Too many people have their eyes closed for the small things of nature and go places without really “seeing” those places and their beauty.
Tag Archives: Nature
Stonehenge by the Sea
Rocks protrude, waves crash,
Mist embraces the shore.
What giant moved these rocks here,
To fight the tide and battle time?
This enchanted place calls to me,
Like Stonehenge by the Sea,
A crossroads between the past and future,
Nothing settled, always changing.
Even the sky changes in a heartbeat,
Water battling earth, air carrying their cries:
Elemental soundings, missing only fire.
Magic enfolds, perhaps the fire is in me.
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
Filed under Uncategorized
Different kinds of “things not seen”
Do you feel that life in the Truth is a battle?
Lots of people before they come in the faith go through a big battle; They do hope all their worries would be over when they convert to Christianity. Some get surprised that all the problems are not over when having become a Christian. There are even people who get some newer worries, people trying to convince them that they have made a stupid choice.
Flying Rowan. Near Glede Howe. Attributed with magical properties by the ancient Britons and a common sight to hillgoers. This one is famous for being used as a guide to the head of Truss Gap in a popular book on the lakeland fells by Bill Birkett. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In a exhortation on the March Bible readings Robert Roberts looks at how we all are ignorant at the start “ignorant of everything”. In the knowledge that human memory is weak, and soon forgets, “especially with regard to the class of things that constitute the Truth” he reminds us of all the things “not seen”, whether past, present or future; and some of those things for which we have not much natural liking and therefore forgetfulness and consequent unbelief become very easy, unless we are on our guard.He writes
There are different kinds of “things not seen” ‹ different kinds of truth ‹ some unimportant ‹ some important. It is with the latter we have to do. It is the latter we desire to bring to mind. It is the latter which will enable us to overcome the mere bias of native ignorance, and walk as children of light.
“This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” This faith lays hold of things ‹ is persuaded of things that we cannot see, but which are true. It does so by the means God has given us for the purpose. We need to avail ourselves of these means in the amplest measure, or faith is liable to wither and die. We need strengthening in the fight or we may be overcome instead of overcoming.
In any case, for sure, god is One thing we can not see …. directly … but when we look around we should be able to see the glory of Gdo in all things of nature. Therefore we better take more time to look at the flowers, the trees, the insects and other animals in this world.
We best wonder more about “God and His works” and come to see His Hand behind everything.
Please read: Seasons of Comfort (Volume 2 ): Regarding God, and His works
Related articles
Filed under Being and Feeling, Religious affairs
Friday’s Quick Picks/Poem: Offerings
Today’s poem is by Cynthia Guenther Richardson, a retired addictions/mental health counsellor and also a manager of home care services for elderly folks, who has worked in the field of human services for thirty years. She believes that language can illuminate, even renew life. She lets nature guides her in enrichment of body, mind and soul.
Seeking serenity is a way of life for her, a nourishment she cannot live well without. She writesIt may have been intensified by troublesome times as a child and young adult but it has nonetheless been a natural impulse as long as I can remember. In any case, it is a powerful key to a kind of magic guidebook for living richly. Why wouldn’t I use it all the time? {A Master Key to Contentment}
In her texts she might ask us to come to see order in the messy jumble of life, and renewed creation stirring in the design of every universal interaction.
Like pebbles tossed into water, nature’s actions and reactions are a demonstration of exquisite unity and symbiosis. And in human connections–slight as a fast second on the street or ongoing as a long partnership – there are various manifestations of energy exchanged, networks of coexistence revealed. {A Master Key to Contentment}
When looking at life she recognises
It’s a numinous life we are born with and into, and its mystical ways seem to me at once ordinary and exotic. All we have to do is turn around to see evidence of a stupendous wisdom. Deep beauty. Even when there is tragedy to throw us off. Even when there is rancorous pain that wars with a need for kind relief. {A Master Key to Contentment}
That is what we ask our readers, to look around them, to see the beauty of nature and if they would not mind even come to see the Hand behind it all, coming to see the Mighty Power of the Divine Creator.
In the midst of the odd wilderness of humanness we may look at man in that huge universe, a world which can fill us with so many things are can let us feel so small.
For today’s writer
Thirst fills me
with a hunger
for small exquisites
which do not rend
the hearts of humans
nor our collective body.
Let me savor any common psalm
to goodness this world has made,
follow paths of ubiquitous light,
stay the cynic for a moment of wonder
so we may wield our will to spare its virtue. {Friday’s Passing Fancies/Poem: Goodness of this World}
Goodness of this World – Photo by Cynthia Guenther Richardson
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Preceding articles
Sensitive trees for insensitive man
Showing the beauties of nature
Winter and Spring wonders of nature showing the Master’s Hand
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Additional reading
- Human beings and creation
- Taking care of mother earth
- Tu B’Shvat, the holiday of the trees
- Time to consider how to care for our common home
- The Presence of God
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Further reading
- Thoughts about Gates
- An Alien World #2
- Magical Sun Pillar
- Land of Lilliput
- Night’s Innocence
- I Just Know There’s One In This Group Asking ‘Are We There Yet?’
- Remember When…
- Heaven on earth
- Perspectives in Immersion and Reality
Related articles
Photos by Cynthia Guenther Richardson
The tenor of life may seem
to be thin, reedy, misaligned,
a shriek, a gasp amid muted din,
sudden ruptures in connection
that will not relay joy. Yet here
we remain, humans among all others,
with myriad moments and settings
for mystery and mindfulness
to release a sweep of harmony.
