Nature’s Gifts

Nature’s Third Gift: Self

“I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,

I see that the elementary laws never apologize,

(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all).”

Why do we restrict ourselves?  Why do we live under bondage, and worst yet, our own?  What is virtue and what is vice?  And what is human?  In this age there seems to be something wrong with every one of us.  I do not see it, but everyone else appears to.  Have we no real pride in ourselves?  Why must we always seek change? 

Christians[2] preach forgiveness, yet they also preach the most unforgivable sin: self-denial.    Why should we mold ourselves to the form of something we could never become: a god?  Why strive for it every day when it is in vain?  And do we not, amidst the agony and shame of trying to become the inappropriate image of perfection that we are not, lose our true selves along the way?  Is it worth the sacrifice?  Your soul for a new ball-and-chain?  Why do we ask God for forgiveness from what we are?  Is it not the most sacred thing on earth? 

Talents, thoughts, complexities, passions, longings, everything of beauty human beings keep within themselves.  Nature has designed it just so.  Why not live fully and completely?  We were blessed at the beginning of time, unlike the rocks and the soil; we were given a soul.  It is a gift beyond precious, and why do we waste it?   Why do we compensate? Why do we dim our flame instead of fanning it higher? 

Nature’s Fourth Gift: Harmony

“In the way the day will flow

All things come,

All things go.”

We’ve heard the phrase before: “Death is only the beginning.”  How many of us have heard it and believed it?  And what if it is true? 

I’m not going to preach an afterlife. But I am going to preach an eternal soul.  Souls are immortal, unbreakable, undying. They cannot fade except from within.  Bodies, exteriors, come and go, and to some point they may portray a reflection of the interior, like a sheet draped over a sofa. The ultimate object may be discerned, but it is only a hint, and the details go unnoticed.  But as it is only a wrapping, no external attack upon the body will destroy the spirit. So long as it remains strong, it lives and thrives.

Nature does not fear her winter, but prepares for it.  It is vital and necessary to the whole, to the existence of all things.  And so days flow, years flow.  Nature each has her complete cycles, and we our own individual cycles.  We do not deny them; we cannot deny them in order to live in harmony with ourselves.

            All things have a flow, a living, breathing pulse.  Many say it rises and falls.  It may.  Life may be a roller coaster, for some.  But to me it is long track, with grief and toil on one side and happiness and success on the other, reaching across the land towards the eternal sunrise.

Notes On Text

[1] Here and in several other places I use ‘her’ and ‘mother’ as a description.  I do not mean to place a label of sex upon that force, but I use this example as a cliché that the general public will recognize.

[2] And many other organized religions.  This is the most common example.

Quoted:

1. Walt Whitman, “A Song for Occupations.”
2. Henry David Thoreau, Walden.
3. Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself.”
4. Enya, “It’s In the Rain.”