As spring keeps moving along I spend as much time as I can on
Nature Watch
out and about in nearby parks and also watching nature through my windows in the pond behind our house. I want to pay close attention to these precious days. And though I don’t always think this way, I realize that even the cold desolate winter days that I dislike so much are also precious. It’s up to me to find their beauty and their gifts. Even the loss and death of things and people we love is a precious opportunity to learn and love. It reminds me that everything is impermanent, everything changes all the time.
In the face of impermanence and death, it takes courage to love the things of this world and to believe that praising them is our noblest calling.
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Now, during springtime, loving the world is easy. Everything feels new and vibrant. The world is full of layers of magic everywhere I look.
A family of mallard ducklings that are often in the pond behind our house are 2 weeks old now and the ducklings are looking bigger every day. Soon they will lose their fluff and grow their feathers. The trumpeter swans at nearby Lake Camelot Park are still guarding the nest and the female swan was sitting on the nest today with no cygnets in sight yet. As I was watching the swans today a muskrat came swimming by in front of me. And because I had my camera at the ready with long lens in place I was able to photograph it as it swam by. My heart leapt to see this rather common wild animal swimming right in front of me. It was so beautiful to me.
Though I’m sad that the crab apple trees have mostly dropped their blossoms already, a few are still in bloom here and there. And all sorts of other bushes, wildflowers, and trees are now in bloom. Today I found wild honeysuckles in bloom, wild yellow violets, and wild geraniums in the woods.
I am savoring every day of this short spring season. This morning I went out on the deck and spent time simply enjoying the fragrance of the lilac tree that is in bloom now.
I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.
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Each day I rejoice at the new life growing and emerging in this beautiful world this time of year. While during this past year I was reminded of the transience of this life we live again and again, I still believe that life is beautiful. Things are born, grow, and die. But spring comes again and again throughout our lives reminding us of beauty, grace, and miracles. Would life be so beautiful if death and loss didn’t exist? I don’t think so. It is the transience that makes life so exquisitely filled with wonder and miracles.
The biggest gift you can give is to be absolutely present, and when you’re worrying about whether you’re hopeful or hopeless or pessimistic or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you’re showing up, that you’re here and that you’re finding ever more capacity to love this world because it will not be healed without that. That was what is going to unleash our intelligence and our ingenuity and our solidarity for the healing of our world.
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I believe that everything is sentient, alive, and has a heart and soul. Life is a miracle my friends. Savor each moment.
May you walk in beauty.
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