I say Peace, my soul, be well moved
and please may peace follow
you and you and more than you.
2016/11/19 · 1:22 pm
Showing the beauties of nature
Are you one of those people who can find enough time and joy to visit parks or different countries?
Spring Beauties (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Today there are many who can travel several times of the year and can go to lots of places in one year. Do they ever think of people who are less fortunate than they? Do they ever think of sharing that what they have come to see and enjoy?
We still look for authors who want to share their experiences of their travels and/or their visits of national parks or some beautiful resorts.
In case they have their own blog we do not mind them sharing what they have admired and directing our readers also to links to their articles, so that our readers also can come to enjoy those experiences.
If you feel called to talk about the beauties of this creation, please do not hesitate to contact us or to present yourself as a author on this blog.
The writer we are looking for should love nature and be willing to share this love with our readers.
In case he or she is a Christian, this may be an advantage. Then we expect from him or her, that he or she has respect for all religions and all sorts of thoughts, even when we would not agree with such a way of thinking. Then we expect the author to put everything in the light of the creation and our duty to take care of mother earth. Because that is the reason we do have to make others conscious about the beauty of creation and our duty to take care of it so that others after us can still enjoy all the wonders of it.
Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Grove (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
For us it is important that a Christian life should be a.o. exemplary, loving, selfless, generating, challenging, transforming, stimulating intellectually, busy, and bring a sense of emotional stability, meaning and peace. We want to show others that does not have to mean our life has to be boring. Just the opposite.
The Elohim having created us in His image expect us to use our minds the right way. The Adonai knows that our minds need intellectual stimulation, and provides many stimulative effects in nature. He has provided a beautiful world, full of all the things we need to live and to admire a spectacular attraction. We should experience the happiness that gives us not only the joy of being one with it but the blessing of being a person in God’s creation. In it we should place ourselves and become one with it. Showing our respect for nature is showing our respect for God. Showing others the wonderworks of nature is showing others the works of God.
Each creature should be a powerful source of inspiration that allows us to appreciate the beauty of our universe and associate the beautiful and romantic nature of beauty and feelings.
If there is some one out there who feels he can understand our thought and understands the need to show others the beauty of nature, please let him or her not hesitate and react positively on our call to become a member of those who want to show others the Master Hand of the Divine Creator.
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Preceding article about “Sharing Writings and linking“:
A charter for a truly free world and why we need it
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Related articles
Filed under Announcement, Ecological affairs, Fashion - Trends, Nature
A charter for a truly free world and why we need it
Dear readers, for those who are new, we like to repeat our aims and about the idea behind our sharing.
Sharing Writings and linking
This website wants to bring an overview of interesting articles which were published on the worldwide internet and present some additional views on how we could come to a better world. Up until now we also wanted to bring additional literature in sight of our readers. For that reason we have, up until a few days ago, included several links into the articles, which opened automatically in a new window. But somehow WordPress changed the way to include url links and made it more difficult or time consuming, not allowing the enclosure feature to remember the previous used url codes and having each link to be separately indicated to open in a new window, instead of remembering it for all links on that page. This means we always have to look again for certain links and have to do much more work to include them. This makes writing our articles even more time consuming. For that reason we regret from a few days ago we did not include so many links any more and from today onwards you shall have to chose how to open the link. Until we do not find a solution to keep the fill in for the links remembering what we filled in previously, we shall have to limit such linking to tags and other articles than those of the particular website (in this instance From Guestwriter).
Secondly, we also received regularly complaints from people that we linked to their website or article and had to undo such links or write a letter first explaining why we included that link and asking what they wanted we did with it. Though most agreed then to have the link staying on the article, we had lost lots of energy writing back and controlling everything.
For that reason we are going to refer less to outside articles, but still use Zemanta for presenting some articles, but this time we are going to choose more those sites we do know and for other sites we are not always going to read them all, before placing the Zemanta link, and will withdraw them directly when a complaint or request for “why linking” is presented to us. (Simple as that.)
Now you know also why one or an other site shall be linked to more than others. Those who would also liked to be linked to, can always ask us to examine their website and to follow their writings, so that we can may have a choice out of their articles as well.
Authors sharing their writings
Concerning the writers on this platform, we still wait for more writers willing to share their ideas. Many who we have contacted wanted money to write or to help this site evolve.
We are very limited in funds and as such can not pay our staff. We also believe not everything has to be arranged by money. A money-free future is perhaps not possible, but lots of things could and should be done without money in the back of the head.
We still can do with people writing about the history of way of living, to show us how our lifestyle changed by the years of technological evolution. We also would love to find an author who want to talk about nature and show the world the beauty of it and/or can let our readers now what is important to look at at a certain moment in the year. (Parks to visit, special exhibitions, etc.)
A political and economical analyst is also welcome.
Because of our interest how human beings should try to make the best out of living with each other, we also could use some more writers who talk about keeping the family healthy, spiritually and health wise. Talks about marriage, brining up children are more than welcome.
Not everything for money
All That Money Wants (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We are convinced there are many benefits for not having everything in return for money. Most reasonable people will have no trouble accepting a money-free where people want to share with each other out of brotherly love. That will give better quality of life for all, less inequality, poverty, crime, greed, corruption, pollution and waste; greater health, education, trust, respect, awareness, sustainability, community values, technological advances, etc. Most people want these things, but are they convinced of the feasibility. How is a moneyless society possible?
