In Gratitude

I love nature. I love experiencing nature in the varied spectrum of living in the Midwest. Here's the short list: I love when it is gray, raining in early cold Spring; I love sitting on my porch with my neighbors on their porches watching lightening and our children play in the rain; I love when it is so hot in August my bones feel like they're melting; I love running in the first snow or sleet, feeling it pelt my face; I love walking late at night with the snow heavily falling, silent and bright; I love shuffling through fall leaves and observing them change from green stemmed to rust framed to all brown; I love the smells, smells, smells of early morning Spring, early morning winter and anytime fall; I love anticipating the first crocus and the Redwing blackbird that harbinger Spring; I love standing under giant trees and staring up at a crisp blue sky. Two things happen then: I feel a resonance with ancient tree worshipers and I feel this e.e. cummings poem, that is a prayer really, rise up.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

So because I love nature, I feel compelled to take care of it. On some level it really is that simple. Because I love our planet, our only habitat, I want to honor it by my choices. In future blogs I'm certain to be more detailed with headier, more sophisticated reasons of how and why we should all revere the earth. But for this, my first post, a prayer released in homage is enough.