Transformation is everywhere. It is the key to life.

Each morning under the tree, I lit a clay deepak like this one. Fire is the element of transformation.

June 27th, 2009

My daughter’s twentieth birthday. She’s on a bus between Amsterdam and London. I place a flame of light for her under the tree. She is radiant as flame.

This morning, I scooped water from the water bowl for the tree. It has no need of taps. As I squatted under her limbs, I felt my own limbs – legs holding me upright, strong, and true like the tree’s trunk, my arms free, like her branches. And when I stood, I happened to press my cheek against one of her limbs, her beautiful strong, spreading winter branch, and felt the cold bark against my warm skin. Cold and grey, while I am warm and pink.

I thought about all the sun that the tree has received, yet it is cold. While I, who sit inside while the sun glows down on the tree, I am warm because somehow through the grace and gift of the tree’s sun capture, I can bring that stored heat back to life, back to warmth. We store the sun’s energy. No, the tree stores the energy. We consume the stored energy, and we are transformers – we transform it back into heat and use that to live by. All the heat comes from the sun. It comes to us via plants.

Transformation is everywhere. It is the key to life.

My daughter is twenty.