Nature's Place

She’s a little beauty. And though small, she does command respect – fear doesn’t help. It would be a different world with more respect about.

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She’s only as thick as a thumb, or a clothes peg. As she investigated under my plant potting table.

Left to her self, with respect, she just went about her business and went on her way. Only when we disrespect, inject our ill nature, does nature reflect it and react adversely.

This is what respect looks like, of a fledgling for a wizened old snake. :-) … Still finding its presence but still enough respect.

As I stepped out through the fly-screen door I instinctively rebounded at the sense of something not quite registered yet, something moved on the ground near my feet. Just as it reacted to my appearance, as form and movement, and presence – the mostly invisible radiance we all have.

A snake, a whip snake I thought … We both maintained composure, remembering presence – all things have it – and carried on. I with my cup of coffee and she in her search for food, shelter, nest site, carried on investigating the various nooks and crannies of the veranda.

The remembering applies to me more than the snake, snakes do it instinctively but we have to re-realise it, presence. Having come into existence with it, to invariably lose it to identity – as a body afraid to die or the fear of death, for instance. Only to find it again, because there’s no other way, in the end.

Anyway, as she moved then so did I, wondering what she was up to, and in a way introducing myself. But she was already introduced, all she cared about really was my presence. That told her there was no danger from me, where we stood. Because I didn’t fear her and so react to her cold confident ways in my space.

Though her presence does instill a certain respect, she is unforgiving of disrespect. No need for fear, in her nature or of her nature. My nature. Not unlike we people, in that respect. For without respect, for situations, people and things, we all wouldn’t last long at all. Nothing tolerates disrespect for long, and respect requires presence.

It’s a long winding road we tread, each to their own, to presence and respect. And everybody’s on it, to one degree or another, to one radiance or vibration or another. It’s the vibe that matters, isn’t it.

Everything has a fundamental presence or vibration. And all we have to do to read it is get back down to our own vibe, or presence.

There it is, in the sensation where no thought or emotion goes.

Read it … as it is, here and now.

No other place or time matters.

Here and now.

© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.

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On the tiles on the veranda, at my feet. A perfectly normal looking female blue banded bee, wings working fine. I thought. It’s not uncommon for new born BBB’s to falter at first flight.

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After I gave her a finger to climb on she wandered about until she tried to fit into the nook between my fingers. It seemed she just wanted to go back to sleep.

But not for long. Soon she was exploring again. This time she thought it a good idea to grip my finger between her mandibles and that way go to sleep – how they do it.

But sleep wasn’t on the agenda, not really. So I introduced her to the zinnia I have growing in the garden, and she took to it like a duck to water. No, no, like a bee to a flower.

After she had her fill of the zinnia I introduced her to the butterfly bush and she couldn’t help herself, wandering all about the wonderful scent, tasting the little pots of nectar as she went.

Yum … doesn’t she look satisfied. Just taking a break from her first born encounter with the beautiful nature of the flowers she feeds on, and that went to nourishing her into existence.

And then she’d had enough, time to sleep at last. But not quite getting the knack of it yet, though instinctively she knew to grip something thin enough she could lock onto for the coming night.

Getting there, almost done … Time to sleep, to rest, to rise again in the morning and go to work in the garden and do what she was designed for, intelligently.

Sun fading now, got a good grip on the edge of the butterfly bush leaf. All the better to wake in the morning, close to breakfast and a new day, a new life. New born BBB.

The first blue banded bee born at my new place, that I know of, landed at my feet late the other day. It didn’t take to the air immediately so I gave it a finger to climb on, thinking it might do better from a height.

It didn’t … BBB’s are solitary creatures, not hive minded like the EU honey bee. The biggest difference it makes to me and you, if we were to pick one up, is EU bee’s instinctive tendency to sting, though it will surely die.

The individual EU honey bee, being just a number in a vast hive of like minded bees, is expendable. Meaning the hive doesn’t mind losing it in apparent defense of the realm, to sting and die.

That’s what a EU honey does after it stings. It dies, because the stinger being barbed gets left behind when the bee is swatted away and a gaping wound is made where the stinger was.

It’s a sacrifice the EU honey bee hive easily makes, it’s not an individual bee’s choice. The BBB on the other hand has no hive to fall back on, he or she is alone in this world.

And being alone requires more responsibility for the natural creatures, instinctively. More intelligently responsive, you could say.

There’s no trouble in nature. The natural creatures just get on with being what they are without the need to reflect on it.

The trouble comes when we emotionalise the instinctive and reflect on it so that it becomes something else.

Intelligently responsive or instinctively defensive. Hmmm …

© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.

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