Taking Our Turns

 Taking Our Turns in Life

All of us living beings:

we’re here for awhile,

and then it’s time for others.

It wouldn’t work to live forever.

The earth would get too crowded!

We tend to feel we’re different

than the other plants and animals.

When we die, it tends to be a tragedy.

But we accept the death of other things

as just the usual way of the world.

It might be helpful to remember

that we all live and die, taking our turn,

all our fellow living neighbors and us.

This might make death more acceptable,

and life becomes something like a gift.

There is so much diversity

of all life on our earth:

Some life lives only a short time,

like caterpillars and their butterflies.

Like garden plants gone with the winter.

Some live very long, like the tall tree,

towering over us smaller creatures.

Imagine what wisdom such long-living

plants can accumulate over a lifetime.

We sit at their feet with awe.

To  ease our own fear of death,

it might help to sit in a wild natural setting,

quietly soaking up the sights, smells,

sounds and vibrations of life around us,

all of us taking our turn in life’s merry-go-round.

When one of us is nearing the end of their life,

we can hold them in a kind vigil,

celebrating that life and what it meant,

staying near and supportive

and tenderly saying farewell.

And where do we go when we leave life?

What comes next? For our fellow living beings,

their bodies return to earth, nourishing new life.

And for us too, if we aren’t buried in steel or concrete.

And our spirits? That’s yet for us to discover…..

Life comes, like a ray of sun, like the gift it is.

And when life leaves, its substance nourishes

the future generations.