Category: Nature

Spring Stillness and Sound

One sunny day this past April, I spent several hours walking among the trees, flowers, dells, and ponds of my favorite nature sanctuary, Mt. Auburn Cemetery. Spring is pure paradise at Mt. Auburn: Leave your physical form at the front gate and become one with the spirit of seasonal rebirth all around you! There is an underlying stillness that fills the air. Even the birdsong and wind through the trees seem to arise from that stillness.

I could feel it in my own heart as I listened to the trilling of hundreds of American toads at Halcyon Lake and sat next to the sunning turtles at Willow Pond. My eyes closed, I sensed both the life-force energy and the profound silence within the sounds of spring. All motivation for movement of any kind fell away. I stopped taking the occasional nature photo—it felt like a distraction. 

I was reminded of visiting the Hopi mesas in Arizona, where the indigenous people there ask that visitors not use cameras or take pictures. I can remember a sense of relief and letting go into the immediacy of the experience. No striving to record what was happening, just a release into Presence, fully connected, heart and soul. The Hopi in their wisdom know that this is the essence of daily life, being fully present. This memory filled my awareness as I opened my eyes and saw the turtles with their heads raised to the warmth and light of the sun. In sitting with them, I too was fully present.

Temples, spiritual sanctuaries, and libraries usually request that visitors observe silence while there. Cemeteries too ask for quiet, in respect for those who have passed and those who may be grieving. I feel that Mother Nature asks this of us as well in all natural settings. When the noise of traffic, machinery, and human voices falls away, there is just silence, the essential stillness of the human soul—where we come home and know fully that we and Nature are one.

In springtime, at a place like Mt. Auburn, where life visibly renews itself in the flowers and trees and the migrating birds, I experience this most profoundly. My inner spirit is also renewed listening to the infinitely varied voices of Nature all around me, which are somehow part of the silence. As I walk, eyes, ears, and heart fully open, any residue of mental separation disappears: no subject or object; no this and that. Stillness and sound are One, within me and everywhere else.

Moon, Stars, Infinity

When astronauts landed on the moon in 1969, I was barely out of my teens and more interested in my life on Earth than what was happening in outer space. Everything seemed somehow different, however, when I looked at the photographs the Artemis II astronauts recently took of the moon’s surface, with distant Earth barely visible over the horizon. I was awe-struck by that visual: infinity perceptible to the human eye. Our home planet looked so tiny in the vast cosmos; our individual lives miniscule. Yet all of it was somehow of a piece; I could sense the oneness that connected everything. Perhaps an indication of how far I had lived since 1969.

I grew up frightened of infinity, all that stretched beyond my lifetime into eternal time/space. Late at night before sleep, thoughts of infinite nothingness caused a “brain freeze” in my child’s mind. As the years passed, I gradually learned to distract myself from those thoughts, although they never entirely disappeared. It was only when I began a spiritual journey in my 30s that I opened the door slightly to a different view of the universe.

Eventually, I was able to see infinity as Spirit, as Light, which lives within and all around us throughout eternity. What once seemed terrifyingly empty gradually became softer, almost comforting if I observed it through my soul’s eyes and not my mind. When I went through breast cancer treatment five years ago, my experience of all-inclusive Spirit became even deeper and more expansive. I could see my physical form as temporary and my soul, which was viewing it, as eternal, infinite.

Perhaps we all go through this evolution in our lifetimes, each in our own unique way. Every human life is a doorway to the infinite, and ultimately we realize how blessed we are to experience it. As I stared at the Artemis images of the moon, Earth, and stars, I could literally feel my heart open to infinity, to my own beingness within it and as it. We each come here to experience a version of continuous awakening to that awareness, perhaps not completely until the moment of our death. But actually it is always present.

Our humanity holds divinity within it, and we are multidimensional beings. The universe itself is multidimensional. It cannot be understood or explained by human mental effort, but rather only experienced through moments of profound opening, in Nature, in crisis, in love, in life/death circumstances. Suddenly, everything is everything, and we are One with it all.  An infinite kaleidoscopic tapestry of light and love. This is the view from space as well as from our own souls. We are the moon, the stars, and all of infinity, living one precious life on an extraordinarily beautiful blue planet, shining light in the darkness of the cosmos.

Growing Up Walden

One of my father’s favorite books was Walden by Henry David Thoreau. He loved Thoreau’s immersion in the natural world and his emphasis on a simple life. Recently, when I was watching a PBS documentary on Thoreau and his time living alone in the woods at Walden Pond, I remembered my childhood in Illinois and how my dad had created his own version of Walden on the five acres where my parents built a house nine years before I was born. The land had a number of old oak trees and a couple of streams running through it but was otherwise mainly open fields. By the time I was a young child playing there, my dad and mom had planted shade trees, evergreens, bushes, vegetable and flower gardens, a fruit orchard, and berry patches. The vibrant beauty of Nature surrounded me every day. Without realizing it, I was growing up immersed in Walden consciousness.

“Simplify, simplify, simplify,” my dad would often quote Thoreau. No wonder I inherited an aversion to complications and clutter—and a love of Nature’s beautiful simplicity. When I read Walden in college, it all came together for me. Thoreau’s writing, as well as that of other Transcendentalists like Emerson, aligned with my heart and soul. Thoreau’s small wooden cabin in the forest by Walden Pond seemed to call to me. A number of years later, I moved to Massachusetts, and Walden became a special sanctuary for me where I often walked the trails and gazed at the trees, water, and sky. In any season, it radiated peace and tranquility. It was as if Thoreau’s solitary spirit watched over and protected it.

