Maybe it’s only by having life kick us in the teeth, by having our hearts cracked open and our tenderest interiors exposed, that we get to the gold. Giuseppe Penone’s bronze facsimile of a tree violently splintered apart is a gleaming metaphor for a kind of rebirth after a painful death. Oh, it will be painful. But only by allowing the towering canopy of our ego to be blasted apart can we get to the gold. If we can hang on, beyond courage or will, well beyond the trappings of self, we can discern the absolute, glorious essence of life.

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