A leaf knows not its unspoken union with the transcendent

tree; nor its essential nature as and ever evolving, unfolding

pattern of intelligent energy.

​

The leaf sees not itself as but a reflection of one underlying

principle; of that which bequeaths existence to all, by

whatever name—be it called life, energy, nature or God.

 

For in its isolation, the lowly leaf cannot know itself to be

one with its essence; one with the creative principle which

gives ground and being to all.

​

Nor can it consciously know the quality men call life—that 

which he has by grace and calls his own; cannot know life as the

all in all, as manifest spirit—the absolute in infinite expression.

​

Neither can it know itself to be a unique expression of

life’s ever recurrent theme of becoming; an eternal song of

everlasting transformation and renewal.

​

For the leaf can only know existence and non-existence—life

and death; never seeing both for what they truly are—merely

separate aspects of the same fundamental movement.

 

Not a movement in time and space, but of the moment;ever

unfolding in the transcendent present—the eternal here

and now.

​

Yes, a timeless progression transcending the temporal

existence of both leaf and tree; an indivisible process whose

true reality cannot be subject to such abstraction.

​

For that which is called a leaf can exist apart from the tree

only as a creation of thought; only as the offspring of a

divisive mind which begets its own limited reality.

​

A consciousness of “self” which brings that called “other”

into existence; a self-estranged state of being in which the

part must remain eternally separate from the whole.

​

A being damned by the implicit blindness of a clouded mind

unable to see the distortion of its own vision; neither able to

know the flaw inherent in its own judgment, nor the faulty

premise upon which it stands.

​

That being an existence founded upon division and so innately

blind to unity; unable to see the whole, because fragmentary

thought can know only parts.

​

And yet the isolation and loneliness that self-consciousness

so engenders is but a dream—an illusion which leaves 

reality unblemished by its false perception, unsoiled by its

petty vision.

​

For though unseen behind a veil of words and thought, an

unspoken union still remains; not of leaf and tree alone, nor of

branches, trunk and root, but of earth and air, of form and space.

​

A sacred coupling whose manifest glory is but a dim reflection

of the true beauty underlying all; a wedding of heaven and

earth whispered secretly in the tree’s joining of leaf and root,

and so too sky and ground.

​

A holy alliance which transfigures the intrinsic energy of

both into ever higher form and expression; a marriage of

earth and air into that called tree, of heaven and earth into

that called being.

​

The tree living testament to the true inseparability of all

things so divided; clear evidence of the temporal’s untold union

with that neither tainted by form, nor touched by time.

​

Silent witness to an endless convergence of time and space in

the here and now; to the fundamental unity lying just beyond

the verbal fog that so beclouds our vision.

​

For as the reality of the leaf does not truly end with the

joining of stem and branch; neither does that of the tree stop

with its touching of sky and ground.

​

Not once slipped the “word” which binds its wings and ties

it to the ground; not once freed the chain of meager thought

which hold and weight it down.

​

To soar and fly beyond the pale, where words can never go; to

find the truth—behold the One that thought can never know.

​

So too the leaf, though it would never know itself to be

yet another reflection of that self-same truth; would fail to 

recognize its true nature, if self-conscious and separate,

isolated and alone.

​

But though the leaf be unaware of its essential unity with its

source, the transcendent tree and that which gives it ground,

the underlying reality of its true existence is no less true, no

less real.

​

For in essence, that lowly transitory leaf is no less permanent,

no less enduring; than the bough from which it sprang or the

roots which gave it life.

​

As each such seemingly separate and distinct part can exist

and find meaning only in and through the other; and the

oneness underlying all—that which transcends relativity and

gives the temporal ground.

​

Yes, all—the leaf, the branch, the trunk, the root—all contribute

to the good; to the whole that is the tree and the implicit

unity of all things so related.

​

For each makes its own unique contribution to that which

lies beyond relativity—good and evil, life and death, time

and space; to that which was in the beginning, is now and

ever shall be.

​

No, the leaf is not truly just an isolated bit of transitory life;

not just a lonely ember to be snuffed out and forgotten with

the first winter’s snow, to burn but a season and die.

​

For as the fall follows summer and the winter fall, so too the

certainty of the leaf’s return to full glory with the spring; a

miracle of life not unlike that of a phoenix arisen, of Christ

reborn.

​

No, for that which at passing glance seems but an insignificant

leaf may be seen in infinitely greater light; may be

recognized for what it truly is—as one aspect, one glorious 

reflection of the absolute in finite manifestation.

​

Yes, both in fact and in truth, that leaf’s true nature and

meaning, its sole reason for existence and being; may be

realized only in terms of its inseparability from an ever

unfolding process of endless regeneration.

​

For the leaf’s true reality lies only in the integral role it plays

in an ever becoming progression; a universal pattern of

growth and decay, death and transformation.

​

The leaf in its very essence, one with that self-same pattern

of ever unfolding creative energy; and never truly the solitary

state of being which words purport; never really the petrified

existence which thought assumes.

​

For the leaf may have life and being only in the context of

its eternal union with the tree; and that with which it joins in

sharing life—the sun and air, the earth and rain.

​

The leaf being one with nature and its myriad reflection

of that which lies within; a living declaration of creation’s

endless theme of one having life and being through many.

 

Its very existence eternally bound to the cosmos in which

it too plays a central role; to the essential unity that is the

universe and the absolute upon which it stands.

​

So too all being whose ground is upon the one reality which

breaths life and existence into all; that which some call

energy and others spirit, some call nature and others God.

 

But by whatever Name, the Source of All!