In a living tree, water is flowing uphill and sunlight is burrowing into the darkness. Two branching structures mirror each other. One, rooted in the earth, expresses the living energy of the sun in the darkness–reaching out for water and organic nutrients and growing into the spaces of the earth as it does so. One, floating in the air, expresses the stability of the earth in the realm of light, reaching out for the creative energy of the sun in its thousand leaves and growing into the spaces of the air as it does so. As the sap flowing upwards passes the photosythesized sunlight flowing downwards, the body and life of the tree comes into being. The two branching pathways join and link together heaven and earth–creating a place where space pours into space. One pespective: sunlight radiating out from the sun into the vastness of space, strikes Earth, and tarries for awhile in the life of Earth: entering through the leaves of a tree, living in the body of the tree for a century or so, then decomposing and turning to heat that eventually leaks out into space again. Another perspective: rain water seeping through the dirt is lifted up again by the strong arms of the oak tree and cast into the air through the leaves shimmering in the afternoon sun, and from there is drawn up once more into the passing clouds. How can this tree be separate from the earth or the sky, without which it could not exist?
–Michael
