No Complaints

"After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains?

Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night."

Walt Whitman

Nature not only soothes and calms us in our uncertain world. Nature has inspired so many of us to write, paint, sing and dance.

Nature inspires me with her beauty, certainly. But she also inspires me with what I will anthropomorphically describe has her humility and her acceptance with what is.

This is my favorite time of year when there is an abundance of lettuce, spinach, asparagus and rhubarb in the garden. The perennial flowers are all starting to bloom in bursts of color, a new one each week, or even each day. The purples of lilacs and iris, then chive flowers. The pink of phlox and wild geranium. And this is after the earlier spring rainbow of wildflowers. And everywhere I look, Mother Nature has done a better job of landscaping than I could ever do. She puts the rocks in the right spaces and mixes wildflower colors with ease.

Yet Nature asks nothing in return for her wild landscaping; no money changes hands, no donations are solicited, no praise requested. She does it not expecting any accolades. Great beauty given with such humility.

And when the rain doesn't come for days, and the temperature heats up, and the winds dry out the soil, Mother Nature doesn't complain, or bemoan the lack of necessary moisture. She waits. She adjusts. And then she quietly accepts what happens.

I love seeing this in the mosses. The moss dries up and yellows, waiting. Then the rain comes and the moss takes up all it can until it becomes soft, pliable and green again.

What lessons we can learn from Nature, in addition to appreciating the beauty and peace.

May I be more accepting of whatever comes my way and adjust to it. And then joyfully take in the goodness when it comes, and use it to its fullest.