Rose Petals and Rust: On Nature’s Inexorable Passage

An observation and commentary on the times ---

Writer, artist, teacher, scholar and humanitarian Esther Warner Dendel (1910-2002) once wrote - “It takes a certain maturity of mind to accept that nature works as steadily in rust as in rose petals.” I believe it is as good a way as any to be reminded of the smallness of our earthly footprint.

Insistent as we are on teasing the will of consciousness, we declare ourselves above and over all. We instill ourselves as masters of everything the eye can drink in. We feast upon on a steady diet of delusion, even as nature grows its greenest grasses and drinks its brightest sunshine. It manages all this surprisingly well without our help.

We go out and we industriously build and plan; we think we surely must control the very turn of the axis itself. We see to it that lakes and streams wither and die. We look but do not see; we never truly learn how to live. We accept credit for inventing colors of which we are incapable of painting.

And while nature laughs, rust consumes our carefully laid out machinery of life and its undying rose blooms in all its glory, celebrating its solitary immortality.