This morning, while I was sitting on the front porch marveling at the wisdom and industry of the spider to weave it’s gossamer artistry, a silly childhood melody started running through my mind:  “There was an old lady who swallowed a spider...She swallowed a spider to catch the fly, I don’t know why she swallowed a fly, perhaps she’ll die...”

 Nature does not protest but rather flows with impermanence, never stingy with sharing her gifts. The flowers don’t shy away from their glorious display, despite the fact that their season is brief, and in a matter of days they will wilt and be no more. Instead, in my garden, I watch them almost eagerly bursting forth from their buds. I check on my vegetables daily, to catch them at the peak of ripeness before they begin to rot. That spider never tires of nightly creating a web that will likely be gone by the following afternoon. The flowers die and new ones replace them. The vegetables decompose to contribute to the soil for the next crop. Every 1.8 seconds, somebody dies on the planet, but babies continue to be born.

There is wisdom to the cycles of nature (and it should be noted that many fields of science study and confirm this). Nature, from which we come, through which we are sustained, and to which we will return. I invite you to contemplate whether we, as natural creatures, are meant to spend so much time and energy focused on fearful avoidance of our transience. For, in that grasping survival space, the life meant to flow through us becomes stilted or stagnant, and the world will never get to experience the expression of our gifts