Symbolic as Well as Actual Beauty -Daily Meditation 12.15.23

Today’s quotation:

There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, and the folded bud ready for the spring.  There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night and spring after the winter.-Rachel Carson

Today’s Meditation:

I love the cycles of nature, for they remind me that the way things are right now isn’t necessarily the way things will always be.  And I don’t want them always to be the same, as they can get tedious without change.  Life is a dynamic experience, not a static one, and if we try to make it static, we end up shutting out some of life’s most important elements.

If we try to extend summer, we miss out on fall, right?  And if we love fall and want to hold on to it forever, then we never shall experience winter.  Even though it can be pretty cold and sometimes difficult to handle, winter does some very important things for our planet, and it would be a shame to miss it simply because we prefer something else.  In my life, I’ve been through several deep, dark winters, but spring has always followed them rather faithfully.

Life is about cycles, of course, and we all have the opportunity to experience them for all they’re worth.  We also have the opportunity to live the cycles in our own unique ways as long as we’re willing to accept what life has to bring and the moments that we’re living.  Nature gives us a beautiful example of how life can change for us, and we would be wise to take those lessons to heart and let nature be our guide in many ways.

When we have access to nature, we have access to a vast teacher of life and living, though we have to figure out many of the lessons for ourselves.  We can do our kids a great favor by introducing them to nature and teaching them all that we know about it so that they can add to that knowledge on their own.  There is much that can teach us many valuable lessons, and I’m very grateful for the many lessons I’ve learned throughout my life.

Questions to consider:

What are some of the most important things you’ve learned from nature?

What would life be like with no contact at all with nature?

How might we learn more about nature and what it has to offer?  Why aren’t we following the path of learning more?

For further thought:

We ought for our own good to have access to nature and knowledge of it.  To my mind, it is monstrous that any child should grow up without some acquaintance with nature, and above all I would say without an opportunity for intimate knowledge of some individual plants and animals.-J.B.S. Haldane

If you missed our last Daily Meditation, it is here.