I am convinced that there is a misconception about the need of money.
Imagining a world without money usually raises the following objections immediately, each of which is linked to a particular lifelong held belief (in brackets):
1. You need to have exchange (You can’t get something for nothing)
2. No-one would do anything (money motivates people)
3. People would take advantage (greed is human nature)
4. I will lose everything I have (fear of loss, ownership)
5. Chaos and violence would ensue (society requires control)
6. Society would stagnate or regress (markets fuel progress)
The good news is that all of these objections can be overturned quite easily using just plain common sense and basic observations.
Something for something or nothing for something
I do agree that most people want something for something else. For generations we people are brought up with that idea. Even worse, often people consider somebody not right in his head when he just wants to do something, not requiring anything in the place. Naturally we all need something to eat and we need a roof above our head, whilst we can not all have the same skill. Not everybody has enough competence to do the things he need. So we often are for many things dependent on others.
I am a believer in the Divine Creator and I am convinced He created all beings in His image and with the idea that all creatures are there for some good reason and to complement each other. Rabbi Jeshua, better known today as Jesus, reminded his listeners to look at the birds who have no money but manage to have their food and everything they need to live.
The master teacher and the prophets of God asked the people to look at nature where we can see what man came to call “symbiosys“. Everywhere in the creation of the Most High where man did not interfere there is balance. We can see that in nature two species benefit each other (the bee taking nectar while helping the plant to pollinate is the most obvious example), but there is no intentional transaction taking place. Both species are ignorant of the desires of the other. Some look at it as purely an accident of evolution that has caused both species to survive and flourish. In nature we can find many plants or animals which make use of each other, but not really demanding a return as such, and most of all not being repaid by something we can compare with money. We invented that idea of intentional exchanges as an essential ingredient to life or to community, to cope with scarcity in more primitive times, and with more complex needs.
Motivation by money not the best motivation
Serious Money (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The money / value system that we humans operate in has its origins in more primitive times, but which has now made us hell-bent on keeping score and accounting for everything in a numerical sense, and at the expense of common sense and sustainability. It is true that people are motivated by money, and that the communist system failed because of people being too egocentric and not willing to work together for a communal idea, building up a society where everybody could live on the same terms and being considered of equal value. We love to have a hierarchical system and I do agree somebody who is just lazy and does not want to co-operate in the system can not have the same advantages as somebody who works hard.
But like in nature those animals not having money, we as humans also do not nervelessly need a currency to provide payment, which proved not always to bring that luck hoped for.
We all have look at “Money” as a handy tool or a commodity accepted by general consent as a medium of economic exchange. In industrialized nations, portion of the national money supply, consisting of bank notes and government-issued paper money and coins, provides a value or currency. Everybody expects everything to be “prized” and expresses the value of things in currencies or in money. In the so called “third world” or among less developed societies, we can see that currency encompasses a wide diversity of items (e.g., livestock, stone carvings, tobacco) used as exchange media as well as signs of value or wealth.
Human motivators Better values
We should come to see and understand that there are much better values than money. Think about the many other human motivators:
- the desire to love and be loved, to meet people, to have children, to help others, to improve ourselves and our surroundings, to look good, to feel good, to learn, to challenge ourselves, to express ourselves, to innovate, to demonstrate our skills, etc.
Every person alive is motivated by these desires to some degree. Because, after survival, these desires are what give our lives value and meaning.
Nature doesn’t keep score and why should we put everything in figures and balance it out to get even? Do you find it normal that people would seek exchange in their families or in their circles of friends? So why do we seek exchange in others? Among our loved ones, loving people shall tend to help each other out when they can and no-one will keep score.
Permitting exchanges between people having prices
Trying to get everything for yourself is not a natural instinct but a created attitude which can be transformed back to the innocent position we have a s a toddler. At the beginning of life the human being only asks and takes what it needs. Greed is not a basic element of human nature – it is even a deformed desire to stockpile something what the person may consider scarce and which he need to live, or a wrong attitude having come into the personality by the envy looking at others and comparing to others.
Like a squirrel collecting nuts, some may find greed makes good sense – because we don’t know what the future will bring. In a monetary world, the greatest scarcity is money itself, so it makes sense to accumulate it, and, since there is no upper limit to the money and property you can have, there’s no reason to stop accumulating it.
Map of the global distribution of economic and physical water scarcity as of 2006
Price systems may be considered the result of scarcity but for the first time in history, we have the technology to eradicate scarcity (or paucity) and to create an abundance of necessities for all humans on Earth with minimal physical effort. Primarily by coordinating the decisions of consumers, producers, and owners of productive resources people have taken refuge with their monetary system. Prices have become an acceptable expression of the consensus on the values of different things, and every society that permits exchanges between people has prices. Because prices are expressed in terms of a widely acceptable commodity, they permit a ready comparison of the comparative values of various commodities.
Machines to do the work of man
Normally we have enough technology to make work light for man. For lots of jobs the machines could do the work for man. What is going wrong today is that certain people, who do not do much work, can earn more than 300% than those who do the dirty work. And that is too much inequality. Such a difference should not exist. This way not having people being rightly paid according to what they do or which responsibility they take at a reasonable reward, prevents a nice way of living for everybody, as it intrinsically requires scarcity to perpetuate itself.
