Quote of the Day (4/28/11)

Oaks abide. And abiding they are revered, for they reveal that which abides within us. What frequenter of oak groves at dusk has not felt the abysmal power of their stillness and borne it secretly away into the night? Oaks abide, and oaks are prayers—their dark hearts leafing outward into the light as surely as human hearts flower inward, following the grain of an even fuller illumination.

Like oaks, words that embody the abiding endure through vast reaches of space and time. In fact, our words "truth," "trust," and "tree" can all be traced back four thousand years to an ancient Proto-Indo-European word for the tree that to them was the Truth. That tree was the oak. They called the oak dorw, which also meant "firm," "strong," "enduring."
--James N. Powell, The Tao of Symbols