Robert from Charlotte, North Carolina reached out to us with the image of a burning bush. It began with a line of poetry he had carried for years: “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God.” For him, those words pointed to a way of seeing. God is always present, yet we do not always pause long enough to notice.

In our conversation, Robert shared a memory from the day his first daughter was born. He walked past a Japanese maple tree outside his office, a tree he had seen hundreds of times before. That day, something in it stopped him. It opened into meaning. Within an hour, his wife told him the baby was coming. Since then, that tree has stayed with him as his own burning bush.

The process began with Psalm 23, but gradually moved toward the Hebrew word סנה, sneh, the word used for the bush in Exodus. From there, we explored rabbinic texts about the Shechinah, the divine presence, resting even on the lowly sneh. The phrase that emerged was:

יְהוָה הִשְׁרָה שְׁכִינָתוֹ בַּסְּנֶה
“The Lord rested His Shechinah on the sneh.”

For Robert, this held the center of the piece. The presence of God dwelling in what might otherwise seem ordinary. The bush remains unseen until something in perception shifts.

Gabriel approached the piece through that moment of recognition. The letters became the structure of the bush, forming something that feels familiar at first glance, yet reveals more as the eye lingers. Color entered the work with a sense of contained intensity, a fire that holds rather than consumes. The composition rises upward while staying grounded, carrying a quiet tension between stillness and revelation.

For Robert, this piece became a reminder to pause, to listen, and to recognize the sacred already present in front of him.