As I pay close attention to the unfolding of springtime, this season of nature’s joy, makes me want to
Offer up Nature’s Joy
to you today.
We, who have only one life, can watch new life being born anew every spring. As the earth rotates around the sun, each year nature experiences a cycle of birth and renewal, growth and fullness, fading, and death. The turning of the seasons echos the human life-span and allows us to realize how the natural world is a part of who we are.
Humans need to experience the natural world in order to thrive and to experience their full humanity. We are not separate from nature and the seasons, we are a part of it. Our species evolved in nature and we need to be connected with nature to be fully alive and thrive.
Of all the seasons, spring calls to us to go outdoors and walk barefoot in the grass, soaking up the sunshine just as a plant basks in sunlight and draws sustenance from the earth. Have you ever noticed that when the weather begins to warm children gravitate to the out-of-doors. They explore and play and tumble in the grass like litters of puppies tumble and play.
Nothing fills me with more joy than contemplating and savoring springtime. Each year I look forward to the first signs of spring and I savor the emergence of new life, spending as much time as I can out in nature.
I am of an age now that I ask the question, “How many springs do I have left?” Each spring seems more precious than the last.
Time is precious
Though I do not understand it, time seems to move more quickly now than when I was young. Weeks, months, and years speed by. My grandchildren are now teenagers. How can that be? It seems only yesterday that they were born. I do not remember the childhood of my daughters speeding by so quickly.
“Nature and the Serious Work of Joy”
I just finished listening to an On Being interview with Michael McCarthy about his book, The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy. McCarthy suggests that focusing on the many environmental crises we face isn’t working. The enormity of what is happening to the earth freezes us and most of us give up or numb out instead of experiencing our grief and then taking action. He believes that if we experience the joy of nature fully, that joy will help wake us up to finding ways to live in partnership with the earth and to solving our climate crises.
The passionate happiness the natural world can trigger in us may be the most serious business of all.
— Michael McCarthy, Nature and the Serious Work of Joy (On Being interview with Krista Tippett)
Joy is serious work because without it we will fail to change our behaviors. I recently watched a public television program that documented a few months in the life of Greta Thunberg, the young activist who has inspired people around the world. When a world climate conference that she was to speak at was suddenly moved from South America to Spain, she faced a big problem. Refusing to fly on an airplane because of its huge carbon footprint, she and her father had traveled across the Atlantic in a ship to visit parts of the arctic and the western United States before heading to South America (by motor vehicle) for the conference.
Because of the change of location she needed to quickly re-cross the Atlantic Ocean to arrive at the conference on time but she still refused to go on an airplane. She and her father found someone who offered to take them across the Atlantic Ocean on a catamaran. The problem was that it was a cold stormy season to cross the Atlantic and the quarters on the catamaran were cramped and crowded. Still, she and her father traveled across the Atlantic on the catamaran experiencing great discomfort. When the trip ended what Greta talked about was the beauty of the ocean and what an amazing experience it was to be immersed in that environment for days. She does the serious work of joy.
“Adults keep saying: “We owe it to the young people to give them hope.”
But I don’t want your hope.
I don’t want you to be hopeful.
I want you to panic.
I want you to feel the fear I feel every day.
And then I want you to act.
I want you to act as you would in a crisis.
I want you to act as if our house is on fire.
Because it is.”
― No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference
Feel the fear and the joy
We need to feel the fear about what we are doing to our climate and the earth but we also need to feel the joy of being in nature.
This morning I spent some time at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum with my camera. The light was too bright for the kind of photographs I prefer to make and there were lots of people out and about, but simply walking through the new growth and driving around the 3-mile drive I felt intense joy.
We humans are part of the natural world and we have a link to the natural world that helps define who we are. The human experience of awe has been shown to lead people to cooperate and work together. Almost all of our experiences of awe are in the natural world. I do not know how to change my ecological footprint on the earth. But I still hope for redemption—that I can do a small part and that together we will find a way forward that will stop and reverse the trashing of our planet.
To be fully human is to recognize that the natural world is where we came from and it is part of us. Without it we cannot be fully human.
Instead of continuing to exert power over nature, we need to love nature with the deep understanding of how important nature is to us. We need to find fierce love that is willing to face what we have done to nature. And we need to do the “serious work of joy.”
May you walk in beauty.
An experiment in leaving a LOT of negative space in an image (for my online photography class)
More negative space
The mystery of the tiny bags hung on bushes by the sidewalk. I didn’t look inside the bags, but I’m still wondering…
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