What does it mean to be alive? That is a big question behind which are the bigger questions of beginnings and endings. You may think the featured picture is a panda bear – it is not! It contains three items that were living and one that never had life*. Something may look alive but it might actually be partly or completely dead. Take the shell of a whelk – it may have a living being within it or it may be just an empty shell.
We live in an age where recycling and restoration are both important. And so you have the popularity of media shows where antiques, old cars and houses are restored. Harvesting of crops has always been important and, with an ever-increasing number of hungry mouths to feed, will continue to be vital. So what is a ‘harvest of restoration’ would you say? Possibly it’s only a small group that can truly describe it for it is very costly!
Whenever you read this, you will be in a season of nature and in a season of your own life. We tend to think of seasons as a time of change as living things inevitably transition from one state to another. Nature’s baton is handed from one season to the next and we tend to think of the first ‘runner’ as being ‘Spring’, the word coming from ‘springing time’ in the fourteenth century. By the sixteenth century, this was shortened to ‘Spring’ describing how plants come forth from the ground (the Latin being ‘ver’ or ‘tempus primum’ as in ‘first time’). This ‘baton of life’ is handed on to Summer which runs on at a more leisurely pace. If Spring could suggest the morning, then Summer well conveys a lazy long afternoon and the promise of harvest. What do you associate with a Summer’s day? Where are you in the seasons of life and the seasons of the soul?
