As the now plentiful sunlight slows in its daily increase, the warming Earth has begun to give us the first, very early, harvests. Young radishes, young Grandpa Admire’s lettuce, Mustard, and Arugula, and a few sprouts of Asparagus have been given to us from the abundant Earth, whetting our appetite for more.

The sunlight and warmth has brought forth an outpouring of snow white and rich purple flowering trees—a white crabapple, sown by some passing bird, provides an abundance of large-petaled blossoms. An apple tree, planted with a dearly beloved niece, provides beautiful white flowers with the hopes of a full harvest of delicious apples, while purplish redbuds, purplish-pink lilacs, and a bluish-purple flower from a plant spreading from a neighbor’s yard, provides a rich beauty to the season of renewal.

Though I have been busy with finishing another semester of college as part of my new career, my wife and I had a chance to attend a birthday party for a four-year-old boy, surrounded by a small group of young friends and family. The parents, living in the relative isolation of the country that provides their century-old home a beautiful setting, had found themselves two years ago separated from the trials of the human world in the throes of a deadly pandemic. While the human world turned and twisted in the devastating virus, they discovered, as the father told me, that their isolated family world, was “what we have wanted”—to focus time and work on their precious child.

They slowed down, learning to live on less so they could spend more time with their young son, and worked to make their home a refuge that would allow their child to thrive. The mother grew food and flowers in the garden, providing them some of their needed nourishment, while the father worked less and took time to build his son a playhouse.

Two years later, their family and friends gathered to celebrate the center of their lives, their young son, celebrating his fourth birthday. My wife and I joined the party, largely made up of younger families. The mother’s mom and her sisters were all there, along with my stepdaughter, her husband, and their child, as well as other friends and family. I was the only grandfather there, while my wife, the boy’s grandmother and her sisters were women of our generation taking part in the celebration of the young life.

At one point during the party, I saw the center that is the Earthly flow of life into the future clearly in the circles that formed about the children. There was a small wading pool that was a center for the young children, who played in the water and stood around the pool in a circle of very young lives. These young children—three, four, and five years old—are the future of the human world; the lives that will take over from their elders as we pass back into the Earthly soil that sustains our bodies and souls.

Around this circle of future lives were the mothers and fathers of the new, innocent lives, chatting with each other as they carefully watched their children, making sure they did not come to harm in the exuberance of their play. In a third circle were my wife and I and the other elders of the group, silently watching the parents and children living out the joyous time as they had done with their children-now-parents a generation ago. So the Earthly river of life flows into eternity, with elders such as my wife and I approaching the years of our passing while the children we helped raise now raise their children, the future of our collective lives on this hard and wonderful Earth.

While sitting in the outer circle of the flow of Earthly life into eternity, I notice that I was the only male of my generation at the party. The elder women—the birthday boy’s mother’s mother, her sisters, and my wife—had come to honor the young life. The mother’s mother and her sisters had done most of the work for the party, making the family time special for all who attended.

For the other men of my generation, as well as the younger uncles and friends of the family, there was something they viewed as more important that took them away from this center of life. In the outside human world, especially in the larger human world, the patriarchs who felt there more important things to do than celebrate a young child’s life were busy with their own lives. For some this meant playing or watching sports, tinkering on cars, chasing money, or—in some tragic cases—making war on each other, with their bullets and bombs ruining the lives of families like these as the god-kings vent their “righteous rage” in murderous onslaughts.

As I have lived my life, I have, again and again seen the strength of the life-giving Earth to provide sustenance, joy, and meaning for those who take part in the essential tasks of living. I have also seen, in the smaller, personal world, the bitter regret of those who do not share in these tasks or who harm that flow.

As the Earth again provides the early gifts of spring, it seems more certain that embracing the Earthly flow of life into the future is an essential task, not just for the children, but also for those of us who are in the circle of parents and grandparents. At best, not sharing in the joyful celebration of the youngsters cuts the patriarchs off from joy their might have; at worst, it makes the patriarchs irrelevant to the children’s lives and outsiders to the essence of life.

For all the sound and fury of the larger patriarchal world, without honoring the center of life, the works of the patriarchs only contribute to the passing rise and fall of power-overful leaders and empires, doing harm to the children of the Earth. But, like so many passing trials, the flow of life continues ever onward while the leaders of the world become the Ozymandias of our time.