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That day never left me. Where others heard thunder, I heard a rumbling debate between the skies and the mountain. Where others felt inert stone, I felt something wrapping me in its protective cloak. I felt at home in nature, watching and listening for the lessons that most people never stop for. Watching the current of a brook, I learned persistence. And seeing how reeds bend under pressure taught me how powerful it can be to yield. Staring at the scars left by landslides in years past helped me understand that imbalance always precedes corrective consequence. We sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that balance is stillness or the absence of change. Watching the world around me taught me a different viewpoint: that balance is motion held within motion. The sun yields to the night, and night to day. Rivers carve valleys, yet valleys provide rivers with guidance. Energy flows, nurtures, restrains, cuts--all to preserve some kind of invisible harmony that we live oblivious to. This constant cycle of nature is embodied in a passage my father made me memorize as a child: Now things flower, and in flowering each one returns to the source, The returning to the source is called tranquility, This is the returning to destiny, The returning to destiny is the eternal, To know the eternal is wisdom, When one does not know wisdom, disaster arises! I didn't understand, but since I have recently spent time among the people of Kugnae and Buya, I have started to ascribe deeper meaning to this passage through my exp- eriences in the woods. Flourishing isn't permanent: in the flower is the seed of returning to nature, stillness, peace. Flowering is beautiful, and so is the tranquility of accepting that all falls back to stillness. This might help us come to terms with our own existence, too. That we, as part of this cycle of nature, flower and return to nature. Seeing that pattern is to perceive eternity--not in the sense of permanence, but as an end- less cycle of recurrence. We needn't cling to the state of the world as it is now, nor fear loss, decay, or death as calamity. They are part of an eternal cycle. One that I have much more to learn about. And as that cedar-lined mountain in the northern reaches of Jeju--listening, never sleeping-- so too must I listen, until I can understand more of its teachings. # # # ##### ### # # # # ##### ~*Sapmagic*~ # # # # ## ##### ## # # | |