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End of a Summer's Day

Meditation

By Sybille StephensonPublished 4 years ago 3 min read
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I always wonder at clouds: light, frizzy wisps of cotton wool; white, fluffy heaps of celestial whipped cream; grey, menacing masses of soaking wet pillows. They come in so many shapes, textures, colours, in constant change throughout the hours, the days, the months, the seasons, the years.

Are we not like the clouds? Our lives moving across the earth, ever changing, ever new. We may feel light, weightless, with not a care in the world; then fuller, more intense, more defined, taking on shapes and roles, involved with each other and so important! But before we know it, life becomes heavy, dark, full of tears and fears and trepidation. A thunderstorm clears the air, leaves us wondering what it was all about.

Nature has seen it all: generations of humans wandering the earth, all different but also somehow alike. And whatever we do, we are most truly ourselves, when we are in nature, connected with the eternal mother from whom we come and to whom we return at the end of our journey.

I walk across the fields on a summer afternoon. Warmth in the air, fragrance over the meadows. Butterflies fluttering above the wildflowers, bees buzzing among daisies, knapweed, crane’s bill, cat’s ear, red clover and yellow buttercups.

The sky is blue. There is a white, fluffy dragon, running after a small dog. The dragon becomes a kangaroo, the dog turns into a frog and then into a strange looking rat. The sun begins to set. The edges of the kangaroo turn golden, the sky is pale pink and blue, and bright yellow, where the sun kisses it with its warm rays.

My soul rises up to the clouds, becomes one with the shapes and the colours. I breath the pink and the gold and the blue. My skin feels the cooler evening air and the warmth of the last rays of the setting sun mingling in the fading light. Sun-breath, air-clouds, evening promise.

Orange, pink, yellow, purplish blue; cloud sheep turning black against the blue of the sky, moving slowly without hurry, changing shape, dissolving, disappearing. The colours deepen, the sun turns orange and sinks into a bank of pink clouds. A pink veil hides the orange face of the sun, bashful bride, sinking slowly, the veil lifting and floating away into the deep blue sky.

The celestial orange passes behind the branches of a tree. The dark shape lights up, becomes transparent for a moment. Liquid gold trickling through black leaves, colouring the horizon orange and gold, red clouds above, like leaves of a much bigger tree, blown across the land.

Cool damp rises from the grass. Fragrant echoes of a warm summer’s day hang in the air. A late robin sings in the branches of a tree nearby. He does not want the day to end, makes the summer spell linger above the darkening meadow with his song.

I look back at the sun, half a red disk above the wide meadow, moving lower and lower. Let me touch you, friendly red! Let me sink into the earth with you!

A last wisp of crimson light above the horizon, the sky is turning darker by the minute, a blanket of velvety indigo covers the earth. A cricket starts tuning its fiddle to play the meadow a lullaby. Rustling among the leaves under the hedgerows tells me that the creatures of the night are waking up.

As I turn to walk home, a hedgehog scuttles across the path. I greet him politely, as one does with spiky people. You do not want to anger them. But the hedgehog has more important business to see to. So I don’t insist.

A black cat patrols its kingdom, dignified, silent, not missing the slightest change in the fresh night air. Mysterious creature, how much wiser are you than the wisest man – or woman as a matter of fact. Perhaps you have the answers to all the questions of the universe, all the riddles of existence that we try to solve only to discover that each solution reveals a new mystery. And you sit there on the garden wall, velvety, sleek, a picture of serene beauty, wondering why we spend so much time and effort running around, looking for answers when everything is so obvious.

The first stars light up in the night sky. Endless universe above me, of which the earth is but a tiny speck of dust, yet so important because it is inhabited by humans with so many thousand individual destinies as there are galaxies out there in space.

A deep calm descends onto my soul, a wordless notion that we are all part of this immense, mysterious and wonderful thing called life.

nature
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