Ecology: Finding the Light

The physical and spiritual resources the earth provides are evident everywhere around us, but it is nature’s living example of growth and survival – it’s ability to sustain itself – from which we have much to learn.  Nature can be a valuable teacher, if we allow ourselves to heed her lessons and embrace her example.

Plants, although rooted firmly in the ground, still move in response to changes in their environment.  Light provides the energy source for plants, and they have evolved a very efficient mechanism for maximizing their exposure – phototropism. Light is so essential to their growth that they will literally bend over backward in order to find it.

Sprouts in the Sun, ©D. Sharon Pruitt

As human beings, there are times in our lives when we may feel as though we are trapped in our present circumstances, rooted to the very spot where we stand, unable to move forward.  Even in those times of personal darkness, though, there is light to be found (even if just a tiny speck) somewhere.  If we can find a way to turn our face to the light, the energy we need to sustain us is there, awaiting discovery, ready to be absorbed.  It can feel like a great effort – finding the light – but it is one of which we are definitely capable, if we remember that the light is ever there for us to draw energy from.  Human beings are phototrophic, too.

Nature – in all of her resilience and fragility – provides us with myriad examples of ways to sustain ourselves in our own.  These lessons are everywhere around us, if we open our eyes to see, and we take the time to foster the connection.

Today, what lesson will you glean from nature’s example?

~ Christiana 

The Words of Wisdom? is a publication of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Gwinnett.

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