Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We have a mushroom growing in our front yard that is an Alice in Wonderland kind of plant. It is bright candy apple red, with white spots, and the first few days it was as round as an apple as well. Now it is higher and the top has flattened out like a pancake. I sent photos to my kids and they looked it up. Of course it is deadly poisonous, and I guess that neon red is a warning sign, but we have no animals to eat it, and even our herd of squirrels know to leave it alone. My friend once found these around her house and gave me three gorgeous photos which I promptly framed and had up in the kitchen for quite a while. Nature is dazzling in it's beauty and danger. Seeing the anteater at the zoo two days ago amazed me, because it was gorgeous and yet ugly, too. It's long snout is like a snakes'. It's as if we are consistently humbled by nature's beauty versus our own ordinariness. We are not the most spectacular species by any stretch of the imagination. The face of the mandrill monkey we saw at the zoo beats any makeup or costume we can concoct. Yet we devalue and belittle our fellow creatures and plants, and more often than not we are the agent of their destruction. Is it jealousy? We'd do better to appreciate what they bring to the world, and honor all life. They gift us with joy and wonder; two things we could all use more of.