Ownership
Throughout history mankind has tried out several systems which all failed in a certain way. I as a Christian am convinced no human system can bring the right solution, but until the return of the Messiah we have to find ways to make life as smooth as possible and to have the creation in balance, not demanding too much of nature and not destroying so many things around us, which we have in loan and do not own. And there is the difficulty of it all, too many people think they “Own” and want to possess more. It is their fear of loosing what they “own” which makes them behave this way and often makes them blind for the way others (other humans, animals and plants) have to live.
The whole notion of ownership should be revised altogether.
We all need privacy and a certain amount of exclusivity, right?
Who wants to share their toothbrush, or have strangers walking around their home, for example?
Our normalised belief tells us that we define who uses what through something called ‘ownership’. Our laws define and protect ownership, with the threat of punishment to those who disobey (ie. stealing).
But where does this concept of ownership came from in the first place? Did we own nothing before someone wrote the law?
Given in loan
We think we own something and that the earth is ours. Believers in God do know that it is a gift from the Divine Creator and that we have received this earth in loan. It is not ours, it is God’s.
Growing up we make things our own. We create our personality. Growing up we collect certain things we consider our own. But we should know that once we die, the breath of life goes out of us, and we shall be nothing any-more with those treasures we collected. We can’t take those treasures with us in our grave, to an other life. It shall be of no purpose in our death. We shall just decay and become dust like many of those goods also shall become dust.
The point is that most things in the community belonged to no-one. Whatever items within the community that were not morally or logically entitled to anyone were used and shared by all.
So without ownership, what stops people from stealing? What actually stops people from stealing from each other is that it is anti-social, disrespectful and invasive, and people who do so are liable to become deeply unpopular. This social incentive for certain behaviour is far stronger than any rule could ever be, as it is dictated by how we feel about ourselves and our position in society. Yet we commonly mistake the rule of law as being the only thing that governs this behaviour.
Crimes, violence and Respect, privacy and exclusivity
Value for Money (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If we understand that respect, privacy and exclusivity are, in fact, already hard-wired into our social psyche – not dictated by external controlling forces – then we can begin to move beyond the traditional inefficient limits of ownership and with it, any fear of loss.
Throughout history we can see that it was the desire of power and the greed of certain people that brought misery to others. The last few moths I encountered many who said religion is the base of violence. When they would look closer at what really happened in history they would see that most criminal acts where done by non-religious people for political reasons and on second place or by people who used a religion as an excuse for their war of conquest. Today we see this by ISIS who present a similar war as the crusaders and do the same atrocities as the inquisitors a few centuries ago. Their killing had a duration of more than one century, whilst ISIS is only busy for a few years. Their terror is as abominable as the terror other terrorists bring. They bring fear and terror in the hope increasing their power. But most crime and violence is driven by desperation through lack of basic requirements for living, ie. theft, armed robbery, burglary, etc. and by having a low moral. Almost all other crimes can be seen as the secondary effects of poor upbringing. ie. where parents are poor, over-worked, unemployed, frustrated, depressed or disillusioned, etc. – all factors that can contribute to an unstable and unloving environment for children, who may later turn to crime as a result of low self esteem or maladjustment.
No incentive for crime
When you succeed into taking away the inequality and create a world where everyone will have free access to good food, housing, education and technology, it still won’t be perfect or eliminate all crime, but if everyone has a good quality of life and free access, then crime will have little or no incentive.
Driven by passion
In our commercialised society we are so used that everything is valued by a currency and money. The economists or entrepreneurs look at the system we are used to and cite economic incentive and competition as good for progress. Have you ever wondered with what they compared their luxurious system? Might it not be that because they start of with a false key that they come to false conclusions?
Are we really to believe that all innovators, inventors and artists will down tools the moment someone calls time on money? Obviously not, since we all know so many creative people that never achieve financial success, it shows us that they are not driven by money, but rather by their passions and desire to innovate.
Sharing people
I would love to call onto people to come to think about sharing more.
Often I do meet people who are very much afraid of a sharing system and think we can not do without money, though they themself use lots of tools without paying for them. We can find lots of people who are using Open Source Applications, which they take it for granted they can use them because everybody is using them. Often they do not see other large scale innovative projects which are becoming the optimum means of production without a monetary incentive.
Lots of people behind the screens try to invent things which can be used by others, and use themselves things others created. Lots of people do forget that many computer programs like Linux, Chrome and Android have been developed freely by enthusiasts in their spare time,. It ware those people who were willing to spend their precious free time to create something for the good of the whole community and not just for them selves or to gain lots of money. The computer industry has led the way on this, but of course, there is no reason why ‘open source thinking’ cannot be applied in agriculture, crafts, construction or education, etc.
Difficult to get people to share something which they consider of their own
The big problem we are facing today is that there has been created a generation of people who mainly think about themselves. Their ego comes on the first place and they look for gaining as much as they can for their own, often at the cost of others.
In the past the economical factor, being of wealthy parents of a having a privileged background was the creating facility for equanimity or for daring taking risks. Comfortable upbringing, access to good food and education, often provided the luxury of time – not labouring for their keep – but spending it on developing their ideas and skills instead. But we also find lots of creative minds who had no financial security, though created masterpieces.
Having money does not mean being smarter. If society can work better without money, then all potential young Einsteins and Mozarts will have the optimal opportunity to exercise and advance their talents.
If we create a society where talents are recognised and stimulated and people can receive equal opportunities, so much more can come off the ground.
Why not believing in a a moneyless future?
You can see that money does not bring that happiness many people hoped for. It is not a bad tool to be used in exchange for things, but we should not put all our hopes on it.
