HIGHLIGHTS: 
"A tree of life . . . take hold of it. Its ways are pleasant ways . . . as in the days when you and we began."

DESCRIPTION:

In 2009 there was an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario by Italian sculptor Giuseppe Penone, an artist of the Arte Povera movement in Italy in the 1960s, called The Hidden Life Within. It took place in a long sunlit gallery filled with large rough cuts of timber into which the artist had meticulously carved, revealing the intact shape of a sapling, the earlier, younger, more slight version of the tree. Each year, trees add a ring of new growth to their trunk’s diameter. So Penone carves away to one of the first “versions” of each tree. We immediately see, as the catalogue for the show observes, “the interdependence among all organic life forms. . . an awareness of a common vital force in all living things. Rather than imposing a form, the artist . . . draws out an existing form.”  Penone’s work alludes to a quiet observation of our inherent natures, an allowance for that authenticity to be revealed, rather than trying to “impos[e] a form” and the inevitable contortion that ensues. Even as we grow, strengthen, provide, sometimes harden, that inner tenderness, that place of privacy and potential, remains embedded in us. This pliability is who we are, regardless of who we fashion ourselves to be.  



עֵץ חַיִּים הִיא לַמַּחֲזִיקִים בָּהּ. וְתמְכֶיהָ מְאֻשָּׁר:
דְּרָכֶיהָ דַרְכֵי נעַם וְכָל נְתִיבותֶיהָ שָׁלום:
הֲשִׁיבֵנוּ ה' אֵלֶיךָ וְנָשׁוּבָה. חַדֵּשׁ יָמֵינוּ כְּקֶדֶם:


Truth is a tree of life for those who take hold of her, how fortunate are her supporters! Her ways are pleasant ways, her paths comprise peace. Bring us back to You, YHVH, that we might return, renew our life as in the days when You and we began.

Daniela Gesundheit - She is a Tree of Life / Etz Hayim Hi עץ חיים היא

Non-denominational devotional pop music from Toronto / Los Angeles. 

Daniela Gesundheit - She is a Tree of Life / Etz Hayim Hi עץ חיים היא

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