The following is an excerpt from the book MY FATHER MYKING by Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
Hear your Father your King, the Creator and Sustainer of the entire universe saying to you:
The world in which you live is full of miracles so that you will have constant reminders of My presence.
There are miracles of history. There are miracles of biology and botany. There are miracles of chemistry and physics and of anatomy and astronomy. There are miracles of events that are mathematically improbable. There are major miracles and there are minor miracles miracles that are easily recognizable and miracles subtle and hidden.
What you refer to as “nature” is the manifestation of My will in the world. All of nature is ultimately a miracle. Don’t allow familiarity to blind you to the magnitude of the miracles that appear commonplace.
Every heartbeat is a miracle. Every cough and sneeze is a miracle. Every step you take is a miracle.
Keep your eyes open for the myriad miracles in your life. Seeing those miracles will add a spiritual dimension wherever you are and wherever you go, and your entire life will be filled with joy and gratitude.
There is a winter in all of our lives, a chill and darkness that makes us yearn for days that have gone or put our hope in days yet to be. Father God, you created seasons for a purpose. Spring is full of expectation buds breaking frosts abating and an awakening of creation before the first days of summer. Now the sun gives warmth and comfort to our lives reviving aching joints bringing colour, new life and crops to fruiting. Autumn gives nature space to lean back, relax and enjoy the fruits of its labour mellow colours in sky and landscape as the earth prepares to rest. Then winter, cold and bare as nature takes stock rests, unwinds, sleeps until the time is right. An endless cycle and yet a perfect model. We need a winter in our lives a time of rest, a time to stand still a time to reacquaint ourselves with the faith in which we live. It is only then that we can draw strength from the one in whom we are rooted take time to grow and rise through the darkness into the warm glow of your springtime to blossom and flourish bring colour and vitality into this world your garden. Thank you Father for the seasons of our lives
The calendar says winter has begun but, while it is reasonably mild and there are still some reddening leaves on the trees, I want to dwell for a few moments on the beauty of autumn, as portrayed here by the great nature and romantic poet, John Keats.
JOHN KEATS (1795 – 1821)
Ode To Autumn by John Keats
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers; And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too – While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
John Keats was inspired to write his poem while out walking in the fields. He tarried, enjoying the moment to the full. The poem is bursting with imagery such as personification, metaphor and symbolism. In contrast, here’s a brief and succinct poem by Emily Bronte, who appears to delight in the final vestiges of autumn and is very much looking forward to the approaching winter.
A couple of weeks ago, I was busy in the garden doing some tidying before the approach of harsher weather, when I encountered this little critter (pictured below) making his way across the lawn (at an alarmingly rapid pace for a caterpillar!). It’s an Elephant Hawkmoth Caterpillar, apparently fairly common in the u.k., though this is only the fourth time in my life that I’ve come across one.
Elephant Hawkmoth Caterpillar
I popped it in a plant pot so I could search for a suitable safe place to put it. The eye markings are false eyes. It puffs itself up to make itself look intimidating, with a good degree of success I think. Last summer, I read in a local newspaper how one family had called the R.S.P.C.A. (Royal Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) to report having found a baby snake. Of course, it was investigated and found to be an Elephant Hawkmoth Caterpillar and was returned to the outdoors. I was amused, but completely understood how it could be mistaken for a baby snake.
Pictured below is a clearer photo from the internet.
Elephant Hawkmoth Caterpillar (picture from Internet)
By now, I hope my little friend is safely cocooned inside its chrysalis, ready for the ongoing winter transformation from caterpillar to moth. Below is a picture of what it will look like.
ELEPHANT HAWKMOTH
You can find more information about Elephant Hawkmoths at the Woodland Trust.
From The Book Of Idle Pleasures edited by Dan Kieran and Tom Hodgkinson
Because we can’t fly we are fascinated by the sight of things that can. I have always loved watching things that appear to be weightless in the air, not just birds and insects, but floating thistledown, autumn leaves, scraps of windblown paper, clouds, balloons and bubbles. Airborn creatures had the same kind of appeal to each of my children. Even when they were babies, lying in their prams, they were very quick to notice a bee or a butterfly or a passing bird, and their suddenly focused eyes would search for whatever it was a long time after it had flown out of sight. When they were older, say, three or four, they tried to emulate the birds by holding bunches of feathers, flapping their arms and jumping up in the air; and a few years later they copied them again by making paper planes in their image and tossing them off the hill behind our house. If one of these caught the updraught and floated away over the trees there was huge excitement, as if a bird’s own magic had got into it. Then the children would flap their arms again and run, leaping, down the hill.