Nature's Time

Just last week I was looking out across the mountains where I live and thought how gray the trees were.  The hardwoods standing out in contrast to the pines who never loose their green.  This week, in what seemed with just the blink of an eye, there is a green haze spreading with the rapidity of a tsunami across the mountains.  This change come every Spring and with every Spring I am surprised by it.

This year it seems so much more gratifying to see the spreading of the leaves and the greening up of the hills and valleys.  I do marvel at what is an age old custom of nature. It is fascinating in its complexity.  It is marvelous in its beauty.  It is satisfying in its simplicity.

It happens each year, not on man's time, but on the time of the universe.  And each of us are subject to that time.  Man's time has nothing to do with the regulation of the seasons.  We can time things down to nanoseconds and even two shakes of a lambs tail, yes there is such a time interval of two shakes.  No matter what the calender says, no matter what the clocks of the world say the time is, Nature has her own time.  

We are each a slave to that time of nature as well.  As much as we wish to be in control of all things, time is one thing we cannot control.  What happens, happens in the fulfillment of time as controlled by the universe.  And we, we puny insignificant humans, cannot do a thing to change that.  We can't, and we shouldn't, even as much as we would like to.  For in doing so we would never grow up, never grow old and never have to mourn the passing of a loved one.  We would never know the soaring of spirit that comes with falling in love, nor the heart break of loosing that love.  We would never know the joy and the pain of being human.  For time is what makes us all who and what we are.

In a short while, as Einstein would say 'relatively speaking', I will be joining in, in the Spring time greening up.  My ashes giving nurture to a living growing tree, growing green on Nature's time.  My life having been lived on Nature's time and ended in the fulfillment of that time.  Although I am more aware than most of my time growing short, I still do not know the date and time of my dying.  That is a good thing in and of itself, because it gives me the opportunity to live fuller and do each day something that I enjoy and to do, and not put up with things that are negative.  Some would say I might be a crotchety old man mad at the world and striking out at the world.  I say I no longer have the time to put up with BS.

I hope to have lived in such a way that when my time is fulfilled, that it can be said of my life that it was full. That I was fascinating in my complexity.  That I was satisfyingly simple.  That I was marvelous in my inner beauty.

Until next time.............