| Summer follows spring, and fades into autumn. Autumn becomes winter which becomes spring. Spring is then followed by summer once more. This has been the nearly never ending and unquestioned cycle of seasons since very near the beginning of time as we know it. What other cycles are going on around us? A seed is planted. It sprouts and then becomes a seedling. After it grows it is a plant which buds and flowers, and after the plant flowers it dies. But at the same time the plant is still alive through the seed it has left. That seed is planted and the cycle repeats itself. The same is true of the animal world. A fetus is conceived and born. The young creature grows and becomes and adult. When it is an adult it reproduces, and then dies. Nevertheless, the animal is still in some way alive because at least part of it grows with its own offspring. Again, that offspring will reproduce and will repeat the cycle. Again and again the cycle has been repeated since time immemorial. Even a forest which is hit by lightning and catches fire will make the earth fertile with its ashes and make room for new trees to spring forth. Even that which dies lives on it what is reborn from its own self. The cycles can even be observed in the inanimate world of nature and in the very nature of time itself. Every sixty seconds, an old minute is gone and a new minute is begun. Every sixty minutes become an hour. In twenty four hours, the earth completes its graceful twirl, and after three hundred sixty five and a quarter days the earth will have twirled its way around the sun itself. A crescent moon becomes a quarter and then a gibbous and climaxes as a giant pearl in the night sky. Then the full moon becomes a gibbous, a quarter, a crescent, and becomes new. The sea itself follows this cycle and the tides are like seasons in themselves. To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven. This has been the eternal truth of time since our beginning. What many fail to see is that the continuous cycles of nature can be found inside of the individual. The succession of seasons is not limited to the inanimate or animal world. Change is part of nature... and are not we as humans part of nature? In school we are taught to observe these patterns in nature and the weather, but the average person probably does not sit down at the end of every day and contemplate that he or she has been living a series of seasons, cycles, and patterns since he or she was born. Why? How could someone not notice that they were living in a consistent and complexly patterned lifestyle? Perhaps it is because physically, it takes a lifetime to complete the cycle, and the only physical (that is unavoidably physical) cycle a human will have to go through is the menstrual cycle. Even then, the menstrual cycle only occurs in women. I assure you however that from the moment we were born, that we have been living a cycle and series of seasons. A person can probably live happily for his entire life not paying much heed to the fact that his life has been a cycle. Still, I believe that we will find it easier and perhaps more enriching if we realize this important detail of our way of life. The very faith we live by, yes indeed our relationship with the divine light consists of spiritual seasons. We will cover the religious seasons in another article, but for the moment we are going to focus on the physical cycles that our physical bodies as humans go through in our time in this world.
Naturally the first part of the life cycle is birth. One could argue that the cycle starts with conception, and it does, but we are first exposed to the world and introduced as an individual when we are born into life and are physically divided from our mothers. We spend a few years in infancy but soon become children, and childhood is the next part of the life cycle. The cruel world of adolescence is next on the map, and it is important because it is during this season that we physically change the most and are shaped for the rest of the seasons. Marriage is also particularly important because during this period we procreate and cultivate that part of us that will physically live on after we are gone out of this world. Arguably old age or seniority comes next followed by one of the most important parts of the cycle: death, or second birth. This page will and all articles within will hone in and bring into sharp relief each landmark of the life cycle. |
| The Lifecycle...A Page in Progress Back |
| The Lifecycle |
| Birth Childhood Youth Marriage Seniority Death Birth |
| To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. |