When my parents flew from Chicago to Boston to visit me, two dear friends drove us out to Walden so that my dad could see it in person. It was a special moment for all of us because we knew how greatly he admired Thoreau and his philosophy. My father continued to plant mini-Waldens in other Illinois locations where my parents lived in later years. And I too have created “Waldens” in the various backyards (or porches) of houses where I have had an apartment.

Currently, my partner Anne and I live in a condo which faces a woods thick with deciduous trees and evergreens. Bird song fills the air when I open our deck doors at sunrise, and we hear spring peepers or summer crickets trilling after dark. Walden once again synchronistically surrounds me, the perfect circle of a lifetime. Early in my life, I learned that the wonders of the Earth are ever-present; every day I see them wherever I live. I am deeply grateful to Thoreau, my dad, and all those magical years of “growing up Walden.”
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Artwork above: “Thoreau’s View,” by Anne Katzeff

The Miracle of Murmuration

There is a wonderful video online that shows thousands and thousands of starlings flying in synchronized sweeping movements through the skies of the Netherlands. It is a fantastical aerial dance, the birds moving as one across the entire sky. This spectacular sight has a name: murmuration, which refers to the sound of the birds’ wings. The term is applied specifically to starlings, and it doesn’t only occur in Europe. I have seen hundreds of starlings in Massachusetts flying like this, swooping and changing directions repeatedly, high overhead, moving as one mind, one avian soul. An astonishing sight. 

To me, murmuration is a perfect visual demonstration of how we live in a cosmically connected universe orchestrated by a greater Intelligence. There are no events or experiences that are not part of this infinite whole, which forms a kaleidoscopic tapestry of moving light and color. In our daily lives, we don’t usually notice how it all fits together, but occasionally something may make us stop and stare in wonder: a spectacular lightning storm; a lunar or solar eclipse; migrating Canada geese flying in a perfectly formed giant V. As we pause, we may speculate on the possible source of these phenomena (Spirit? Nature?), but whatever name we use for life’s magic and mysteries, the miracles on this Earth are beyond human language. We can only experience them in awe.

A number of years ago, I went on several trips to swim with wild dolphins and whales in the open ocean. Dolphins too engage in their own form of “murmuration.” They frequently move as one as they travel through the seas. “Dolphin mind” I’ve called it, and I’ve been part of it myself on more than one occasion. Once, as I swam at a distance from a pod of spinner dolphins in Hawaii, I found myself moving to the right at the exact same moment that they did. There was no conscious decision on my part. I was just suddenly swimming in synchronicity with them as they swam closer. I felt a part of whatever telepathy passed among them. It was an unforgettable feeling.

Such moments—whether watching birds or dolphins or trees moving as one with the wind—have filled my life with a deeper sense of connection to all things. And to a belief that the seemingly impassive and distant cosmos all around us is in truth within us as well. These connections, visible and invisible, are interwoven throughout the universe. Life on Earth and across the galaxies is perfectly related. The moon affects the ocean tides, as well as our inner fluidity. We are moved in every moment by something greater than even our own imagination: murmuration sweeping through all our senses. The heartbeat of the universe.
*Photograph above by Nicole Pearlstein 
Starlings in flight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4f_1_r80RY

The Wisdom of Slow

There is a profound blessing in aging: the pause for reflection. As I grow older, I find that I think more slowly, thoughts moving through at their own pace, unfolding, flowering. I often walk that way too, step by step, holding the awareness that I may never pass this way again: this moment, this experience, this perspective. I remind myself not to miss the subtleties, the hidden beauty, the wonder. Truthfully, it feels to me like the wisdom of a lifetime.

There is a great push to rush through life in the 21st century, as if we were running a race or trying to escape a predator. Many of us feel that pressure—violence and hatred at our doors, poverty and loss not far behind. Everything, particularly in the current political climate, has become a game of survival. Every film, TV show, and news story focuses on outrunning an enemy, surviving an apocalyptic situation. Death always threatening. Yet, life on Earth is so much more than this, if we pause and remember.

Sunrise and sunset each day. Seasonal changes. The love of family and friends. Since the beginning of time, these have always been present, just as there have always been fears and uncertainties. We came here to experience it all. This century may be particularly challenging, but this is the soulwork we signed up for. To remain calm and peaceful in the midst of chaos; loving and kind in the midst of conflict. Humans are evolving, slowly, often imperceptibly, but if we remember the long view we can take a slow deep breath and continue.

I keep coming back to slowness. It seems the key to so much. If you and I rush, we lose one another in the process. We forget who we are at the soul level and why we are here ultimately. When I listen to my friends, slowly and carefully, I really hear the voice of their inner being, what they want to express, to me and to the world. If I speak without rushing my thoughts, I express my heart’s essence. Together, we share our common humanity. When I walk slowly through a park or sanctuary, I fully experience all of Nature with each step and each breath. I hear birdsong and see every season’s flowering. This is the wonder of being alive, no matter what else is going on in the world.

As the days and years pass, I feel all of this more acutely. Yes, my soul is eternal, but this particular lifetime is unique, a gift not to be wasted or hurried through to an imaginary finish line. Every single moment holds within it a drop of infinity, the spirit of all that is, which I can only receive if I slow down and breathe it in with gratitude and appreciation. It is then that time falls away, and my soul and my humanity are One.