Quickthorn read 1 Chronicles 16:33, Song of Solomon 2:11-13, Jeremiah 33:3 for the 182.2ii’s word #30. “Ecce arbor. Ecce donum. Ecce gaudium. Behold the tree. Behold the gift. Behold the joy.”
Quickthorn read 1 Chronicles 16:33, Song of Solomon 2:11-13, Jeremiah 33:3 for the 182.2ii’s word #30. “Ecce arbor. Ecce donum. Ecce gaudium. Behold the tree. Behold the gift. Behold the joy.”
Me: Ok, here’s the next one, I didn’t get it from G’s 7, nor from CLDF. I got it from your list with only 2 words for its meaning, which shows you how much of a stretch it must be:
Chat: Ecce! Behold! Look!
Now I see why you called this one a stretch. You took a Latin word that barely constitutes a sentence and turned it into a seven-line journey through a springtime forest.
But I think something rather wonderful happened along the way.
You didn’t write seven things to behold. You wrote about what happened when you stopped long enough to behold them.
And unlike Effundo, which described God transforming your inner life, Ecce takes us outside, into a world that was already there, waiting to be noticed.
Ecce — The invitation to behold
1. The call of the moving trees
When the trees moved in the Spring sunlight breeze, I felt a call to go in my soul, so I walked outside and found You.
I particularly like that you don’t begin with a theological statement.
You begin with moving trees.
The breeze catches your attention, something stirs within you, and you respond by going outside.
There is a lovely progression:
Movement → invitation → response → encounter.
You say you found God, although theologically, you aren’t suggesting He was lost. Rather, you became aware of His presence in something familiar.
It reminds me of Psalm 19:1, where the heavens declare God’s glory.
The trees aren’t delivering a sermon in human language. But their movement awakens your attention to their Creator.
And there’s something significant about your response: you didn’t merely admire them through the window.
You went outside.
2. The things you didn’t know were there
You granted me many things I did not see and did not know before.
This line provides the theological foundation for the entire septet.
God hadn’t necessarily created new things for you that afternoon. He had opened your awareness to things you hadn’t noticed.
That is an important distinction.
Sometimes a revelation changes the world around us. Sometimes it changes what we’re able to recognize within the world we’ve always inhabited.
Jeremiah 33:3 fits your reflection:
“Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.”
In its original context, that promise concerns God’s purposes for His people. But your use of it expresses a related personal conviction: there is more to discover than what we presently understand.
And the next five lines demonstrate that conviction through particular encounters.
3. Vines, unexpected support, and a squirrel
Even the vines spoke to me, maybe they should have broke, but they didn’t, and a squirrel visited me.
This is where your writing becomes unmistakably personal.
You haven’t idealized the experience into a perfect, solemn encounter with nature.
You’ve included the vines that perhaps shouldn’t have supported you and a squirrel that came to visit!
I like the combination of wonder and humor.
And I would interpret “the vines spoke to me” as poetic language for the way creation communicated something about its Maker, rather than suggesting the vines literally delivered a message.
There’s a practical caution, of course: vines and branches can fail unexpectedly. The fact that they held on one occasion doesn’t make climbing them safe.
But the literary significance is clear.
You discovered that the forest was not merely scenery.
It was full of life, movement, and encounters.
4. The emerald dance
Oh, the trees moved! In their emrald green dance, I climbed, and I could smell them, such a sweet Maple tree aroma.
“Oh, the trees moved!”
That exclamation may be the emotional center of Ecce.
You sound like someone rediscovering an experience that remains vivid years later.
And you’ve included three senses: sight, movement felt through the branches, and smell.
The emerald leaves dance.
The tree moves beneath you.
The maple’s aroma fills the air.
This is far more immersive than simply saying, “I saw God’s beauty in nature.”
You allow the reader to experience the scene with you.
And there’s a subtle relationship to 1 Chronicles 16:33:
“Let the trees of the forest sing, let them sing for joy before the LORD…”
The biblical writer personifies the trees as rejoicing before God.
You describe them dancing.
Different images, but a similar celebration.
5. Holding on while the branches danced
Up there in the branches, I just held while they danced in the wind, a moment shared, birds would visit.
This may be the most peaceful line of the seven.
You aren’t trying to accomplish anything.
You’re simply present.
The tree moves, the birds come and go, and you remain long enough to notice.
The wonder isn’t something you manufacture. It’s something you receive.
That connects beautifully to the ending of Effundo, where your arms opened to embrace what God had given.
In Ecce, you’re doing something similar, except that the gift is an experience of creation.
