Tag: nature preserve

It is.

Image result for picture of a white heron in a forest

Behind our home is a small lake and behind the small lake is part of an expansive nature preserve. A white heron often comes and perches in the thick expanse of trees and greenery that make up the preserve. The white heron is still, elegant, peaceful. It is such a beautiful, tranquil contrast to the unruly thickness of the foliage all around it, the greenery that twists and turns and fights for the center stage of the forest, reaching and seeking desperately, upwards and outwards. When I see the heron, I often wonder if that is what our souls look like. The beautiful, quiet, placid spirit part of us, deeply nestled in the center of the thick, and wild forest of our minds and our thoughts and our lives. It quietly sits and observes and reflects without thoughts and judgments and cares. The white heron is beautiful. It is quiet. It is being still. It is being. It is.

The Earth Has Stopped

Yesterday, I read this quote in my meditation:

“It was one of those days so clear, so silent, so still, you almost feel the earth itself has stopped in astonishment of its own beauty.” – Katherine Mansfield

I think that is one of the most poignant, beautiful lines I have ever read.  I had never heard of the author, so thanks to the wonders of the internet I was able to find out everything I could possibly want to know about Katherine Mansfield.  She was a short story writer, from New Zealand. She was friends with D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf.  She passed on in 1923 due to tuberculosis at the young age of 34.

I think that quotes like the one above are why I love the written word.  When someone can help encapsulate what I am experiencing, thinking, feeling in one short statement, I think that it is nothing short of a miracle.  I think this is also why I love nature.  The author passed in 1923, but yesterday when I was walking a trail in a nature preserve with my husband and my dogs, I experienced exactly what she wrote.  The awe that I felt for the still nature around me almost took my breath away.  Nature is not timeless, but for our lifespans, it might as well be.

I don’t really have anything else to say about this.  Katherine Mansfield’s statement says it all and I am in awe of that.  And I look forward to experiencing that “earth has stopped” moment again and again for the rest of my life.