The summer season seems to be moving so swiftly this year. Perhaps it does every year, but for some reason I’m really noticing it now. Sometimes I wish that I could
Slow Down Time
or at least slow down the turning of this season, so that I could savor the beauty of this time of year even more. I think our long brutal winter and slow start to spring make the rapid changes now seem even faster than usual.
“Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying.
― Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
My peonies are in full bloom but the blossoms have already begun browning and fading. The lush greens all around the city still gobsmack me with their lush beauty. But the lack of rain worries me so early in the season.
All the green in the planted world consists of these whole, rounded chloroplasts wending their ways in water. If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring’s center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its exact place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin. The iron atom combines with all the other atoms to make red blood, the streaming red dots in the goldfish’s tail.”
― Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
On my walk this morning I enjoyed the coolness of the day, low humidity, and better air quality than we had yesterday. With the long winter with heavy snow we had, the dryness we’re experiencing now, and the many wildfires raging in Canada, I feel a sense of the changes we have wrought to the earth’s climate. And I feel like we simply don’t know what to expect anymore as the seasons turn. When I am tempted to veer towards worry or sadness I remind myself to stay present and to look for the good. There is almost always good to be found.
We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
— Joseph Campbell
Then I ask myself if I can find one small positive thing to do for others or for the world. That’s all, one little thing.
If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
What’s your one small thing you can do today?
May you walk in beauty.
Note: Today’s photos – ranunculus beauty and a little bit of layering of ranunculus flower photos with other photos.
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