We should go back to the natives. We best dare to look at those living in the Amazon or other not yet by capitalism spoiled places. We too can learn from populations where money is not the key factor to order their way of living.
We should also come to understand that in our society we do have so many things we do not need or do not need any-more. Why not giving that stuff away that is filling your cupboards? If you have certain talents, why not sharing them with others and letting them also enjoy them?
In case a moneyless future seems something interesting to think about or when you like the idea, why not join “a movement of believers”?
Please have a look at the underneath brief introduction to the charter for a truly free world.
You are invited to show your support by reading and signing The Free World Charter.
Thank you.
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Preceding articles
Your position about materialistic desires having conquered the world
Learning that stuff is just stuff
Material wealth, Submission and Heaven on earth
Looking on what is going on and not being of it
Misleading world, stress, technique, superficiality, past, future and positivism
How to Find the Meaning of Life and Reach a State of Peace
Why “Selfishness” Doesn’t Properly Mean Being Shortsighted and Harmful to Others
Hoarding Relationships and Things
A bird’s eye and reflecting from within
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Additional reading:
- How we think shows through in how we act
- Greed more common than generosity
- Capitalism
- A look at materialism
- The business of this life
- Angry at the greedy state
- Intellectual servility a curse of mankind
- Detroit, A city not to be understood
- Catherine Ashton on the EU annual report on human rights
- Time to consider how to care for our common home
- Increasing wealth gap of immense proportions in the Capitalist World
- Democratic downfall
- Welfare state and Poverty in Flanders #6 Transport factor of immobilising financial growth
- A dangerous way of censorship
- Internet absurdities
- Changing screens
- Looking for Free Blogs and blogging
- Subcutaneous power for humanity 5 Loneliness, Virtual and real friends
- Inequality, Injustice, Sustainability and the Free World Charter
- Mortal Soul and Mortal Psyche #5 Mortality of man and mortality of the spirit
- Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 3
- Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 4
- The Question is this…
- True riches
- Count your blessings
- Sow and harvests in the garden of your heart
- Bearing fruit
- Good to make sure that you haven’t lost the things money can’t buy
- The 2014 year coming to its end
- 2015 the year of ISIS
- Coming closer to the end of 2015 and the end for Donald Trump as presidential candidate
- In a world which knows no peace sharing blessed hope
- 30 things to start doing for yourself – #6 is vital.
- If we, in our prosperity, neglect religious instruction and authority
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Related articles
Sensitive trees for insensitive man
even, dense and old stand of beech trees (Fagus sylvatica) prepared to be regenerated (watch the young trees underneath the old ones) in the Brussels part of the Sonian Forest (Forêt de Soignes – Zoniënwoud) in Belgium (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
For years already, I claim we should treat plants and animals as subjects but also as living beings created by the Divine Creator, who has given them for our use but not mis-use or maltreatment. I always claimed they too have feelings and ways of communicating. In the 1970ies I followed many scientists who tried to proof and did proof how plants also have feelings and communicate with each other.
Though at regular times people seem to be reminded of it. Because too often man forgets that he is not alone having feelings and able to communicate with others of their own sort properly.
It is long known to biologists that trees in the forest are social beings. They can count, learn and remember; nurse sick neighbours; warn each other of danger by sending electrical signals across a fungal network known as the “Wood Wide Web”; and, for reasons unknown, keep the ancient stumps of long-felled companions alive for centuries by feeding them a sugar solution through their roots.
The German Peter Wohlleben studied forestry and spent over twenty years as a civil servant in the forestry commission. For him trees are his life and for that reason he also gave up his job by the state forestry because he wanted to put his ideas of ecology into practice. He now runs an environmentally friendly municipal piece of woodland in the village of Huemmel, holds lectures and seminars and has written books on subjects pertaining to woodlands and nature protection so those interested can accompany him through the forests of his homeland and the whole world.
The Hidden Life of Trees describes how trees are like human families. We as human beings only think of ourselves being able to make a nice family, though many make a mess of it, and when watching Danish television series I even wonder if there are normal Danish people walking around in the North, who can have a normal family life. In the series we come to see they all seem to be unfaithful.
In nature we see better build ups. Tree parents living together with their children, communicating with them, and supporting them as they grow, sharing nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warning each other of impending dangers. With their newfound understanding of the delightfully complex life of trees, readers will never be able to look at a walk.
The deep dark forest One of the tracks through Pantmaenog Forest. There are prehistoric tumuli marked on the map here but they are difficult to find among the dense conifers. The trees here were planted after Bellstone quarry closed in 1908 and some of the old quarry workings are also concealed by the forest: human beings making their mark on the landscape in a variety of ways. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Since it first topped best-seller lists last year, Mr. Wohlleben has been spending more time on the media trail and less on the forest variety, making the case for a popular reimagination of trees, which, he says, contemporary society tends to look at as “organic robots” designed to produce oxygen and wood.
Though duly impressed with Mr. Wohlleben’s ability to capture the public’s attention, some German biologists question his use of words, like “talk” rather than the more standard “communicate,” to describe what goes on between trees in the forest. But no matter how you want to call that communication we should come to understand that it is really communicating, no matter if you want to call it talking or something else.
