And God said, “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth.” Gen 1:29
We take so much for granted, and the week we celebrate Earth Day—right when spring blossoms are all around us—is the perfect time to stop and realize the miracle of reproduction that’s unfolding in each flower.
I grew up on a farm where my mother had a large vegetable garden and my father grew the hay and corn used to feed his cattle. I knew where my food came from and about the natural cycles of reproduction, life, and death. I understood that bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and yes, even bats, performed a critical role in pollination, without which our fruits and vegetables simply wouldn’t have existed.
Yet very few youngsters have that privilege today, so it’s all the more important that filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg has been photographing the fascinating and complex world of pollen and pollinators for over 35 years, using time-lapse photography. In the TED talk below, he discussed his work and showed some exquisite high-speed images from his film “Wings of Life,” inspired by recent evidence that nature’s primary pollinators, the honeybees, are disappearing.
Schwartzberg quoted Chip Taylor, Monarch butterfly expert, who said, “Nothing lasts forever. Everything in the universe wears out.” On hearing this, Schwartzberg reflected, “That blew my mind, and I realized that nature had invented reproduction as a mechanism for life to move forward as a life force that passes right through us and makes us a link in the evolution of life. Rarely seen by the naked eye, this intersection between the animal world and the plant world is truly a magic moment.”
More than magic…it’s transcendent.
Pay attention to this miracle all around you.
And never take it for granted.
Book Review: Saints At The River by Ron Rash
I will save that poem and help it prop me up at times of …needed propping. My mom is feisty and forever young, but at 89, I see her near future. But I totally agree with the sentiment of the poem (which says the same thing, in a different way, as your post on pollination!).
Thinking of you as your presence of love and faith helps your dad on his journey.
Thank you so much, Pamela.
For you, and anyone interested, the entire song lyrics can be found here:
http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/h/y/m/hymnprom.htm
And I wish you good days ahead with your own mother. Mine just turned 88. Aren’t we blessed to still have them with us!
I’m paying attention (!) even more now because of your post here. Thank you – it’s lovely. And yes, we MUST pay attention to the magic around us. As much as we humans don’t want to acknowledge it, it’s true that ‘Nothing lasts forever,” but the newness of being occurs as the old wears out. Thank God.
So glad I discovered you and your blog through Karen. And thanks for reading my book and for the wonderful review on Amazon – you are a giver, and I am a thankful receiver.
Pamela, what a treat to have you visit me here at Heartspoken! Isn’t Karen an incredible connector? She’s the one who introduced me to YOUR blog too!
I am in the midst of a personal playing out of nature’s cycle of life – my father, at just shy of 95 years old, is nearing the end of his earthly cycle, and while it is heart-breaking on one level to see the ebb of his life force, here at springtime, there are reminders all around of what my faith tradition believes — expressed beautifully in the last verse of a song written by Natalie Sleeth:
In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;
In our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity,
In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.
Thanks so much for visiting and commenting, Pamela. I hope readers will visit your site by clicking on your name above or going to: http://roughwighting.net/
I was always amazed at my mom’s flower garden and all the visitors she saw there, insects and birds. I still find wonder in many birds, the complexity of a flower, even the activity of insects. May we never taken it for granted.
I’ll bet many of us were first introduced to the glories of nature through our mothers and their gardens! Thanks so much for this lovely comment and reflection, Karen!