home town, the town I grew up in.  When I examine why I moved back I find it because of the feeling of being deeply rooted.  Being back in my old home town, being back close to my family makes me feel connected, feel deeply rooted.  It is not the feeling of being back to what is familiar for the town has changed in the years I’ve been gone.  It is something deeper, something deeply rooted to this place.
 
  Deeply rooted is ancient but something new for me to explore.  Each day I see something new but old, something that gives me glimpses of something deeper, something deeply rooted.  A tree, a painting on a wall, a duckpond, an old building downtown.  Each sparks a connection deeply rooted.

  These are my Deeply Rooted stories.

Larry Mixson, 04.14.2019