I am drinking night-time tea, writing, as if to write to a lover of feelings yet to be spoken.
I’ve been in the garden today. I sometimes wish my Nan was still alive so I could ask her: ‘Is this what it felt like for you?’ She was a big gardener. I thought it must have been because she liked gardens.
I want to ask her if she, too, felt the whisper of the earth and was afraid to tell us. I want to ask her if delicate roots intrigued her, if rose buds felt like dear, sweet children.
Such beautiful voices have been suppressed. Beautiful voices of truth and earthly wisdom, voices of absolute love and dear, dear compassion.
You will not silence me, fearful past.
I will speak of this beauty.
I will shout it, and the world will know its truth.
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There is something about them that I know, something that speaks to me through the softness and sway of their leaves and sweeping, cupped petal.
Theirs is an energy much like the soft breeze of spring that I love so much. It is an energy elegant but dear, and I know that I am that. I know I am that very same softness.
I am not a vegetarian, nor am I a vegan, although I care deeply for animals and respect them just as much as I do the human folk I share a table with. I’ll eat the animals, though, because plants are also alive and must be sacrificed in order for my body to consume them. That consciousness lives within plants does not seem a far out idea for me to accept…because I feel every inch of their life.
Plants, trees, flowers, herbs… I believe they are all very much alive, and as conscious as you or I. Live a day within my skin. I assure you, you would believe, too.
Our limbs grow without us consciously commanding them to. So do those of plants.
We become diseased without consciously intending to, sometimes with death the end result. So do plants.
I eat plants because I have to, just as I eat meat because I have to.
I don’t take either for granted.
Life is beautiful life, down here on this great big spinning rock of ours.
There are days when the wind blows my feelings in storms over the sea of life, and on these days my old friend fear rows back to me and makes himself known. Do you need me, he says, can I hold you a little longer, he says.
On those days, I am human. On those days I worry and I cry and I tense up, thinking I might have lost something precious that once held me perfectly. Thinking, oh no. What if my life tumbles into bits and pieces, again?
Then there are the moments that shine like a diamond struck directly by the suns brightest ray. Moments of Devine breath. Like the other day, for instance, in the garden. The silent whispers were there again, and not in some imaginative fairy world kind of way. In a very real feeling kind of way.
Somehow (and you all know by now that I am completely clueless as to the how and the why of these sorts of things) there was communication happening between my heart and the earth. The weeds for heaven sake, weeds I once would have gritted my teeth at and angrily resented. They were silently singing. I couldn’t help but love them dearly.
Have you ever looked into someones eyes and felt they were speaking to you without words? If you’ve been in love before, it’s certain that you have. This kind of energetic communication happens between man and nature, too, apparently, and I am the first to say how surprised I am about this glorious darling of a thing.
And it is glorious. My goodness, it is.
There is no human language to describe a Devine beauty such as mans union with nature, but I truly hope that if you’ve not yet known this depth of beauty in your life, you one day will.
If not, I have been here, giving you my words and my heart, hoping they have been enough.
No one should leave this planet without going to this lovely place within themselves.
And so it is I send my wish out for all the world to find their way.
It was an octopus mum, to be specific, a mum just like me. And my mum, and yours, and his mum and hers.
I wouldn’t say it was the octopus herself I fell in love with, exactly…
It was the love.
The love I somehow absolutely knew she felt for her little tiny octopus babes. It was grace in motion, the way she bundled her precious little ones into the ocean, the way she held them with her soul.
Maybe it’s because I’m pregnant (29 weeks, not that I’m counting down or anything.)
Or maybe it’s just because love is what connects every living creature on this earth and I think that is the most beautiful miracle, regardless of the motherly hormones surging through my veins.
I think it’s the miracle thing.
The love thing, the complete and utter mind boggling beauty of it all.
I am so saddened it took me this long to connect to all of life, truly I am, but I’m also beyond grateful to have had a chance to know this depth of connection with my fellow planet dwellers. It really is the most magical, wondrous thing.
Now, If you’ll excuse me…there must be another adorable octopus video on the internet somewhere. I mean, surely.
I sat beside the river and smiled. It seemed a little funny to me that us humans believe we are the stars of this Earth show and that nature is here for us, rather than with us. What if we are here for nature? I think it’s more likely that we are all just here, to be whoever and whatever we are.
Last night as I sat beside the river, an epiphany that’s been growing within me grew a little more, so I thought I’d share it with you guys, just in case you’re interested.
I’ll start with the trees. Trees begin with a trunk. As they rise (grow) they branch out, one branch at a time. Each branch thickens and solidifies over time, and as it does it gives birth to new branches, which then give birth to new branches and new branches, until finally we reach the climax: the leaf.
Flowers. All begin with a stem which grows and, in time, becomes a beautiful little bud, bursting for change, bursting to open. Petal by petal it reveals itself, until eventually we have a fully open flower. It doesn’t happen over night, the growth process. But perhaps that’s the whole point of all life. The journey.
We know roughly what will come of a growing tree/flower because we’ve seen it so many times before and so the expectation is to look toward the finished product. To wait for it, even. But what if we’d never seen a fully grown flower? What if we’d never seen a fully grown tree? All we would have is each individual moment to watch the flower bloom. The same is true for the tree.
A flower/tree has never experienced itself, or this life, before, so how would it know how to grow but to simply let the process be and to experience whatever may happen along the way?As the flower blooms, as the tree branches out, as the human lives and ages…all there is is the process. Living. Experiencing. That’s all there is. For all of us.
And so it could be said that nature is here to live and experience life as consciously and fully as we humans are. Each flower is here to find out what it is like to bethat particular flower in that particular environment, in every moment it lives. Some flowers live to be picked or destroyed. Some live their whole lives to wither and naturally die. The same goes for trees. Some tree branches may be jumped on by a child and broken, leaving the tree injured and in need of renewal and repair. Some will mend on their own. Some will need help. Some, as nature and all things go eventually, will die.
These processes the natural world go through: they are really no different than the processes we go through, as humans. Growth. Challenges. Being loved and cared for. Being abused. Nature goes through it all, right alongside of us, and none of us have any clue what the journey will be until we are in it, living it, being it.
This will likely sound a little (cough: really quite) crazy to those of you who are absolutely not on the nature train, so perhaps I’ll leave you with a little piece of homework, if you’re interested in diving deeper. When you are next outside, go to the nearest tree and hold your hand up beside a leaf (palm facing you). Look at the leaf carefully. Then look at your hand carefully. Look at the leaf and your hand, again.
When you see it, you will smile, I guarantee you that much. And you will know, without any doubt, that you are not at all alone in this universe.
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