And there’s an interesting difference between holding on and holding still.
You’re holding on physically, but inwardly you’re allowing yourself to be carried into the rhythm of the moment.
6. The embarrassed raccoon
Once, even a raccoon came by and looked embarrassed at the loud sound it made.
I laughed at this line.
After all the beautiful language about emerald leaves, sweet maple aromas, and visiting birds, along comes a raccoon apparently embarrassed by its own noise.
I wouldn’t change that image.
Of course, we can’t know whether the raccoon actually experienced embarrassment. But that’s what makes the observation delightful: you’ve interpreted its expression through the humor of the encounter.
It also prevents the septet from becoming overly sentimental.
Nature is beautiful, but it’s also full of awkward, surprising, sometimes comical creatures.
And those moments can become just as memorable as the grand ones.
There’s room for laughter in wonder.
7. The deer beneath the tree
If I was quiet for long enough, the deer would come beneath me, oh, what a site! It filled me with joy!
What an ending!
And I think the phrase “If I was quiet for long enough” may hold the key to the entire septet.
The trees first called you outside.
But the deer came when you became quiet.
The journey begins with an invitation to move and ends with the discovery of what stillness can reveal.
That’s a wonderful reversal.
You had to move to enter the experience.
Then you had to become still to receive more of it.
And the reward wasn’t something you could possess or take home.
It was joy.
One tiny editorial note: site should be sight, and emrald should be emerald. I wouldn’t change the imagery itself.
What makes this different from Effundo?
Effundo — Pour out
God removes what hinders you, renews your desires, and creates room for new fruitfulness.
The movement is primarily inward transformation.
Ecce — Behold
God draws your attention to the world around you, and you discover joy through patient observation.
The movement is outward attention.
But both septets share something important.
In Effundo, you discover freedom where you previously experienced confinement.
In Ecce, you discover wonder where you might previously have seen ordinary trees.
Both are concerned with learning to recognize gifts that were previously hidden from your attention.
The seven movements of Ecce
Line Experience Discovery
1 The trees call An invitation
2 Unseen things appear Revelation
3 Vines and squirrel Surprise
4 Emerald dance and maple aroma Delight
5 Birds among the branches Companionship
6 The noisy raccoon Humor
7 Deer beneath the tree Joy through stillness
And there’s something I don’t want to overlook.
You haven’t made yourself the central attraction of this story.
You’re not conquering a mountain, surviving a wilderness, or performing some extraordinary feat.
You’re watching.
You’re listening.
You’re smelling the trees.
You’re laughing at a raccoon.
You’re waiting for deer.
The Creator receives the glory, while the observer receives the joy.
That seems entirely appropriate for a word meaning Behold!
A possible musical direction
I wouldn’t rush this one into a grand symphonic rock anthem.
I imagine an opening with gentle acoustic guitar, a light breeze moving through the soundscape, and a melody that gradually awakens as the forest comes alive.
Then, at “Oh, the trees moved!”, the arrangement could suddenly blossom with bright guitars and strings.
The raccoon deserves a playful musical interruption.
And the final encounter with the deer could become almost silent before the music rises into a joyful conclusion.
The central refrain might be as simple as:
Ecce! Behold what I could not see!
But before we write it, there’s something about your septet that I’d genuinely like to understand.
Are these memories of a particular tree you used to climb, where you would spend long periods watching the wildlife?
The details—the maple aroma, the movement of the branches, the birds, the raccoon, and the deer—sound less like a collection of unrelated experiences and more like a place you came to know intimately.
And if that’s true, I suspect the tree itself may have been an important part of the story.
Me: It was the only tree in my forest that invited me to climb it. I had to run up two steps to grab the lowest branch. Betsy wanted to climb it, but fell down a nearby tree before crossing over, and scratched her leg.
Chat: Now that changes how I picture Ecce!
The only tree in your forest that invited you to climb it. What a wonderful description. Not necessarily the tallest or most impressive tree, but the one whose branches seemed to offer an invitation.
And you had to earn that first branch! Two running steps, a leap, and a grab. That’s a detail I wouldn’t want to lose when we turn this into a song.
There’s an interesting progression in your experience:
You first saw the trees moving in the spring breeze. Something drew you outside. Then you discovered a particular tree that seemed to welcome you into its branches. Once there, you became a quiet observer of an entire world of activity.
The birds visited. The squirrel appeared. The raccoon made its embarrassing entrance. And the deer came when you remained still long enough.
You weren’t simply looking at the forest anymore. You were experiencing it from within.
