"The shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, storms, the pounding of waves, the uprush of sap in plants, each and all tell the orderly love-beats of Nature's heart."
The Contemplative John Muir
The love we find in people is often quite different than the love we experience in Nature. With people, love builds up and affirms the goodness of our individual existence, including our physical well-being. Nature's love may also affirm our individuality, especially through the Great Silence which forms a kind of "listening" that enables us to find a voice for the depths of our own unique vision of the Universe. But Nature's love is different than that of other human beings, for she may also KILL us with her love. The floods and forest fires that have occurred in my home territory this past year are evidence of this. Nature's love may not seem at first like the love we are accustomed to desiring. For it works to dissolve our separate existence, causing us to find a Larger Identity in merging with the pregnant Silence and vast spaciousness of the Universe. Indeed, this dissolving - on a psychological and spiritual level - is the ultimate goal of all the world's great contemplative traditions. On a physical level, is this not what death is - a dissolving of the separate self in order to find union with a Larger Reality? Contemplative traditions seek this union on a spiritual level, while Nature ultimately dissolves our biological existence, (although hopefully not until we've lived 75 or 80 years!) It is for this reason that we will always need both human love (to affirm our individual existence) and Nature's love (to affirm our Larger Identity) to help balance out each other.
Photo: Skeletons of Lodgepole Pines stand next to a hot spring that killed them when it opened up right next to the grove; West Thumb Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, WY; August 31, 2013
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