These days are so busy I barely have time to raise my head above the fray of activity, responsibility, study, and expectation, even when it is fun! While so much of this "activity, responsibility, study and expectation" is the wonderful and purposeful result of conscious decisions made and intentionally set into motion, how is it that everything comes to this very loaded point on the head of a pin?

Or to the center of the forrest, where all trails lead to this hub? Or to the hilltop, where there is room for just one, for just a moment, and then it's down again.

I feel as if I planted myself like a new tree, a little sapling, and now the flowers of Spring have begun to burst from their buds, weighing the slender green branches earthward. Bending, bending, bending Earthward.

And soon, the flowers will set, attract all manner of pollinators and bring forth fruit--apples, peaches, apricot, almonds and pecans! Plums, olives, walnuts, cherries, avocado, papaya and coconut. And on....

What is ripe is offered to anything that requires the flower, the fruit, the seed, and what falls to the ground feeds the ground.

From here, the branches spring back to recover, to rest, and as the sun grows warmer, to send new growth skyward, to begin the cycle once again.

Five years ago I planted myself like a new tree.

Five years ago, when I realized I wanted to receive the Precepts, I went looking for a Teacher and a Sangha, and I found the Blue Mountain Lotus Society, and then they found me!

Next month, during Hanamatsuri, I will be ordained as Osho. Three years ago, I was ordained as Shuso, and I'm still puzzling over what it means to be a Buddhist Priest. Each time I ask the question there is a new answer. Sometimes there is just silence. Sometimes laughter. Sometimes action!

But none of that surprises me anymore.

My questions once terrified me-- now question and I have come to terms with one another. In fact, we look forward to finding one another over and over again in dialog, in doubt and in faith.

Question and I abide here together.