It is also different with human beings who think they communicate and are on social media, thinking they have so many friends, but in reality do not have many friends nor comrades and do not really have any real communication going on between all those people. We did not mind to run around in that what God had created us and did not have to hide anything for others, always able to keep faithful to the one we loved and where we choose for. But to day they want to shine and glitter in fashion clothes but are fast to take those cloths of in the hidden to do things we would have found inappropriate when there was not a strong connection with each other. But to day they seem to change of girl like they change of underpants, and often there is not much conversation going on and lots of time it is just a one night stand with no further communication at all. They have become worse than animals. (Are am I looking at it too pessimistic?)
Whilst I do believe those trees have much more communication going on than their human counterparts who are not afraid to kill more and more of those air-cleaners, not seeing that they are polluting more and more their own environment, making it poorer and poorer. Even those Germans who are reputed to have a special relationship with the forest are a kind of a cliché and it can well be that those Germans do not love their forest more than Swedes or Norwegians or Finns.
When I lived and worked in Germany, for relaxation I went into the woods around Köln and went swimming in open air. Then I could encounter many like minded nature lovers who wanted to be one with it and, like me searched for ways to respect it and to make properly use of feeding us in a clean and appropriate way. No chemicals, no additives, all pure whole grain and pure natural food.
Young musicians living in a shared community in Amsterdam.
Though when I look at how enthusiast we where in the 1960–70ies and had so many dreams, being called ‘flower power‘ people, many not understanding our idea of sharing and love and making a collective community, kibbutz or commune, many of them have gone far away from their idealism and the last few months we see many things we fought for, being undone in a very short time.
Though might we see somewhere some light shining in the dark, perhaps getting back some younger ones again being interested in nature and how we should behave in it? Can it be that there are again seeds planted for people willing to reconsider our human behaviour in the big universe?
For sure it is high time that people are going to understand the need of forests and green spaces around our busy roads and living estates. Yesterday it was again on the news that in the Kempen 122 ha of woods has to be offered for sand-winning, as if it is nothing. Man also thinks it is alright to artificially space out trees, but forget that shall not give the same intensification as wooded areas. The plantation forests that make up most of West Europe’s woods ensure that trees get more sunlight and grow faster. But, naturalists say, creating too much space between trees can disconnect them from their networks, stymieing some of their inborn resilience mechanisms.
Intrigued, Mr. Wohlleben began investigating alternate approaches to forestry. Visiting a handful of private forests in Switzerland and Germany, he was impressed.
“They had really thick, old trees,”
he said.
“They treated their forest much more lovingly, and the wood they produced was more valuable. In one forest, they said, when they wanted to buy a car, they cut two trees. For us, at the time, two trees would buy you a pizza.”
But where are all those very thick trees gone, I wonder. In Belgium some years ago you could find also many places where you could enjoy the view of masterly or kingly majestic trees. The last two years , in the region where I live now (Leefdaal, Flemish Brabant), we have seen hundreds of trees being cut and not replaced.
Deep in the forest something stirred Go Ape, a series of aerial walkways, swings and zip slides in the forestry land north of Aberfoyle. Note – human beings included for a sense of scale. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mr Wohlleben had also difficulties with the ministry of forestry but it turned out that Mr. Wohlleben had won over the forest’s municipal owners. 10 years ago, the municipality took a chance. It ended its contract with the state forestry administration, and hired Mr. Wohlleben directly. He brought in horses, eliminated insecticides and began experimenting with letting the woods grow wilder. Within two years, the forest went from loss to profit, in part by eliminating expensive machinery and chemicals.
We should enjoy those trees going to grow in all sorts of shapes, creating all sorts of designs in the air. When we look at ourselves, we should see that we also do not have a life going in straight lines. We also not all grow up straight. Why should trees have to grow up in those particular straight lines indicated by people in the office. The same as the right 25 cm cucumbers, the bananas with the drawn out moon shape, the tomatoes and apples which may not be too big or flat… everything should be according to the book and numbers indicated, … but life is not according the book of man … but should be according the Book of life …. with not everything exactly the same, and not always according to the books of man….
When is man going to see we should come back to being close to nature and to be part of nature again? And when is he going to understand we do need much more green around us … to have a colourful life full of health and joy?
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Please also find to read:
- World Agenda for Sustainability
- Welfare state and Poverty in Flanders #1 Up to 21st century
- 2nd Half 20th Century Generations pressure to achieve
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Related articles
Filed under Ecological affairs, History, Lifestyle, Nature, Welfare matters, World affairs
Winter and Spring wonders of nature showing the Master’s Hand
In the early 1860s, Gregor Mendel developed the concept of the gene to help explain results obtained while crossbreeding strains of garden peas. He identified physical characteristics (phenotypes), such as plant height and seed color, that could be passed on, unchanged, from one generation to the next. The hereditary factor that predicted the phenotype was termed a “gene.” Mendel hypothesized that genes were inherited in pairs, one from the male and one from the female parent. Plants that bred true (homozygotes) had inherited identical genes from their parents, whereas plants that did not breed true (hybrids, or heterozygotes) inherited alternative copies of the genes (alleles) from one parent that were similar, but not identical, to those from the other parent. {Encyclopedia, topic Genes} When you know that we have about 140,000 genes which instruct the body’s cells to put amino acids in the right sequence in order to build proteins, you might wonder how this all was provided in the first instance.
Mørketid or Polar night at the South Pole, Antarctica.
