Nature Raw in Tooth and Claw

 This chalk drawing was found near the local community center.   The center is close enough from a wild space, to imagine that this little sketch was drawn from life.  A hawk does live in the tall trees surrounding the center, and the open space houses rats, mice, snakes, gophers, moles, in short a whole raptor buffet.

What's great about this drawing is that, clearly, some little critter is caught in the hawk's claws, yet there's no indication that the hawk is a "bad" animal for having to kill to survive.  Some realistic, observant little kid drew this matter-of-fact representation of life.  The hawk has got to eat, and therefore has got to kill something, plant or animal, in order to survive.

No blame, no shame..

Vegetarian or not, something has to die so we can live. Yin Yang. Yet we sentence people to death as if it's the worst punishment possible.

Why does death scare us so?   We don't know what happens after we die.  Is it the terror of the unknown that makes us crazy?  Why, then, aren't we scared of tomorrow, of going to sleep, of the future in general.  We don't know what's going to happen in the next five years, five hours, five minutes, five seconds, ever.  We only think we do.

We take life for granted.

If we didn't take life for granted would the thought of death be easier to handle? If we embraced our life's unpredictability, would we see death as just another path to follow?  Death is a hard topic to get our heads around.  It's a place where people go and don't come back. Perhaps the best we can hope for is to continue living as fearlessly and matter-of-factly as we can, come what may, moment to moment, no matter what.

Let's eat!

Phew!

After all my talk yesterday about blogging daily, I almost didn't post today.  So much kept getting in the way of my commitment.  In dealing with all resistance, persistence furthers, so here I am with this photo.

My daily dog walks often take me to beautiful places.  Sometimes there's so much loveliness out there that it's hard to choose just which image I'll use. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and these logs caught mine.  The blue of the lichens, or whatever this is on the side of these dead trees, really struck me.  Not only does their shape and color remind me of barnacles on whales, their presence shows me how much use something dead can be.  The death of everything becomes the food for everything, literally and metaphorically.  Death supports life, and both can be beautiful.

When the Lion Comes

Yesterday my sister told me about the recent deaths of two young people who were close friends of her son. She's dealing with her own grief, the pain of her boy and the impossible-to-imagine agony of their parents.

Death comes and we feel sad when we think of the person who is gone. We will miss them, and, depending on our connection with them, they will leave a hole in our lives. Still, when an old person dies, it seems the right and proper end to an active and full life.

When a young person dies it seems wrong, somehow, because, in a certain sense, it takes away our hopes and dreams for the future. Gone are the longed-for grandchildren, the excitement of viewing another's careers, love affairs, and home-making, through the close and loving lens of family. The seasonal celebrations, the phone calls to "see how you are", the visits with long conversations about triumphs and defeats; all those are gone.

We don't feel sad for the person who died. They've gone beyond sadness, pain, all the comforts and discomforts of life. We feel sad for ourselves. And deeply lonely. How to we heal? How do we become happy again?

We learn how much of our happiness depended upon the very presence of another, and very precious, being; and how much of it depended upon our vision of the future. Our salvation, and the way to heal, is to focus as much and as deeply as we can on the present moment, even when it's painful to do so.

Acceptance of our feelings is key. Allow the sadness and know that the food still needs to be cooked, people still need to be tended to, jobs still need to be done. Accept and do, focus on each task and find the small joys in each moment.

Your life will go on. Pay attention, and let your new future emerge from within the seeds of this closely observed present, and when you think of your loved one, think of the times you were happiest together. Forget any regret or judgement. You were together once and you loved each and still do.

Remember the love. Hold it close to you. It's all there is. It's all there ever was. It's still here for you. It will always be here for you.

Remember love.