Cycles I

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Everything has its cycles of ebb and flow ~ or even life and death. The difference is in the length of the cycle, giving each their own rhythm. The ocean’s rhythm is tied to that of the moon, giving the ebb and flow of the seas an unending seven hour rhythm. The cycle of a mountain, from the start of its existence ~ which is usually found in either volcanic activity or the movement of the earth’s plates ~ to the time when wind and weather have torn it down again, leaving nothing but a hill; takes infinitely longer than that. For trees, the cycles last from a couple of decades to hundreds of years.

Day and night, the seasons, the year it takes for the earth to circle the sun... All of them are cycles.

Someone told me once that one of the shortest cycles of ebb and flow ~ and yes, according to him of life and death ~ is our breath. Breathing in moves our vital force. It allows us to stand up straighter, to open up. Breathing out we release all of that. We close in upon ourselves; we may even curl up into a fetal position. Only to repeat this process, this cycle, as we breathe in again.

Being human, we have a tendency to view these cycles from vastly different perspectives depending on what cycle we are looking at. I would say that we, most of the time, don’t give breathing a second thought. And the ebb and flow of the oceans are just one of the facts of life.
Our own life span is too short to fully appreciate the cycles of mountains...

When it comes to trees...
More often than not, when an ancient tree really has to come down because it has lived longer than even it had ever expected ~ when a grandfather tree is becoming dangerous because its trunk and branches have become feeble and might break and fall on top of someone ~ we rally in protest. And often a tree like that is in a place where it will not be allowed to finish its cycle ~ decaying to the point where it feeds the surrounding trees that once sprung from its seeds, such that they will grow big and strong and old...

And when we are confronted with the cycles of animals; our reactions tend to get more emotional. Especially where it concerns our pets, our animal companions... But sometimes, long after their bodies have been cremated (or buried in our back yards), we may have a sense that our companion is around us still... We may look up, expecting to hear a greeting bark or meow ~ only to see a faint shadow move out of the corner of our eyes.
They may come back to us to comfort us, even when they have moved on into the unseen, into the world of spirit.
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