Lessons from Nature

It is surprising the kind of things we can learn from watching the natural world closely. It underlines the fact, I think, that everything that exists is linked in some way and each part of creation can always learn from another part.

I was driving along in my car this morning and at a part of the road that skirts the ocean, I noticed the sea was particularly rough, even though it was a lovely sunny day. At that point, the coastline is very rugged with steep cliffs dropping vertically into the sea. The surf was pounding into the cliffs and surging back out again in a swirl of white foam. It set me thinking.

I wondered what I would have seen at that point had I been privileged to be in the same position two or three hundred years earlier. Would the cliffs have been the same as they are now? Would the fissures and indents in them have been as deep? Almost certainly there would have been marked differences, for the erosive action of the waves, though seeming to have little or no effect in the short term, over many years change the shape of the coastline all over the world.

It’s amazing isn’t it, that water, a normally soft substance can, by sheer persistence, wear away even granite, which apart from diamonds, is the hardest natural substance we know? True, the water needs to be whipped into a frenzy by winds and storms, or in the case of a waterfall, have its energy increased by dropping hundreds of feet but even the gentle drip, drip of water falling a few feet soon makes it’s mark on the ground beneath. There is a great lesson here for all of us.

Replace granite with hard, intransigent human attitudes, even violence and replace water with the action of love. What do we have? We have the perfect illustration in nature of the profound truth in the call by Jesus of Nazareth to “turn the other cheek.” Fighting violence with violence merely increases the level of violence and suffering for all concerned. Use the soft power of love, energised by the power of the spirit, which is what I believe Jesus intended, and although it may take a while, the violence subsides, being worn away by the gentle but persistent action of the waves of love.

The power of the spirit is accessible by each one of us because everyone is a spirit first and foremost. No matter how much we have hidden our spiritual essence by covering it with layers of thought and action dictated by our five senses only, the spirit remains undisturbed. Learn to ‘go within’ and it will not be long before you become aware just how potent is the force lying hidden inside you. It is a force that responds only to love, pure unconditional love and because love is the foundation on which the whole of creation is built, nothing is beyond its ability.