Perspectives

Driving home tonight, I found myself stopped on the overpass in traffic in a place that was new. When one finds themselves in a daily mass of traffic or seeming to move in tandem, very close tandem, one would forget about the bigger picture.

That is what the stop on the overpass provided.

Stopped, I was offered the opportunity to see the bigger picture. Just how enormous eight lanes of Interstate roads are, not to mention the countryside that surrounds it,

This had me pondering about the missed opportunities, chances that hung around, yet were ignored by me.

Alex, a friend, fellow worshiper, gardener,has been offering many of us the opportunity to travel with him during his journey with cancer.

Alex writes often in his CarePages. Today he wrote about the cycle of life as he gardened.

This is some of what he wrote today:

The garden has many lessons to teach about the natural rythms of life and death that, by the way, cannot be separated from each other. Plants push up through the soil, unfold, spread out in leaf, bloom, fade, then die, returning to the soil to perform other essential purposes in feeding and nurturing the rest of the garden. There is no isolated incident in the garden...it all has connection to the whole...nurtures and facilitates the next cycle until all rests through the winter. The gardener listens to this wisdom and works with it to create beauty within it. He or she only participates in it's movements performing the simple tasks of weeding and pruning. In this simple experience, I can sense around me the love and wisdom that is poured out on all creation.

My family and friends know that I find my strength from and connection to God through the earth, my gardens, forests. Just a few minutes of planting flowers, pulling up weeds, transplanting and dividing longtime friends is enough to nourish me for weeks.

Judy and I had discussed the need to let nature be natural. Let the woods be the woods. Trees fall down, break down and feed the soil. Lately I have taken to driving around at lunch seeking those deep forest smells.

Knowing that the universe constantly surprises me, I chuckled when I read another paragraph in his writing, as he quoted Mary Batison in her writing titled Into the Trees.

"Forests live out of the deaths of toppled giants across the decades, as well as the incessant dying of microscopic things. Without death, the forest would die. Both fallen giants and fallen leaves collaborate with the bacteria of decay to produce the fertile soil from which new growth comes. By itself, no single organism can long survive. The forest is its own memorial, the conclusion of its own conversation."