The oldest lichen in the world has lived 4,500 years. It was a milestone for me this year to get to 59. My father died at 57. Neither of my brothers made it past 58. On Mt. Mitchell, where I took this picture, a 3x4 foot educational display put my 59 years in a different perspective.Lichen grow about one millimeter per year. This one is maybe 8 inches (tall? long? deep? how do lichens prefer to be measured?) which means it's lived about 150 years longer than me. Made me want to kneel, like a person does at an altar rail in church.
Learning in and from the natural world is another way of practicing spaciousness. The space, measured in time on this earth, between me and this small silver lichen is big.
Yet here I am admiring you, brother lichen, and this simple exchange you and I are having enlarges my perspective. Just by reading the nature display and then looking up into the lower branches of the red spruce where you live, my world is instantly more spacious and neurons are flitting about in my head in a way that my heart indentifies as awe and gratitude and joy.
Thank you, brother lichen. I owe you.
