Ephemeral

I’ve added another new gallery to my website portfolio. It’s called

Life is truly ephemeral. While the moments may sometimes seem long, a lifetime seemingly passes by in the blink of an eye. The seasons are a constant reminder of the brevity of life, as are my grandchildren who are growing up so quickly. Each season plants and animals live and die, sometimes an amazingly short period of time.

And each turning of the season makes me wonder, how many more springs will I see, how many more summers?

Then I circle back to the idea that the length of a life does not matter. In my opinion life, itself, is all about love and curiosity. What if love and curiosity are the forces that drive all creation, all of the seasons and the myriad of life forms, all of the births, all of the deaths? And what if the underlying purpose of life is simply to learn and grow?

Life learning about itself

To me, love and openness (another word for curiosity) is all that matters in the end. So I fall in love with life in the moment, time after time, day after day. And I allow myself to become curious about life rather than saying, “This is good and that is bad.” Finally I give thanks for this life I am living and for all of the life forms that surround me.

Of Love

I have been in love more times than one,
thank the Lord. Sometimes it was lasting
whether active or not. Sometimes
it was all but ephemeral, maybe only
an afternoon, but not less real for that.
They stay in my mind, these beautiful people,
or anyway beautiful people to me, of which
there are so many. You, and you, and you,
whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe
missed. Love, love, love, it was the
core of my life, from which, of course, comes
the word for the heart. And, oh, have I mentioned
that some of them were men and some were women
and some—now carry my revelation with you—
were trees. Or places. Or music flying above
the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun
which was the first, and the best, the most
loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into
my eyes, every morning. So I imagine
such love of the world—its fervency, its shining, its
innocence and hunger to give of itself—I imagine
this is how it began.

-Mary Oliver, from Red Bird (Beacon Press, 2008).