A leaf on the pond

How quick and rushing life can sometimes seem, when at the same time it’s so slow and sweet and everlasting.

~ Graham Swift

After yesterday’s wonderful workout and trip to the creek, I took my time walking back up to the house for lunch.  As I was walking along the pond, a leaf drifted past me and landed on the surface of the pond.

It seemed like I stood there for the longest time, watching and photographing the leaf, while time did its little trick of slowing and then speeding up.  I don’t suppose it was a very long time at all even if I did momentarily experience universe time.

I’m not sure what universe time is other than to say it encompasses the second it takes a leaf to land on the pond while stretching across the space of many millennia.  It makes you feel small and big at the same time.

Light changes, the leaf twirls with the wind and waves of the water, the sun moves in and out of the clouds.  Life goes on and on and on like one of those scenes in a movie where the character stands still and everything fast forwards behind him or her as you watch this single leaf floating on the surface of the pond.

For a second, maybe for an eternity, you become the leaf floating on the pond.  Light, in the light, just floating and moving with the flow of life, the universe, and everything.  (As always, thank you to Douglas Adams for that phrase that I’m sure I use all too often, and appreciate all the more for using it so much.)

Life on earth is a whole, yet it expresses itself in unique time-bound bodies, microscopic or visible, plant or animal, extinct or living.  So there can be no one place to be.  There can be no one way to be, no one way to practice, no one way to learn, no one way to love, no one way to grow or to heal, no one way to live, no one way to feel, no one thing to know or be known.

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

And after the stretched out time with the maple leaf floating on the pond, I made another discovery of life…

Coming up out of the ground, bringing color into the light of winter, the crocuses have decided this is their time.  We all have a time.  Sometimes we move into it too soon and winter comes back to let us know we were early.  Sometimes we get it just right.  A blogmate, someone I think of as a good friend even though we haven’t met outside of cyberspace, has decided this is the time to close her blog.  I admire her courage in stepping away and moving on with her life, something I ponder as I struggle with the time-balancing act between blogging and life.  Thank you, Kel, for sharing with us the building of your island retreat, your Art Attacks, your beautiful blessings, and your wonderfully creative blog.  I’ll miss you in this aspect of life online, but hope to see you in other cyperspace venues.  May your creativity and love of life continue to expand as you move on to bigger and better things.  Can’t wait to see what you do next.

We live in this mysterious world as if we understand it and so wonder becomes lost.  We live as if we know more than we don’t know and that isn’t true.  Each moment of our lives we stand at a crossroads:  we can reduce the profound to the mundane or we can intuit the continuous and vital mystery through which we move.

~ G. Bluestone

Thank you so much for sharing your time with me here in the Bogs on this lovely Sunday.  M and I spent a good part of the day hiking.  I’ll tell you all about that tomorrow.

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