We live in an unfathomable universe. All around us are mysteries that we cannot pretend to understand. Life is a tangle of complexities, the synergies of which we can only feebly guess at. To survive this uncertainty, to prevent us from going insane with confusion, we automatically try to simplify “life, the universe and everything”. One way is through adopting beliefs – patterns of thought that tell us how things work and what we need to do to fit in. Another way is by using metaphors to fill the voids where un-knowing exists. Metaphors assume that life continuously reflects, refracts and duplicates itself – like a mirror, a prism or a hologram. The most powerful source of metaphors is Nature. We constantly refer to our observations about Earth’s natural processes to explain our own personal, social and mystical experiences – birth, growth, cooperation, conflict, death, seasons, cycles, equilibrium. And of Nature’s metaphors, few can be so meaningful and enduring than the Tree. In this episode, I have interspersed fragments of a poem that I wrote with my own reflections on “The Tree of Life”. As you take this journey of imagination with me, I hope that you will discover you own personal garden of inspiration.