It's not over till it's over

  Sharing some thoughts from the other day...

I posted on my Inner Workings blog the newsletter "The Flowers are Speaking" in her article "At the Edge of the Woods," by Mary Porter Kerns.

This is what struck me first as I read through it. And I reread this paragraph several times. 

I am comforted in one way, with a strong sense that the Earth will be fine—our Great Mother Earth will always generate new life. Yet, my grief in knowing we are losing the worlds that generations of our ancestors knew and loved is overwhelming when I allow myself to think about it. It is scary to contemplate how all that we depend on for our food and shelter might be radically changing over the coming decades. And so, I usually don’t. I may even delude myself occasionally into thinking that since I am in the later years of my own life it won’t affect me. But of course, it will, because my life is bound to the lives of my children, all the descendants of those beings currently living, and the worlds we will all be born into again and again.

 The lifespan I'm currently experiencing had become so overwhelming, I forgot about the lifespans of other things and reincarnation.

Needed to get back to nature, eh?

Kerns said: "...as she dealt with the invasive species of Oriental bittersweet, she listened to its voice...

Oriental bittersweet and their beautiful orange berries shared this wisdom when I sat with them at the end of last season, but I had not fully digested their wisdom until now. They said, “Allow us to help you trust that a new balance will come. A new equilibrium often takes longer to achieve than the span of a single lifetime. Let us help you sit with your discomfort. Remember that new life always arises from the ruins of the old. For now, trust that each curve of our vines holds our desire to create new life from the dirt that holds us both.”

This made me copy the whole article, because it's so rich in its simplicity. Dealing with unwanted growth - anyone with cancer can identify with this probably.

Or just disease processes of any kind. Or discomfort from unexpected avenues.

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Sharing with Thankful Thursday, and Skywatch Friday

I did go back to nature...as best this ole body can do these days. Drove up to my favorite lookout (Tanbark Ridge, 3175') on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Breathed fresh clean air (with whatever pollen was still floating around). Set up my folding chair and settled in for a half hour of higher altitude breath work.

Besides occasional tourists stopping by to take their photos with the mountains, there were occasional jets overhead. A faint contrail can be spotted in the sky. But I mainly looked up with that sparkling little round cloud among all the mares' tails.

The slide above the fronds of the bush shows the roadway of the Parkway on the other side of the valley. And if you look very hard (and have a better screen than I do, maybe you can see the car which just is to the left of the mudslide. The next time I go I think I'll put fresh batteries in the old Nikon which at least has a zoom capacity. Where I can connect its photos is the question, since I no longer have the computer where that app worked. We shall see if the card reader works, and if I even have a card in the camera.

What fun things to do when I should be seriously taking care of more business-like parts of life. But today is rest.

Having a flexible mind makes navigating life much easier, as you are not thrown off course easily.

And I went back again on Tuesday for another half hour, catching some sun on toes and shins for a half hour. Breathing wonderful highly oxygenated air from all those woods. Hot for that half hour, but our weather is due to get wet again, so changes of plans.

“[In] all this inky black void, the Earth was there with this beautiful blue hue to it. The blue marble.”
—Frank Borman, astronaut

My sunrise photo from the Parkway, May 20, 6:52 am. This will be my next header...