One type of light therapy lamp for classic (winter-based) seasonal affective disorder
After the “Majestic darkness”, the “Mörketid,” or the time when the sun does not rise at all in northern Norway the Northern Europeans may see light coming up the horizon. For two months, only a gray-red twilight glow was visible for a few hours at noontime. Having 21.2 percent of Norwegians living beyond the polar circle suffering from Winter depression they now may come back to life. Some looked for their therapeutic ‘sunlights’. The fresh light shall have the melatonin, a hormone produced in the brain, to increase again. They do know that an increasing number of tourists, however, are enticed to the polar circle by the flickering aurora, the glistening of the snow in the moonlight, and the cozy light of scattered villages. Also for them it are wonders of nature.
In Winter the social activities could have helped to keep people enjoying life. According to a Harvard University study, elderly people who participate in social activities, such as going to church, restaurants, sports events, and movies, live an average of two and a half years longer than less social people. It has long been assumed that it was the physical part of such activities that helped people, said Harvard’s Thomas Glass, who led the study. However, he added that this study provides
“perhaps the strongest circumstantial evidence we’ve had to date that having a meaningful purpose at the end of life lengthens life.”
Glass noted that doing more, regardless of the activity, extended life in almost every case.
With warmer weather awaited and the days becoming longer we should look forward to more outdoor activities which shall give us more fresh and hopefully better air. Though we do have to think seriously about preserving that fresh air and doing much more against the pollution.
TV watching may come in second to relax, after listening to music (according to a study of 2000), people should find more leisure in going to do outdoors leisure activities and socialising more. In this system of things throughout Europe more and more people are feeling pressed for time, reported in 1999 the German newspaper Gießener Allgemeine. The same is true whether people are working outside the home, doing housework, or enjoying leisure time.
“People sleep less, eat faster, and feel more rushed on the job than 40 years ago,”
says sociologist Manfred Garhammer, of Bamberg University.Part of that sleeping less is brought on by watching more television which is recently pushed more in the background by the youngsters who are spending lots of times on social media. Though they seem to accumulate lots of friends on them, they seem to be more lonely and prone depression than some years ago. We also hear of many more borderline personality disorders and eating disorders and broken families which do not help to have some good relations or making people happy.
The second decade of this century daily life continued to accelerate in all the European nations. You would think labour saving household devices and a reduction in hours at work would have brought about any “leisure society” or “time prosperity.” Instead, on average, time for meals has been reduced by 20 minutes and for a night’s rest by 40 minutes and people take less time to look at the beauties around them. The magic of nature, plants growing, animals going around, all seems to pass their eyes unnoticed.
In case they would give it more attention they not only would enjoy life much more but they also would come to see that all that vibrant exuberant activity is marvellously orchestrated and that there is a Master Brain behind it.
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Preceding:
Spring-migration is on at the Holler
How to make sustainable, green habits second nature
Savouring pictorial entertainement
Engagement in an actual two-way conversation with your deities
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Find also to read:
- Democratic downfall
- USA Climate Change Action Plan
- 20 Best Gratitude Quotes
- Bad company ruins good morals
- Cleanliness and worrying or not about purity
- Man in picture, seen from the other planets
- Inequality, Injustice, Sustainability and the Free World Charter
- Paris World Summit of Conscience, International interfaith gathering #1
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Further readings
- Gratitude; by Lights media
- Living Life to the Fullest
- Animal Spirits: The Raven/Crow and The Hummingbird
- The “Pursuit” of Happiness
- Our State of Health and Happiness
- Leisure-time – boredom-issues concerning college-students
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Related articles
Here and Now
For years scientists warned politicians, but they would not listen and the citizens only thought of what was good for them at that moment, not interested to learn about the impact of their ecological and carbon footprint. No matter what happens nature shall show mankind that it is always stronger than the human being, which has to learn by falling and standing up again.
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To remember
rainfall causes problems to roads, cars, and rail travel => Movement restricted
towns + surrounding areas plagued by floods this winter.
recollection of previous winters = cold mornings with frost covered lawns + a wind that slaps your face with a chilling sting
ground not prepared as no drainage is available + waterways are not viable
foliage not resting as trees + flora remain green > earth rest less
environmental change on animal life > effects of stress, lack of sleep + tiredness
wildlife struggle to maintain their habitats
Related articles
My town and its surrounding areas have been plagued by floods this winter. Movement from town to town is restricted as rainfall causes problems to roads, cars, and rail travel. It seems to be raining for a season. My recollection of previous winters has been cold mornings with frost covered lawns and a wind that slaps your face with a chilling sting. If wet, lingering rain and floods are to be our depths of winter then we are certainly not prepared. The ground is not prepared as no drainage is available and waterways are not viable. The foliage is not resting as trees and flora remain green. I wonder what fauna make of all this weather? What effect is this environmental change having on the animal life?
In our current ways of living we know the effects of stress, lack of sleep and tiredness. Will the earth rest less, will wildlife struggle to maintain…
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Filed under Ecological affairs, Lifestyle, Re-Blogs and Great Blogs
Looking at a conservative review of Shop Class As Soul Craft
Some might think we are
“constantly striving to develop lives of meaning without any outside recourse. The soul is increasingly insulated from the world outside our heads.” {Against Kant and Consumerism}
but today lots of people strive to enrich themselves with material wealth and consider their live worthwhile when they can be more wealthier and better showing off than others. Lots of people think they miss enough money or enough gadgets to enjoy fully life. For many everything seems to turn around the gathering of as much money as possible.
Lots of people do not look for the depth of meaning of life and are not so much interested in the others around them and the influence or necessity of them for them.
