Order and Nature
When order overshadows true shape.
Near my home, an aqueduct carries a canal over a river. Vast effort went into this, all so a train might pass. Engineers solving a puzzle nature never posed.
Ages before, we sought to count days. A calendar was invented. The count was not in alignment with the actual rhythms of the sun and earth. A corrected calendar was instituted. That, too, went astray.
Now every four years we slip an extra day into place, as if that makes things right. Still, each day is its own shape and length, moving by laws beyond our charts.
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I build fences at right angles through a meadow that rolls and bends and curves.
The ground rises and falls according to the mountain, yet our roads cut straight lines through the landscape.
The days stretch and shrink through summer and winter, yet we divide time into hours of sixty minutes.
Enough of these impositions, and we begin to speak as if nature has it wrong. The equinox, when day and night are of equal length, becomes the day nature gets it right.
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My community is made up of individuals, each living a separate life, and yet we create stories with main characters and three acts. In my mind, I arrange people into stories: beginnings, middles, ends. Main characters, dramatic arcs.
Each life bursts out of these boundaries.
What comfort is there in such order that fails to match the living world? How can I better see things as they actually stand—wild and uneven?
How can I wait for Providence when that is called for, and still rise to meet the times that demand my labor?
– from the mountain
Consider:
Where am I forcing neatness on mystery?
Reading:
“Nature doesn’t move in a straight line, and as part of nature, neither do we.” — Gloria Steinem
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“There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature.” — Antoni Gaudí
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“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.”
— Ecclesiastes 3:11 (KJV)
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