Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott.
Well it's a glorious morning,
Sun is shining,
I'm up on Dartmoor just crossed over the stream admiring the ferns that are coming up.
These are sort of bracken ferns and they are at the moment they are unfurling their leaves and they're very tall and upright like pencils or it reminds me in a way actually of the military where they all stand upright with their chests out.
It looks a bit like that as they're starting to come up and before their leaves completely unfurl and then paint a haze across the hillsides of green and it's a beautiful morning.
The wind is not blowing,
It's been blowing a lot over the last few weeks.
I don't need to find somewhere to shelter from the wind and I can just be with you.
It's not raining at the moment but I'm just enjoying this delightful experience of being outdoors and as I walk we have on the moorland ponies and cattle and sheep that run semi-wild.
They're all farmed but it's an open moorland so they're not in sort of fields and they roam across the moorland and as a consequence there's lots of animal dung as you walk across the moorland and I just sort of noticed with the the animal dung you notice the the beetles or the flies that settle on it and process it and eventually that dung becomes nutrients for the soil and then I noticed the other day a buzzard ahead of me gliding into a tree.
Now a buzzard in England is a bird of prey,
It's like a hawk and it was gliding into a tree and I watched it take a perch on this tree looking outward probably looking for prey I guess.
You know I just thought wow you know it's from from the beetles and flies up to the bird of prey it's like that's the whole spectrum of the food chain of the ecosystem that I walk through every day and as I was reflecting on this I began to realise how important it is to cherish the whole system.
The whole ecosystem matters and this is relevant because I think I sometimes fall into the trap thinking that maybe I should be taking a particular role or I need to be doing something in particular and often we gravitate towards the the parts of the ecosystem that are the the ones at the top of the food chain,
The carnivores,
The the grand birds,
The beautiful animals that we're drawn towards because they have such a presence and yet they only exist because of the rest of the ecosystem and I began to realise and I've realised it before but it landed for me again today that I don't know exactly what part of the ecosystem I am for and I'm talking about the ecosystem not just of nature but of community as well.
Every part has a play,
You have a part to play in the ecosystem of your community whether that's your family or your neighbourhood or your town or it might be your community of singing or yoga or whatever it is,
Golf,
I don't know but you have a role to play in your community and don't underestimate that role and you know you don't look at the beetle doesn't look at the buzzard and think oh I wish I was a bird of prey that's you know that is that is the place to be.
The beetle does what the beetle knows it's designed to do it it does what it needs to do for its survival for the survival of its species but ultimately without even realising it its role is also for the survival of the whole ecosystem and so today is a reminder of that for you in your life and for me in my life it's a reminder that I am playing a role in a wider ecosystem.
Sure for me it's about my community but for me also it's wider than that it's the ecosystem of spirituality of of bringing back or reawakening consciousness awareness within people in the world so they have as I have a really rich internal spiritual life and I'm doing that slowly and I'm doing it in the way that feels right for me and my encouragement is that if you feel that you have a role to play don't underestimate the role that you have even if you think it's small just inhabit it create through it allow your part to be part of the ecosystem and together we will reawaken the spirituality of the planet.
It might just be one person at a time but that's all it takes so play your part in whatever ecosystem you feel you're a part in and don't underestimate the part that you play it is important to the whole and let me know your reflections on that and of course don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature
