The goslings have begun to fledge. They look like they are half-feathered, half fuzz.
During this time of great social unrest and worldwide pandemic it’s easy to think that everything has changed; everyone is engaged in turmoil and uncertainty.
The goose family that wandered into our yard today reminded me of
The lessons of nature
Nature teaches me to be fully in the present moment. It teaches me about the wheel of life continuing to turn no matter what. And it teaches me about impermanence.
While I don’t seek to minimize or ignore the events that are occurring in my city and around the world, immersing myself in nature helps to ground me into a knowing that no matter what happens in the future, in this moment, I am okay.
Nature helps me realize that we humans are only a small part of nature and the universe, and that no matter what we want to believe there are powers on this earth and in the universe much greater than us.
“This is how it must go. There will be catastrophes. Disastrous setbacks and slaughters. But life is going someplace. It wants to know itself; it wants the power of choice. It wants solutions to problems that nothing alive yet knows how to solve, and it’s willing to use even death to find them.”
― The Overstory
Nature teaches me to experience wonder, gratitude and joy
“A leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.”
― The Overstory
And even as black, indigenous, and people of color rightfully demand equal rights that have long been denied them, nature teaches me that there are other rights besides human rights to consider here on earth.
“What conveys a right, and why should humans, alone on all the planet, have them?”
― The Overstory
Today I have no answers to the problems that be-devil us. But I hold a deep abiding belief that nature heals and that all of us need to spend more time in nature listening to the wisdom of the trees and other creatures.
“The books diverge and radiate, as fluid as finches on isolated islands. But they share a core so obvious it passes for given. Every one imagines that fear and anger, violence and desire, rage laced with the surprise capacity to forgive—character—is all that matters in the end. It’s a child’s creed, of course, just one small step up from the belief that the Creator of the Universe would care to dole out sentences like a judge in federal court. To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs. No: life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.”
― The Overstory
May you walk in beauty.
Spread Your Wings
0 Comments