Nature

I send hugs and greetings to my friends in Wisconsin who embrace their nature with joy, wonder and appreciation. I send profound respect to my friends all over who walk the talk and know that we are the nature we abuse.

I salute your passion, your dedication, and especially your appreciation of the “isness” of being in an environment of unimaginable beauty in its detail. So few of us take the time to look, to feel the consistency of nature’s grace and change.

Take clouds for example. In the last thunderstorm that rolled through your area, did you notice the roiling and darkened Cumulus Nimbus hammers that pounded your space? Did you look out and see their turbulence? Did you count the time in seconds between the lighting flash and the sound to know the approximate distance it was away? Or were you inside aware, but unobservant of what was going on in your immediate nature.

How about when the storms of life and nature pass? Do you take time to acknowledge with thanks the peace that follows? Here’s what I see when the puffy cumulus flatten out within a temperature gradient that gives their base a flat surface.

Stepping Stone Sky
©2008 Rolland G. Smith

They float upon the blue of heaven’s floor
Above the desert dry and highway street;
These steps of mystic mist that gods adore
When walking top the clouds in soft bare feet.
Dissolve they do for spirits quickly pass
Attending to their realms and duties held.
Then Gaia in her nature smooths the path
And gathers mists together in a meld.
From this she makes another downy cloud
Where spirits rest before the morning bright.
For soon they rush to gather and enshroud
The human pleas from prayers before God’s light.
All this is from a photo of the sky.
And spirit’s grace commands I say, “Oh My”!

We love the dichotomous aspect of nature. Wet here, dry there. Cold there, hot here, and all of it interchangeable and all of it seemingly cyclical even though most of us cannot remember the weather specifics from month to month let alone season to season.

Sure last summer was hot and the winter was cold, but beyond that did you notice any differences from the year before and the year before that? Did the other beings of nature react or play differently? Was there more fruit on the tree this year than last?

If you want spiritual awareness of life, if you want refined attunement to your soul’s environment; to your nature, then choose first to be aware of your climate and then your weather will be second nature to your understanding.

Photo by: Claude Charlebois