As a child, I remember lying in the grass while looking up at the immenseness of the sky; so majestic was it in its blue tinged beauty. Then rolling over onto my stomach smelling the earth and its life-force while gazing at the greenness of the love that the earth shares with all of her creatures.

I remember the magic of chasing lighting bugs in an attempt to capture their light for just a brief moment before letting them go on their way into the night. Even at a young age, I was ever seeking the light.

I know that I am not alone in these memories of happiness when our hearts, not our minds, beckoned us to be a part of and connected to the earth. As children, from the depths of our heart and soul, we recognized nature’s wisdom as a gift to be shared by all. Many of us saw and lived in a garden paradise that provided the adventures and magic of life that only nature can provide.

My parents, on the other hand, had seemed to lose sight of this simple truth, nature’s wisdom. Possibly, it was due to their excessive work habits in their effort to ‘provide for me.’ But it was my great uncle who fostered and nourished in me the uncomplicated facts of life and the beauty and the wisdom of the fruits and the flowers of creation. He would let me help him while he tended his grape vines and nurtured his pride and joys, the bright flowers with the sword-shaped leaves—gladioluses. Picking a grape and holding it between his thumb and forefinger, he once spoke these wise words to me:

“Jimmy, this is the perfect color of purple; if you pick the grape when it is a lighter color, it will robe the vine of its gift. And if it is a deeper bluish-purple, you will have dishonored the vine by letting the grape stay on too long.”

Elders and children, the wise ones of humanity, but the rest of us, in-between elder-hood and childhood, seem to have forgotten our hearts truth, and what is truly important in life. In our own attempt to ‘get ahead,’ we have failed to remember nature’s wisdom. In it’s place, we have injected the superiority of materialism while casting a blind eye at the destruction of nature and it’s various ecosystems.