The American Conservative in the May/June 2015 article speaks about Matthew Crawford his books “Shop Class As Soul Craft” plus “The World Beyond Your Head” and looks at ‘the subtitle to his latest book which promises a look at our “age of distraction“.
The article says:
The premise of Crawford’s book is that our distractedness is merely symptomatic of a deeper cultural defect, a misrepresentation of the self that has permeated our society. He traces this back to Enlightenment philosophy, especially the thought of Immanuel Kant. Enlightenment thinkers of the late 17th and 18th centuries presented a view of the person that contrasted drastically with medieval and ancient thought: they put unprecedented emphasis on the rational individual as separate from society or community. They posited new theories about freedom founded upon reason and self-determination, with epistemological roots in ideas such as Descartes’s famous claim that “I think therefore I am.” Kant believed that knowledge and ethics must necessarily be situated within the mind—that existence must be interpreted through the autonomy of the individual.
The writer thinks
The soul is increasingly insulated from the world outside our heads.
Whereas in the real world, Crawford writes,
“we are subject to the heteronomy of things; the hazards of material reality,”
and continues
what Kant has given us is our modern identification of freedom with choice, in which choice is a “pure flashing forth” of the individual will.
that identification of freedom with choice has been there already from the period of the beginning in the Garden of Eden. Man had the choice either to follow his Creator His Will or to go his own way. Man choose the latter.
Thousand of years later, many think the world around them limits them and nature is to block their leg.
dumb nature is understood to be threatening to our freedom as rational beings, it becomes attractive to construct a virtual reality that will be less so, a benignly nice [reality] where there is no conflict between self and world
How many people do not want to be on their own and have the world turning around themselves. For many it is most important that everything turns around their own “I” so that they can say with proud: “I am“.
The associate editor of The American Conservative Gracy Olmstead writes:
Consumer culture tries to destroy the discomforts and imperfections that are necessarily part of life.
Is not there one of the greatest problems of our present society, which has put most of its hopes on the material things it can require to make its own. It is not that they want to hoard things, but they love to gather all the newest things so that they can show off against others who have to do with older things.
Though the writer of the article finds that modern cars are designed in an insulating and distracting way, we more see them as copies of each other not having any more the specific personality or difference as the cars had in the 1950ies, when each car looked so specific and really could get its fans for one or another model and each model with its own flashy personal colours. to us it looks like that car owners lost the interest to have a car or any other object (clothes, houses) that look very personal and have their won story to tell. People do want all the same and are willing to cue for the latest gadget. Everybody else has to be able to see that they have this or that brand and can afford this or that mobile or i-pad, which has to be of the latest and newest ‘invention’.
Concerning the cars we could agree with the idea the critic has
Everything within a car is constructed to give a sense of isolation and ease.
When the author would mean that the person who is driving the car would like to have the feeling to being his own world, having his own little world where nobody else around is being part of it. When the music can play loud it does not matter that others can hear it in their bathroom or are whipped out of bed. It is there music and everybody else should have to hear that is the best music to listen to.
Naturally the cultivation of “me-worlds” extends beyond auto-mobile design, but form men this might still be the thing to make their ‘me’, though the i-pad has taken a lot of that place.
Olmstead finds that Crawford spends a good deal of the book arguing that an Enlightenment approach to epistemology leads to narcissism: an understanding of the world that revolves entirely around the self and writes
The narcissist “treats objects as props” and struggles to comprehend them as objects with a reality of their own. The fantasy of autonomy, when full-grown, results in a “project of open-ended, ultimately groundless self-making.” {Against Kant and Consumerism}
Interestingly, Crawford identifies our treatment of others as the root of online narcissism in the age of Facebook:
“We increasingly deal with others through representations of them that we have,” he writes. “This results in interactions that are more contained, less open-ended, than a face-to-face encounter or a telephone call, giving us more control.”
Automobiles, the reviewer says
“can foster circumspection—literally, looking around for others and regarding oneself as an object for others in turn—or a collection of atomized me-worlds.” Our experience becomes ever more “mediated by representations, which remove us from whatever situation we inhabit directly, as embodied beings who do things.”
Throughout the ages the world has received its many distractions. The tools may have changed but the aim and way has stayed the same. Today “virtual reality” allows many to find back lost friends or schoolmates and gives the opportunity to interact with more, and more diverse, people, not fewer and not more homogeneous.
For American society to emerge from the distractions of consumer culture and virtual existence
Ms Olmstead finds
we must look beyond the symptoms and consider the disease: the shroud of individualism that prevents us from fully embracing the real world.
The individuals looking for themselves to acquire as much material wealth as possible have to come to see that they would be better to work at their social contacts spending more time to be with each other in real life than in chat sessions, never going deep in a conversation. For sure we we must
cultivate an awareness of—and love for—the world beyond ourselves.
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Preceding articles:
Material wealth, Submission and Heaven on earth
Why “Selfishness” Doesn’t Properly Mean Being Shortsighted and Harmful to Others
Comic: The Last Time I Felt Accepted For Who I Am
The world starts with yourself
Find Inspiration and Follow Your Dreams
There can only be hope when there is a will to be and say “I am”
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Additional reading:
- Souls and Religions with Nirvana and light
- For those who make other choices
- Being Religious and Spiritual 1 Immateriality and Spiritual experience
- Detroit, A city not to be understood
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Filed under Lifestyle, Social affairs, Welfare matters
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Marcus Ampe
Success Inspirers' World
Relating to God
