Winter in the Desert

Winter time in the desert. The most startling thing about winter is that I don’t hear birds singing. Many species have migrated south. The ones who stay are focused on finding food and staying alive. In winter they don’t feel those rising urges to claim a space and proclaim a territory; a piece of the whole out of which they can derive sustenance for themselves and the family they expect to nurture.

In springtime the competition will begin for the best places - a combat of songs and occasional skirmishes that end in a sort of a truce between rivals. Territoriality, one of the primary laws of nature - the territorial imperative.

But now it is winter in the desert. Winter when the plants draw energy back into their roots. The roots that reach deep into the earth. The roots that search out the nurturing bounty of the earth itself. From the earth, the sun and the atmosphere the plant takes all that it needs to grow and thrive and support the next higher level of life. The plants that support those creatures roam across the ground and fly up over the land. Living, mobile creatures seeking out new sources of information and new experiences to manifest and explore. Free roaming creatures eternally moving outward. Out into the farthest reaches of the known edge of the physical dimension and reaching beyond. Living beings inexorably seeking to push the envelope of life just a little bit further. Seeking to encourage and incorporate into themselves more and more beauty, light, understanding, and love in the ever-ongoing search for perfection.

Perfection, the unachievable goal, the never attained resting place. The place that would mean the end of this outward, expansive breath of creation. Completion, the end of that expulsion out and the beginning of the drawing back in again of all things and all experiences into the One. Who can fathom the depth? Who can fathom the depth?

Time to play my flute.

Song of Life

We measure space by the six directions – North, South, East, West, Up and Down. We measure time in years, days, hours, minutes and seconds. With this mental construct we give order to the space-time continuum. We experience ourselves within space and time as a conscious awareness. I am. I am finds itself emanating form a material form we call the human body. This body, we now know, has taken billions of years to achieve its present configuration. We find ourselves to be a locus of experience within the form of a living, mobile, organic being capable of speculating on the source of its existence.

With our body we move about on the surface of a ball of matter we call a planet. This spinning ball is itself moving through something we call space at an incredible speed. This planet is one of a whole family of spheres of matter rotating around a huge ball of energetic activity we call the Sun. This Sun, a star, is one of an inconceivable number of other stars.

Time, space, matter, awareness. To what end, to what purpose, have these come into existence. I sit at my computer and you sit at yours. We don’t know each other. But we are asking similar questions. What is this experience of Life for? Am I here for a reason? Is there purpose in Life? Toward what end have billions of years of careful, patient evolution been moving? Idle questions – No!

Pick up your flute. Play a tune. Wonder at the perfection of sound filling inner and outer space. Feel the joy of being alive and having the divine opportunity to express your life as music. With your music sing praise to the Power that has brought into being this wonderful world. Give thanks to the Power that sustains you, me and all the wondrous forms and feelings that are the Universe.