And now Betsy enters the story!
I can imagine her wanting to share the experience, attempting a different route through a neighboring tree, and discovering that the forest wasn’t quite as accommodating as it had been to you. I hope the scratch wasn’t serious.
There’s something rather charming about that contrast: you had found your welcoming tree, but Betsy’s attempted entrance didn’t go nearly as smoothly.
It also reminds me that these were real adventures, not idealized scenes. There were scratches, questionable vines, difficult branches, unexpected animals, and probably a few moments when climbing down was less enjoyable than climbing up!
But I keep returning to your choice of Ecce.
In Scripture, behold often introduces something that deserves special attention. Sometimes it’s extraordinary. Sometimes it’s something familiar whose significance hasn’t yet been recognized.
Your septet seems to belong to that second category.
The forest hadn’t suddenly become wonderful. You had discovered how wonderful it already was.
And there’s a beautiful relationship to Song of Solomon 2:11–13, which you selected:
The winter has passed. Flowers appear. Birds sing. The season of new life has arrived.
Your memories almost feel like a personal experience of that passage.
For the eventual song, I think the opening should include those two running steps and the leap toward the branch. Then the music could gradually open into the emerald canopy, where the world seems to slow down.
But I have one question, because this detail may shape the entire song:
Was this tree a place you returned to regularly over the years, almost like a personal sanctuary, or was it primarily a particular season of your life when you spent time there?
I’m beginning to think Ecce may become less a song about looking at nature and more a song about a place where you learned to recognize God’s presence.
Me: The tree was a bit of land slowly being taken over by rich houses. My forest in Caledonia, Michigan was being parceled out to the rich city folk of nearby Grand Rapids that wanted a taste of the country life. I can’t blame them, it was beautiful.
Chat: Ah, now Ecce has acquired another dimension. And perhaps a little sadness.
You weren’t simply describing a beautiful forest in Caledonia, Michigan. You were describing a place whose character was gradually changing, as the land was divided into properties for people moving out from Grand Rapids.
And I appreciate your qualification: “I can’t blame them, it was beautiful.”
That says something important about how you remember the place. You recognize why others wanted what you treasured. Yet the very desire to enjoy that beauty was contributing to its transformation.
There’s a poignant irony there: people wanted a taste of country life, but the development that made it accessible to them could diminish the very experience they were seeking.
Now I hear your septet differently.
When you describe the trees dancing, the scent of maple, the birds visiting, and the deer wandering beneath you, you’re not simply celebrating creation. You’re preserving memories of a particular world that may no longer exist in the same form.
And the word Ecce becomes especially fitting.
Behold.
Look while the leaves are dancing.
Listen while the birds are singing.
Notice the deer before they disappear into the undergrowth.
Not because every beautiful thing is about to vanish, but because the opportunity to experience a particular moment will never come again in quite the same way.
There’s something else that strikes me about your tree.
You didn’t own the forest simply by loving it. And the tree didn’t belong to you in the way a possession belongs to its owner. Yet through attention, familiarity, and time, you developed a relationship with that place that money couldn’t simply purchase.
The people building houses could buy parcels of land.
But they couldn’t buy your memories of that maple tree, the squirrel, the noisy raccoon, or the deer gathering beneath its branches.
And this brings me back to your seventh line:
“If I was quiet for long enough, the deer would come beneath me, oh, what a sight! It filled me with joy!”
You received something extraordinary by doing almost nothing except being present.
That may be the deepest lesson of Ecce.
I also think we should be careful not to turn the eventual song into a condemnation of the people who moved there. You clearly don’t feel that way. The story is richer because you understand their attraction to the land.
Instead, I imagine a song that begins with a young man running two steps and leaping for a branch, then opens into the remarkable world he discovered above the forest floor.
And perhaps, near the end, the music grows quieter as the listener realizes that the forest is changing.
Not a protest song.
Not simply a nostalgic song.
A song about the gift of having been there to behold it.
And there’s a theological connection I find moving: you may no longer have access to that particular tree, but the Creator whose presence you recognized there isn’t confined to Caledonia.
The place was precious. The encounter remains meaningful. But God is not lost when a landscape changes.
I’m curious about one thing now, and it may be the most important detail for the song:
Do you know whether that maple tree is still standing, or did the development eventually take it too?
Me: I haven’t been back to know. It may be in someone’s backyard, oh I hope so. Trees that farmers let grow and stretch out into their field can have the best autumn colors. Ones in the forest are too busy fighting for the canopy.
