A Reason to Be

I saw a great blue heron this evening. Poised, absolutely still, keen eyes targeting the inlet's slow undercurrent. A model of patience, serenity and predation, all at once. And quietly magnificent.

May is my favorite month, and nature is why. At no other time is life's passion and magic so evident. Honeybees buzz among freshly opened blooms; trees have opened themselves into canopies of green, sculpting intimate cathedral walls from winter's bare branches; the air skips with fragrances of sweet lilacs, fresh greenery, piquant cottonwood pollen. Blackbirds strut and screech, protecting the nests of their females. The first mallard ducklings appear, balls of down darting around their mothers as they swim.

And people bloom. I see a new radiance in laughing smiles, elevated spirits, sun-blushing skin. The cyclical current and natural urge of life animates everything, in its time. And the fact is, we are neither separate from nor immune to that current. We are, in essence, another expression of the wild, moving force of life, directing that force by our will and choices. Religion, political power, ethnicity--all are simply different faces we can put on top of our nature, that element of being that is common to us all.

Perhaps the reason for our being here is not to achieve small measures of success, whatever we have chosen that word to mean for us. Rather, perhaps we are here to discover the magic of expressing perfectly our own measure of bright nature. To use our wills, our choices, to form our springs, summers, falls and winters harmoniously and with great joy, in ourselves and with each other. Perhaps the marvelous opportunity we've been missing is simply to learn how to Be.