Thursday, June 14, 2012

The Nature of Nature~

A beautiful greeting in the central lobby at Yale-NH Hospital,
even the ceilings in the patient treatment rooms are embellished with color & delicate form.
We next have scenes from two gardens~
above is the Tranquility Garden which is on the roof at Yale-NH Hospital. This magnificent garden is a place of pure peacefulness, it is truly a labor of love, with beautiful trees, flowering plants, & a rock laden stream too. All on the roof of the 7th floor of a very busy city.

Below are the roses our son Mike gave to me one Mother's Day almost a decade ago. They are of the variety named Lincoln. This springtime these sweet roses were espically happy & abundant, of which I made sure I e-mailed a pic of them to him as I was sure he'd certainly be glad to see that his choice of flowers are still bringing forth their special home grown charm!
We have below some blueberries, not yet blue of course. We've been way busy in these here hills, but if we want to enjoy a snippet or two we had better protect them from the birds, or else..
I do believe in the possibilities of our strengths & abilities. It does take hard work & determination to sift through a lot of it, but it can be done. Often times not easy, as we all don't start at the same starting gate. When we remind ourselves of that, & take time to connect with nature, it does continue to improve our own nature too.

It has been quite a while since I've been able to reestablish a regular rhythm of Peace Garden postings. Reason being,~ life does get complicated at times, & due to all of that, a lot of what ordinarily would make me want to write , to reach out & share... well the complications that have presented themselves during this varied season in a lifetime, so much of which has been written about in books, plays, essays, & composed to music; for me it's been a constant exercise of realizations, & a deep complicated season of extreme contrasts. But that is what any given life is all about, & how we fathom through it all is what lets us know who we truly are.

Many years ago when I was taking an English Lit course entitled the Literature of Meditation we were asked to do an exercise of facing another classmate, & to then take turns of asking the other Who are you? We each were required to answer this question, & every time it was presented, over & over & over... distilling it down until words could take us no further. The question always seems to boil down to that basic one of who & the self, which I have always felt is all of us. We are all mere mortals, & it is through the Arts that I have found an essential connection to our mutual links in the chain of what at times seems like a free floating experience of life unfiltered. It is that delicate balance that is so important, finding fulfillment in sharing & being connected to that wider view of our common humanity. Friends are in so many ways our chosen families, as friendship is not a born into situation. From friendship we learn from one another to accept, respect, & to treat the other simply as we would like to be treated. I don't know if the families we were born into can ever achieve that, but it's certainly a goal of many.

The golden rule never gets old, & the golden years may be called golden, but in many a family they are laden with landmines that individuals learned over time to walk gingerly around. But during times of extreme stress, all steps may not be purely measured, & situations that can come up at times be so heavily laded that for some that spark of creativity may go untouched for sometime, only to be re kindled after a long period of some heavy soul searching. Thus my story.

Peace is fragile, it's personal too, but very necessary to work on. It starts of course within our own selves & must be nurtured & well cared for, otherwise there's a withering on the vine & never a full flowering. I've gotten a lot better at balancing all of this, but am only human of course, & there's no perfection, but in nature. We are after all a part of nature, so ultimately there is hope for every single bud.











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