Nature and Human Nature, Rites of Passage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

As one season passes into another, so too the seasons of human life. For me, the relationship between human nature and nature is best summed up by the words of Albert Camus: “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

Spring, summer, autumn, winter ... not dissimilar a rites of passage as we humans (whoever, wherever we maybe) journey through the mind-body-spirit of any whose lives we may have touched by word or deed, lessons learned even ... to be passed on, and on again ... until no one remembers the original source yet something of its place on all our learning curves across a past-present-future to which we all subscribe and contribute, each in his and her own way. Such, to my way of thinking, is immortality.

For now, spring is here again. I look out of my window and am filled with the joy and wonder of rebirth. I may not be a religious man, but as I ponder the endless path of nature’s four seasons, I do not regret preferring nature to dogma. There is a spirituality in nature that touches and moves me more than any religion ever could.

NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE, RITES OF PASSAGE

As a new leaf on an old oak,

find a mind-body-spirit regenerating

greener centuries

As new buds on a rose bush

find all animal senses coming on heat

after a wintry frost

As new petals on a daffodil,

find emotions rising above their flaws

on a robin’s wings

As driftwood on home shores,

find young potential needing to be put

to better use than this

As seeds on a southern wind,

find life forces placing time and space

on a learning curve

As pilgrims to raison d’être,

find ghosts dead set on helping us live.

let live, have a voice

As fairy tales to a child’s mind,

find ancient legends wringing metaphors

from contemporaneity

As singing wires to cloth ears,

find rebel green campaigners messaging

the Earth’s naysayers

As ashes to ashes, dust to dust,

find art and science performing last rites

over tablets of stone

Copyright R. N. Taber 2019