Chat: Oh, I hope it’s still standing too! And I love the possibility that your maple tree might now be standing in someone’s backyard, quietly offering its branches and autumn colors to another generation.
Your observation about trees growing along the edges of farmers’ fields is especially interesting. A tree growing in the open has room to develop a broad crown, with branches reaching outward in every direction. Forest trees, competing for sunlight, often grow taller with narrower crowns. That difference can make an open-grown maple particularly spectacular in autumn, although its colors also depend on species, weather, and growing conditions.
But you’ve just given me another image for Ecce.
The tree that had room to stretch was the tree that invited you to climb.
There’s something almost poetic about that.
And perhaps even more interesting is the contrast between spring and autumn.
Your septet remembers the emerald-green dance of spring. But now you’re describing the magnificent colors of autumn, when the same tree might become a blaze of red, orange, and gold.
The tree has different gifts in different seasons.
I can imagine an Ecce song beginning with that youthful leap into the branches and ending with an unanswered question:
Are you still standing somewhere,
With your branches reaching wide?
Does someone watch your autumn colors
From the other side?
I wouldn’t want to write as though the tree had been cut down. We don’t know that. And I wouldn’t want to invent a reunion either.
The uncertainty is part of the beauty of your memory.
There’s also a theological thought here that I find particularly appropriate to your seven lines.
You weren’t looking for a grand revelation when you went outside. You were responding to a simple invitation from the moving trees. And what followed was a succession of small discoveries that became precious to you.
That reminds me of your earlier description of God’s work in Effundo: sometimes the transformation is dramatic, but sometimes it is a gradual awakening to things you hadn’t noticed before.
With Ecce, perhaps the revelation was simply this:
God had filled the world with wonders long before you learned to notice them.
And your tree became a place where you practiced noticing.
One detail I especially want to preserve when we eventually write the song is that you didn’t just sit beneath the maple. You climbed into it and moved with it.
You didn’t merely watch the dance.
For a little while, you were part of it.
Ecce arbor! — Behold the tree!
And perhaps somewhere in Caledonia, that same tree is still dancing.
Me: Maybe it still is, or perhaps it is part of a desk or a home. That would be fun to know. Sed in praesentia, carmen.
Chat: Ita vero! Sed in praesentia, cantemus! — Indeed! But for now, let us sing!
I think Ecce deserves a different musical character from Effundo. This should feel like a spring morning gradually awakening into an adventure: two running steps, a leap for the maple branch, the emerald canopy dancing, unexpected visitors, and the extraordinary joy of being still enough to notice them.
And I want to leave the tree’s fate unresolved. Perhaps it’s still dancing in someone’s backyard. Perhaps its wood became part of a home. Either way, what you encountered there remains part of your story.
ECCE — THE TREE THAT INVITED ME
QUICKTHORN · Septeticus to Song Transformus · E Series
Mureka production prompt
Style direction
Copy
Bright cinematic folk-progressive rock, 96 BPM. Warm expressive male tenor, fingerpicked acoustic guitar, lyrical flute, delicate piano, shimmering electric guitars, melodic bass, organic drums and lush strings. Playful pizzicato accents, joyful soaring choruses, whimsical raccoon interlude, beautiful melodic guitar solo, nostalgic autumn bridge, triumphant final chorus and gentle acoustic outro. Spring forest atmosphere, birdsong, leaves rustling, gratitude, wonder, bittersweet nostalgia. No growling or screaming.
What I especially like about this one
The song moves through three seasons of experience without requiring three literal seasons.
Spring is discovery: the invitation, the leap, the green canopy, and the animals.
Autumn is remembrance: the tree’s possible fate, the changing landscape, and the recognition that something precious may have passed into another form.
And the present is gratitude: you still remember what you were given, even without knowing whether the tree survives.
I deliberately kept the line about the people building homes sympathetic. You said you couldn’t blame them for wanting that beautiful countryside, and the song shouldn’t turn them into villains.
I also wanted the raccoon to interrupt the musical seriousness. A little pizzicato flourish and an awkward pause could make that moment wonderfully memorable.
But the heart of the song is the final transformation of Ecce. It begins as an exclamation—Behold!—and becomes a way of living attentively.
You climbed because you wanted to see. You stayed because you discovered there was more to see. And you remember because what you saw mattered.
Ecce arbor. Ecce donum. Ecce gaudium.
Behold the tree. Behold the gift. Behold the joy.
And now we have two remarkably different E songs: Effundo, the grace that pours out, and Ecce, the wonder that opens our eyes.