3 days Ago
My sister has a new passion — dragonflies. She has introduced me to the vast variety and beauty of these predaceous insects who have existed for 300 million years. A retired bio-geography professor, she is forever discovering new birds, fungi, wild orchids, slime molds and whatever other beings call attention to her trained eye.
“Knowing how things work, the great diversity of landscapes, ecosystems, and lifeforms, and the exquisite connections among organisms makes the world even more wondrous ...
If I could comprehend the vastness of the universe I’m sure I’d be even more awestruck,” she says. She has never felt the need for a divinity. Life as she finds it is miracle enough.
When she was compiling an Encyclopedia of Natural Places, however, she asked me for a poem to introduce the chapter on her most revered place, Mount Washington. I began by writing, “Merlin of Mists, Merlin of Gales, Guardian of souls from ancient of times ..
.” Happily, the words touched something in her that we, in our ignorance, often do not expect scientists to harbor. The mountain is one of the oldest symbols of a deity in many cultures and I like to imagine that there remains, even among devout atheists, an intuitive allegiance to what mankind has called the sacred throughout the history of Homo sapiens.
I find it touching that despite living in a culture steeped in the myth of Genesis (“You shall have dominion over the earth ...
”) how often an ancient memory of Eden, before the fall, returns to our consciousness unbidden. Unforeseen. The death of a loved one often awakens an awareness of our kinship we had with other creatures in the mythical peaceable kingdom.
I remember that after a close friend died, the next morning, as I walked, bereft, in Bennett Meadow, a feather floated down from above and landed at my feet. I felt as if an unseen bird had brought me a message from another realm to tell me my friend was at peace. When my mother died after a life full of our mutual misunderstandings, I didn’t know quite how to feel until I dreamt that I was leading a shy, delicate mare to a sunny, flower-filled meadow.
Somehow I knew it was her I was taking to a peaceful place. It made me realize there had always been love between us, even if it had been difficult to share while she was alive. Not too long ago I met a man who felt a bluebird might be following him on his walk.
His mother had loved bluebirds and they often came to his yard. Perhaps one of her emissaries was keeping her eye on him?! He did not state in so many words, but the gentleness of his voice betrayed a sense that he feels she continues to look after him. Article continues after.
.. Cross|Word Flipart Typeshift SpellTower Really Bad Chess A friend in Hawaii had never spoken of anything remotely spiritual, yet when her long widowed mother died and she let her mother’s ashes drift into the sea, suddenly two seabirds came out of nowhere and flew off together.
She found herself deeply and strangely satisfied imagining her parents together again. The earliest animal forms discovered are of a horse and a water bird, both carved from mammoth ivory about 30,000 years ago. Authorities on symbols and many tribal peoples believe that birds are messengers from another world, and the horse is often considered a mother symbol.
We have long assigned a meaning to the denizens living around us in order to restore our inner equanimity within the inherent chaos of living. Poet Stanley Kunitz put it this way, “Old myths, old gods, old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of your mind, waiting for our call.
We have need for them. They represent the wisdom of our race.” Perhaps what we deem “magical thinking” represents a truly wondrous aspect of the human mind.
I remember a friend being awed that a fox waited outside her dying parent’s window and after mother’s last breath, he turned, looked in at her, and returned to the forest. She knew intuitively that her mother’s spirit was being safely returned to another world. That such relationships and the myths of our ancestors still exist to comfort us is a random biological outcome of the brain’s evolution.
Like my sister, comprehending how things work and connect is miracle enough for me, but doesn’t it feel just a little magical that a unique arrangement of cells can generate meaning and myth ? Margot Fleck lives in Northfield..
