Alphabet soup for the soul – “N”

N is for Nature

“Let us spend one day as deliberately as nature“

-Henry David Thoreau-

Nature has the answers to many existential questions if we are willing to sit back and observe.

The examples vary across the animal kingdom, the plant life kingdom and the world’s oceans. Some are subtle metaphors, and some are so stunningly obvious that they make me ask, “How come I didn’t see that before?”

The Amazon rainforest alone holds many of the answers to life itself. Explanations of how to grow, nurture, breathe, and eat, along with healing under the canopy nature provides. The answers are indeed everywhere. All we have to do is look.

It is no mistake that humans are made of the same elements found in the stars, which permeate the farthest reaches of space. It is also no mistake that the human body and the earth are 70% water.

Nature maintains duality in everything. It is beautiful, ugly, gentle, strong, loud, quiet, fierce, friendly, order and chaos.

As the prophet foreshadowed, a day would arrive out of nowhere and with a wallop, winter would be upon us all.

As witnessed through the window, high above the perch where I write these words, the snow blankets the soft bed of rich green grass that lays beneath it. I am reminded that winter has swept in and taken credit for all the work the autumn winds did, whistling the weary down for slumber and putting the land to sleep.

Greatness is similar to snow. It starts with little flakes, which turn into a snowball that fits into a hand, and with a couple of rolls in the sea of snow, it’s the size of a soccer ball. The snowball gets bigger as it continues down the same path with momentum.

Creativity is sparked, and the culmination becomes a beautiful snowman that children can make come to life and play with as if it were a real person.

The impermeant nature of life returns the snowman to the earth in melted water, allowing the grass to grow strong and thick. Changing from spring through the summer and eventually to autumn as the cycle repeats itself endlessly forever and ever.

Click here to read O is for Observe