Tag: Nature

Turn the pages

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Look, it’s spring. And last year’s loose dust has turned into this soft willingness. The wind-flowers have come up trembling, slowly the brackens are up-lifting their curvaceous and pale bodies. The thrushes have come home, none less than filled with mystery, sorrow, happiness, music, ambition.

And I am walking out into all of this with nowhere to go and no task undertaken but to turn the pages of this beautiful world over and over, in the world of my mind.

* * *
Therefore, dark past,
I’m about to do it.
I’m about to forgive you

for everything.

Mary Oliver, A Settlement

Seasons

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The first of May marks the start of Summer in the old Celtic way of dividing the seasons

The heart’s seasons seldom coincide with the calendar. Who among us has not been made desolate beyond all words upon some golden day when the little creatures of the air and meadow were life incarnate, from sheer joy of living? Who among us has not come home, singing, when the streets were almost impassable with snow, or met a friend with a happy, smiling face, in the midst of a pouring rain?

The soul, too, has its own hours of Winter and Spring.

Myrtle Reed 1874 – 1911, American author, poet, journalist, and philanthropist.

Free of care

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It is blossom season in Japan and in gardens here. They are often used as a metaphor for human existence – beautiful but short lived – a reminder that life needs to be celebrated yet always contains an element of impermanence.

You ask me why I dwell in these green mountains;
I smile and am silent, for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows down the stream and goes into the unknown,
I live in a world apart that is not of men.

Li Po, 701-762, Green Mountain

Surprised by joy

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Our life journey contain many twists and turns and we all make mistakes along the way. And yet, Spring returns

I write, 

erase, 

rewrite.

Erase again, and then…

A poppy blooms.

Hokusai, 1760 – 1849, Japanese painter, printmaker

An unfolding process

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It’s only when caterpillarness is done that one becomes a butterfly.

That again is part of this paradox.

You cannot rip away caterpillarness.

The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process of which we have no control.

Ram Dass

Beauty Changes

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Today is Candlemas in the Christian tradition, the lighting of candles to look towards the end of winter, layered on the earlier Celtic feast of Imbolc.

Beauty changes; it’s not static. The seasons change. All the leaves fall off the trees, all the flowers disappear. Everything becomes bleak in winter when there is hardly any noticeable contrast, except in shades of dark and light. Now we might say that spring is more beautiful than winter, if we prefer vibrant colors, beautiful flowers, an the kind of energy that spring brings. But if we open our minds, we also begin to recognize the subtle beauty of winter. We can appreciate the lack of color and silence of winter as much as the energy of spring.

This appreciation comes from not having opinions about things being perfect in a static way. It comes from seeing that the rose is a perfect rose in spring, summer, autumn and winter. For static perfection, you need a plastic rose, but that’s never as satisfying.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Mind and the Way