If you cannot get across it, you must get across it, nevertheless. - Martin Buber

I contemplate a tree.
I can accept it as a picture: a rigid pillar in a flood of light, or splashes of green traversed by the gentleness of the blue silver ground.
I can feel it as movement: the flowing veins around the sturdy, striving core, the suckling of the roots, the breathing of the leaves, the infinite commerce with earth and air - and the growing itself in its darkness.

All actual life is encounter.

Do not be vexed at your delight in creatures and things! But do not let it shackle itself to creatures and things; through these, press on to God. Do not rebel against your desires, but seize them and bind them to God. You shall not stifle your surging powers, but let them work at holy work, and rest a holy rest.