Nature’s Call

 Hold on a second. I have to answer Nature’s call. After emptying my bowels and my bladder, I wonder about all the other ways Nature has been calling, or as I say, “knocking at the door.” Somehow, Nature called me into existence. I am here becau a natural sequence occurred which set me on the course of being human.

Despite wrong learning, and with misperception abounding, I have floundered around enough, to suffer from the dis-ease of not knowing what we humans are capable of. Nature keeps calling me into the bathroom, at the same time, it keeps calling me into the mysteries of aging.

There is a whole lot of being human that is organic, predestined by our animal nature. Unfortunately, somewhere back there in time, most ofour ancestors swallowed the kool-aid, or had the sense beat out of them. So badly, that a belief that we humans are not still part of Nature prevailed. Wrong. From the moment of conception, throughout the amazing uptake of additional complexity, to the wizened wrinkles and loss of memory that ripens us all, Nature is turning the evergreening wheel.  How could we have pretended otherwise?  Yet, we still do —some of us don’t realize that Life is having its way with us.

That belief, as incredulous as it is, still rebounds harshly on those of us who are aging. Its as if the laws of Nature don’t apply to us.  Graying isn’t natural, and Nature hasn’t any surprises left for those in the later stages of ripening. Nature’s call is confined to passing by-products, and has nothing to do with the latter years. Life eschews waste, and saves the best for the ripening times. The environmental crisis, and the neglect of the aging, share the same root. Each assumes that Nature is out there — and is there, for our use.

This isn’t an environmental scree, it is a plea that we humans enjoy the fact that the garden is within us, and that wildness and natural wily-ness is part of us, even as, and maybe especially as, we get older. Nature is each one of us. Nature’s call is coming right through each one of us, each as naturally original as a snowflake, or a monsoon.

Some old people are feeling the impetus of Life. It is stirring them to go further. The lucky ones, they suffer gladly, the vagaries of Life, becoming polished by the combination of hardship and glory. They bring the unknown to us, naturally and nutritiously. Life thrives when it gets to go on to complexify, while it is simplifying itself. Old age is an essential part of the whole! Ageism is the gravitational pull of the past, while aging is the gravitational pull of what is. Nature’s call.

There isn’t much more to say. Words fail anyway. As a human, an elderly one at that, I have learned that the only say I have, is how I respond to Nature’s call. The way I see it all now is like a dance. Nature leads, and I follow as creatively as I can. How I respond is who I am, and Nature’s call dreams me up.

 

 

 

  

Across A Lifetime

I tend to think differently. There are many reasons that is the case, but the most significant one is that I have a developmental perspective. That means that I see how Life moves through each of us over a lifetime. The most amazing thing about this view, is that it reveals the many stages of growth that are typical for our species. This viewpoint has contributed to my overall confidence about what nature is doing with us. So, despite our abuse of the natural beauty that has been bequeathed to us, I still can see the way Nature thrives when we grow and become more mature.

There is an organic quality to us, the animal nature of who we are, that has been forgotten in our rush to become civilized. This has had many dire consequences, not the least of which, has been our assumed dominion over the natural world. In the process, all kinds of hell have been set loose. Everything has suffered, and especially in societies where this blind adherence to the preeminence of our kind has dominated, the old have suffered. What Nature has designed as the point of most natural transition (death), has become a place of fear, ignorance, and superstition.  Captured within the hubris of so-called modern culture, humanity, and all of Nature, labors from the misperception that Nature and humans are separate.

This misperception obscures the biological magic that defines us, that shapes who we are, and the place we can occupy in the great circle of being. Life has a hold on us, even as we pretend we don’t have a hold on it. So, some of us, through maturity, luck, and unconscious instinctive desire, still manage to return to the headwaters, and fulfill the cycle of life. We are part of a drama that has universal implications. Souls cycle through life, and return to the source.

My luck has been that I was torn apart, so nothing made any sense, and what remained, was only what exists beyond nothing — the immaterial realm. Without the usual kind of sight, I could see my own blindness. It (my blindness) existed even when I thought I could see. Only then did I look more carefully.

I learned that Life itself lived through me. Then, I paid more attention. Later revelations showed that Life moves through all the stages of humankind. Old people are the latest stage of a larger rushing torrent, the final unleashing. Some of them, broken and wrinkled on the outside, experienced Life moving through inside them, and have become the embodiments of Life. They give an expression of our natural inheritance. They are the wild fruit of a cosmological Mystery.

The old today are not the old of yesterday. Life moves on. Paradoxically, what seems old is new. Elders are beginners with strange sensibilities. Life is arriving again, in a form that looks familiar, but isn’t.

I think differently. This is my song. The only one I am capable of singing. A developmental perspective has changed my viewpoint, and made visible the inside story. Don’t take my word for it, check out the old people around you. Some of them, will disclose the possibilities, that Life brings. 

That will be hearteningly obvious. Interact with them. Consider embodiment. Life is there, in its eternal passing-through. Now, interact some more. Add depth to the Mystery. There we are. The children of this place. Elders posing near the beginning, which is an ending. The origin waters.