Are you too serious during this playful wonderful time of year called spring?
This is the time of year that I drop everything, get my hiking shoes on, and go out there and hunt morel mushrooms in the woods.
It's just like us humans, with life bursting out all around us, to stay huddled up in our offices and gated communities, no matter what the season.
We're about paper and plastic. Mother Nature could care less!
Aw, but isn't spring beautiful? Has no one told nature yet that it should do spring low-key this year because our country's in a recession? My gosh, people are sad! Many are walking around with frowns on their faces, and then nature has the audacity to spring forward with bright pinks, purples, yellows and whites just like any other year!
Nature has no concept of that paper or plastic that we can money. Nature still produces food for us, even in the wild, but do any of us take the time to study wild foods that have been put there for creatures like us to eat?
And nature isn't really in any mood to eat our money either, unless it's shredded and the dyes are removed. Then maybe as it decomposes, it may provide some nourishment for the green life.
What I'm really trying to get across is that we humans have let ourselves become so civilized, so homogenized, so hygienicized and pasteurized, moisturized and motorized that we have completely lost contact with the rhythms and dance of life that our ancestors knew so well.
So today in the spring of 2009, let it be remembered that billions of human beings lost lots of their paper and plastic money. Some lost property that they claimed was theirs. Some lost respect from their peer humans. Some were not able to use the paper or plastic to plaster greasy creams and dangerous dyes around their eyes and mouths. They were not able to bring into their McMansions new attire even though last year's clothes still hung in the crowded closets.
Humans in the spring of 2009 worried while flowers danced with the warm breezes of dawn. Humans pre-occupied themselves with Wall Street while mushrooms emerged in the musty woods.
Lovers became disillusioned with a depressed society, which was completely created by their own species' greed. They failed to nurture one another during this malaise, as they saw birds outside their windows chasing one another with mad love.
Ah-hah! Mad! Humans know mad very well. But when they get mad, they get violent and call one another names. They may conspire to get their neighbor or co-worker in trouble or even fired from a job.
Some of us humans feel deprived, and can't understand why Mother Nature is partying it up like never before. She rained for a few days, perhaps her tears. But now she's over it, and she's painting the skies silky blue and the earth luscious green with specks of white, yellow, purple and pink.
Art, like spring, continues. Artists are used to being poor and living on the edge. Many have tuned their bodies to the rhythm of the seasons. Thus from among the humans, you'll often see the artists and the eccentrics out there enjoying the rapture of this season.
So, come on! This is spring, guys! I know our civilized world tells us that we are in a recession, maybe a depression, maybe even a collapse. But the earth lives. Our home is alive at this time of year more than at any other time.
Forget for just a few hours that you are a 2009 Human Being. Regress to the Human Being of your ancestors. Go out and hunt, gather, dance and sing! Most of all, love and enjoy the simple and refreshing gifts that are in abundance if we'll just look!
Celebrate spring! And then commit to do all you can to see that it comes around with joy for all of those who will follow us in the generations beyond.
"Notice the lilies of the field who neither spin nor toil. Yet even King Solomon in all of his glory was never adorned such as these." (Jesus, about 30 AD)