It had never been my intention to discover something new. I wa simply forced to follow the call of a voice. Now I know; it was the voice of God I wanted to hear, the voice I divined as a child, of which I dreamt when I read in the Old Testament that it sounded not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, but that it was a gentle whisper. The voice of God speaks but of the soul, the soul speaks but of life, and as he soul means life, God means life itself, the beginning and end of a gigantic current which flows in eternal movement, in time and space, beyond time and space, and beyond any judgment.
As strange as it may sound, it was in the fall and winter that I felt closest to my tree. Her spring beauty and summer fruit filled me with delight, but when the days began to grow cool and the leaves turned from darkest green to yellow, I could feel something deep and marvelously intimate begin to take place between us. And as fall turned to winter, this feeling of intimacy grew. With no bees humming among the blossoms, no birds fluttering from limb to limb, no leaves and cherries decorating her branches, my tree seemed to reveal herself to me in her purest form -- in her very essence. And when I embraced her and pressed my ear against her trunk, I could hear the silence that united us. And I knew that was sacred. (Choqosh Auh-Ho-Ho)