Anticipation,
Threating skies assemble,
Nature is silent.
Weather fronts collide,
All senses are on alert,
Time is disrupted.
Harbinger thunder,
Announces impending rain,
Sheets of lightning flash.
Life giving water,
Releases a crescendo,
Throughout the valley.
The Jordan river,
Gathers the liquid bounty,
Routine life returns.
The remnants of hurricane Delta slowly retreated through the
Carolinas back out into its birthplace in the Atlantic Ocean. It cast a wide net of rain showers that
fitfully graced the overcast October landscape for hours on end. But now as the subdued daylight slips over
the western horizon, darkness once again begins to be revealed. And a foreboding stillness smothers the land
into abject silence. All nature seems to
sense the changing of seasons with the accompanying drop in temperature.
The winds that were moving through the land have abated, rendering
the colorful autumn tree leaves listless and immovable. Many of the new growth leaves on the outer
edges that had already lost their life sustaining chlorophyll were still able to
maintain their hold onto the limbs. Other
colorful spirits no longer drifted on the air to join those that had fulfilled
their destiny after being torn loose from their moorings in the passing storm. They now lay lifeless in the quenched green
grasses and bushes. Isolated raindrops
still remained delicately clinging to the plant leaves that had earlier
embraced them. Then a gentle drizzle
begins its decent as the storm offers up one final gesture of defiance,
confirming the senses of the silent insects and song birds.
And God whispers “It is well; rest in stillness; the cycle
of life circles on.”
NOTES FROM THE JOURNEY
We live out the vast majority of our lives gazing up at the dark shadowed under belly of overhead cloud formations. And yet only in this period of human evolution can we insert a credit card chip, casually walk aboard a jet powered cylinder and observe a magnificent cloudscape shining down below us that has been blind to all landlocked generations before us.
It never ceases to amaze as we defy the gravitational pull that prevents us from flying uncontrollably off of the planet’s surface!
Perhaps this pandemic year 2020 will be remembered for our common legacy of mortality and a virus more than anything else. One of the many positive attributes of receiving an electronic newspaper in addition to not braving the elements in my sweats every morning is the videos that are included. This Saturday morning’s edition included a rather premature video of some of the prominent deceased influencers in 2020 that have caught our attention for their actions that remain here on earth.
I normally review these names because many of the people
have been a part of the fabric of my life for this time and place. And now that I’ve entered into the fourth
quarter of life, I find these choices even more interesting because of their
qualifications. And in this electronic
age, there are obvious choices in people who have made a name for themselves in
the public’s eye for music, athletics, art, acting, politics, etc.
If you’re like me, you catch yourself comparing dates of
birth for those departed like Chadwick Boseman, 43, 1976; Mac Davis, 78, 1942; Ruth
Bader Ginsburg, 87, 1933, to gauge longevity.
The vast majority of us will not have our legacy shown in these lights,
however quickly even these will begin to diminish as with all human beings.
I chanced upon an observation in a Psychology Today post by
Robert Enright, Ph.D., that really resonated; “Does legacy count for little? Think of even one time in which
one of your parents gave you legitimate love that stayed in your heart. If you
can pass that to even one other heart and then it is passed on to another
heart, does this count for little?
What will be your legacy?
Do not be concerned if your name is not in lights 200 years from now. Be
very concerned that you have the opportunity today to start a pattern of love
that goes from heart to heart to heart…even if you and your works are long
forgotten… and it can exist apart from anyone ever
connecting our love back to us.”
And so, wouldn’t it be wonderful
if the legacy of this chaotic year 2020 was not mortality and the human to human transmission
of a virus, but the immortality of the love humanity transmitted heart to
heart?
