A long moment in Nature’s peace amid this orchestrated madness

On June 21, 2025June 22, 2025 By Alethea KehasIn Reflections39 Comments

Even amid the most chaotic times, nature offers us peace and balance — The Buddha in the herb garden beside my front steps

Madness has taken over the country I call home, but there is peace to be found amid the chaos. Humans are not strangers to chaos because we are most often its creators. Nature inherently seeks balance, but human nature is its primary upsetter. How utterly ironic that our highly evolved brains push us towards disharmony all in the name of supremacy. This quest for supremacy churning out cycle after cycle of battles for dominion over ourselves, other species, and our planet, which is not just ours.

Yet, She endures.

In the soft hours of mourning I pause with her presence. The cat I am far too attached to takes advantage of the moment to cocoon herself between my thighs and belly as I watch a small orange slug, that is not really orange, but more the colors of an oak leaf transitioning from summer to fall. Its glistening body is horned like a young goat and in this pause I find its beauty. Curled into a half-heart around the edge of an oregano leaf in this garden of herbs and wild weeds that seek only coexistence, the slug defies gravity. Or seems to.

Beyond this small patch of earth that sits below my front step, the male cardinal that built a nest in the lilac sits on a branch of a maple singing his sermon of the day. How glorious he is to behold with his coat of red and his beard of black haloed in summer’s green. Yet I know he is more than that. I have held the fallen feather of his kin up to the sun and witnessed the full spectrum of light. But, he knows this too. Listen to him.

His mate is in the peach tree is gathering a meal. Equally lovely in her understated tawny hues she wears red on her beak, the crest of her head, and threads its hues through her tail and feathers as a reminder of balance. She is earth, fire, air, and always water. Water because it is a feminine element. And each of her feathers holds the same spectrum of light as his.

The cardinals are not the only birds singing to the mourning and gathering food. The phoebes who nest under the peaked roof of my unused front door are busy doing the same. Dedicated to the tasks of the day they provide a chorus with the finches, nuthatches, and chickadees. Circling the clouds, the resident falcons calls out for breakfast and I take in the scent of the ocean from the sea roses before I head inside for mine.

Life Outside the Window #naturephotography #newengland #unity

On September 30, 2020October 25, 2021 By Alethea KehasIn Reflections11 Comments

It is raining here today. Thankfully. The water cools the heat that should have left by late September and covers the dirt in the empty stream beds. I have never seen such dryness where I live. The lake where we spend much of our summer has receded by feet from the shore. The sandy cove popular with swimmers, now a vast mudflat exposing the spindly legs of a dock that no boat can go near. It is surreal. It is so uncomfortable to observe, I could not take a photograph.

Each day brings a new challenge to face, asking us to learn how to live on the edge, and quite often inside the roiling elements of life. Too often, I find I am chasing after my breath and asking it to expand out of the constriction of my lungs. I go outside during these moments and lay on the good earth to sync my heartbeat back to the Mother. It is the best way I know how to live inside chaos.

The area where I live has become beloved in a way I never thought possible. A simple acre of land surrounding my home is somehow enough to show me the vast wonders of creation. Life contained, yet not contained. The birds come and go and so do the squirrels and the chipmunks. The trees stretching networks of roots too vast to comprehend the mystery of what it means to be rooted. We can move without moving, and with my belly pressed against the grounded life that deep stirring fills the ache of belonging.

Life has become a game of tension and release and I often wonder who is really controlling the bind. I wonder how far we need to go back to remember the vast connection that both binds us into division and frees us into unity? This juxtaposition of a truth that seems alien to our rights if you feed into the beliefs of the mind struggling for separation.

As I listen to the fall of rain and the birdsong of gratitude I am reminded of how false the hold is. The entangled mind that tunes into dissonance feeds a disease that spreads through all minds if the frequency is found and listened to long enough. Why boil the internal waters if what the body needs is a cooling into peace?

Serenity in Turbulent Times #serenity #writephoto #suevincent

On September 3, 2020 By Alethea KehasIn Reflections24 Comments

These days serenity is borrowed. To avoid the turbulent waters that try to divide the heart’s landscape of love, I find myself seeking the pause. Stillness, where thoughts cannot ripple the surface. I walk into the rain to find beauty in the gray mist. The tucked heads of flowers pigmented like the sun. Their beauty muted because the eyes can stand only so much glory.

With my belly on the mossy lawn I watch hills of ants and find a sophistication of silent cooperation that is foreign to my language. For a moment, I’d like to be an ant crawling into dug caverns, deeper and deeper into the body of Earth until what remains on the surface disappears from the mind.

The cat studies with me. Delighted. Her purr barely perceptible, she is stingy with her love, but her curled lips betray her. She believes me to be a cohort in mischief and I think perhaps I am. Inside the house dust settles into corners and dishes wait in the sink, but I am stealing more time to listen to bird song and soft sigh of grass yielding to my body.

Here, level with the eyes of the cat, I search the understory of life and find pipes made of fungi pushing through last year’s leaves and I know the fey cannot be far away.