Chumash Indian woman, isolated from her mother and father as a very young child, who first found the sacred in a tree. Asked who raised her, she responded: You really want to know who raised me? It was a peppertree with a short trunk. . . . It had a great nest inside that was like a womb. . . . You could sit in that womblike space and look out at the world without the world seeing you. . . . I felt safe and loved and protected in that tree. It was my link with God/creation—with what was stable and real . . . that tree was a sacred presence in my life, and it taught me more about God and love than I ever learned in all the years I went to Sunday school.

(Kenneth I. Pargament "Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy: Understanding and Addressing the Sacred")