These are thought to be Tundra Swans however I have my doubts. By this time of year shouldn’t they be in Northern Canada, on the tundra? Photo taken recently at Tule Lake Northern California.
And if you, or I, are in any doubt about the size of planet Earth in relationship to other heavenly bodies, ideas will be shattered in one moment….
Sometimes ones personal world seems so huge and overwhelming, knowing how small Earth is, in the greater scheme of things, helps get a more realistic perspective on everything.
Wild Geese – Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Brilliant! Thanks Ray.
The link showing how small the earth is was, as the young people say, “awesome”. I remember as a teenager that ideas of infinity and eternity were key to my spiritual awareness.
After along and varied path, I found the following poem about ten years ago. It sums that up for me in a “Zen” context. It’s a great favourite of mine I’d like to share.
“A million Mount Sumerus are but a drop of dew
On the end of a single hair;
Three thousand worlds are only a seagull
Floating on the ocean waves.
The two children of the tiny creatures
In the eyebrow of a mosquito
Never stop quarrelling between themselves
As to whose earth this is.”
Hakuin
From:
R.H. Blythe, Zen and Zen Classics, 7 volumes (Tokyo: Hakuseido,
1960-1970), V, page 198 cited in
Conrad Hyers, Zen and The Comic Spirit (Philadelphia:
The Westminster Press, 1973), page 13.
In gassho
Ian
Thanks Ian, good find. Amazing how words found by chance can have such an impact on ones life.