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What a sad story it would be for us
If the truth of our existence was
That we sprang up from a primordial mud
By accident... like bacteria.
How naked and purposeless and meaningless human life would be,
If all we were... was a freak accident of evolution...
Seeking only pleasure...
Turned loose to our heart's desire in the world...
To compete for survival and power
Amongst thousands of other similarly-fated evolving creatures.
And yet, can we cling to the beautiful scripture that tells us...
That we were created by the Hand of God and in His image...
And abandon science...?!
It says in Genesis...
"The earth was without form and void.
And darkness was upon the face of the deep."
And so... it truly was.
We now know that life is otherwise unknown in our solar system.
If it had ever sprung up, it isn't there now...
Not even such a thing as a bug or a fern.
And yet, life on our planet is abundant and beautiful in every way.
We have mountains, and deserts, and oceans, and prairies.
We have grains, and vegetables, and greens, and sweet fruits.
We have flowers, and trees, and grasses, and insects.
We have millions of species of unique and wondrous creatures.
This planet absolutely exudes life...
Not just one happenstance of life,
But multitudes of specialized life
That can only regenerate within its own species.
Life has burst out everywhere here.
This planet is life...
And expresses all the facets of life.
And yet... it has an innate balance and wholeness.
Earth could have propagated life in any number of horrendous ways.
By itself, nature might have been random and chaotic...
A deathtrap of survival...
Even a war of surviving organisms
Selfishly seeking food and dominance.
One voracious gene
And the natural world could have become
Nothing but roaches or mice swarming over all the planet.
An aberration in one or two genes
Might have borne an animal suitable to any climate,
And which could propagate litters of pups constantly.
Life could have been quite violent and disgusting,
That is... unless there was some other force at work in the world.
After millions of years it might have been...
That lions were the only animal left on the planet,
Having had eaten all the others.
It might have been...
That sharks had grown large and multiplied
Until they had emptied the seas of all other living things.
We know that dinosaurs ruled the earth
During earth's primeval and primordial age
And then... left with it.
They were suited for that time of earth's formation.
Over millions of years
Life forms have either changed...
Or have evolved...
Or have emerged...
Or have become extinct...
Possessing genes that would never change...
As well as, genes that would change.
And there are some life forms
That have never changed in the slightest.
It is a curious idea to think it a possibility
That when life on earth was emerging,
It was so full of life and so potent
That it spawned such giant creatures as the dinosaurs...
The power of life so strong...
It compelled the emergence not just of plant life
But of thinking creatures...
All multiplying into complementary species...
...Possessing a gene of propagation...
That unfolded and regenerated
Until that unfolding and that potency fulfilled its course...
For some life forms... to continue forever...
For other life forms...
To some day... fail to regenerate.
Part of the theory of evolution has been described this way...
"Tools thus influenced the evolution of the flexible human thumb
and gave meaning to the human posture-- if indeed, they were not
responsible for the original evolution of that posture."
~~~~~~~~~~~~(The Columbia History of the World, Chapter 4)
Is this saying that embryos knew that there would be tools available
And so spawned their own flexible thumbs...?
Or... that embryos knew that standing upright would free their hands
And so each one willfully developed an upright posture...?
Among all of life...
Where is this link...?
From the will or the desires of a progenitor
To its developing offspring...?
To say that the human species evolved from the ape species
Is to also say that all four-legged animals
Evolved from the same species...
And compels us to further deduce
That all animal life
Originated from the same gene string...
That cats, dogs, deer, elephants, and mice
Are somehow related...
And that there is only one original gene string.
What may make as much or more sense...
Is for animal life to spring forth
Like sands of life sown onto the seashore...
Like fairy dust... or star dust...
In millions of shapes...
Like snowflakes...
Each with their own special character...
Each with their own sense of feeling...
The feelings... the emotions... of life...
Born into the earth...
Life... born into the earth.
Yet each... a prohibitory species...
Some which would fail...
Others... which would continue to regenerate.
The life-forms that survived...
Survived because of the emergence
Of complementary life-forms.
Each life-form fulfilled another...
Like some kind of marriage between life-forms
Linking life together...
Granting each... mutual survival.
Look around at this world you live in.
Of its very nature
The process of nature justifies itself...
Comes to its peace...
Evens out...
And fills in.
Each living thing has purpose within the whole of all that is...
Each... has parameters that fulfill the continuity of life.
If there was too little of a control mechanism within life...
If all creatures were predators, for instance...
Nature would grow too violent, and
It would cease to be life.
If nature had provided too much interference...
Such as protection from all physical ailments...
Nothing would matter...
Life would have no feel, no substance, no consequence...
And that too, would not be life.
We can also see that respect,
Even dignity,
Is a predictable constant in nature...
As if respect was a law or a truth of life
Between one creature and another.
We might see it as a sense of territory
Or as a sense of survival,
But it is the showing of respect...
Even the demanding of respect.
It is that sense of order within life that fulfills it
And allows all to flourish in relative peace.
This relative peace
Allows each to seek the unfolding of itself...
And thus... begins to define life not as mere survival...
But as truth, and joy, and beauty, and freedom...
Each with a physical feel of itself...
Each with a sense of all it is...
Each with a sense of its own.
If it isn't natural, is it true?
Does a dog scamper like a squirrel...?
Does a giraffe jump like a kangaroo...?
Doesn't each creature know what it is by the feel of itself...?
By its sense of its own truths...?
That sense of self is a conception of truth in life...
Is even the beginning of life...
Allowing each to know itself...
To know what it is... as it is...
And to... survive.
Without the meshing of truth into life,
Life could only be defined as "nothingness"
Or "insanity"
Or "living death".
It isn't, is it?
And, it is a cohesive whole...
Many millions of parts creating a whole...
Expanding and contracting and yet
Coming back to balance... and surviving.
It's a wonder to behold
That our planet has established an order
Of perpetual and even eternal life.
From all the possible happenstances
That could occur over ages and ages of time,
Somehow those happenstances formed into wholeness.
Some may think that the words "natural" and "order"
Would be contradictory terms...
"Natural" of course, meaning "wild" or "innate"...
And "order" meaning "constrained."
But, that's what we do have...
Natural Order.
Is it inconceivable...? that the force of life itself
Has a nature of its own...? or a definition...?
That is repeated again and again
In the framework of all that lives...?
A bursting... an unfolding... an emerging... a reaching...
A breathing... an embracing of beauty...
A begetting... a gift of life one to another...?
Couldn't we define the force of life by what we see in our world...?
Not the predatory world of dinosaurs!
As magnificent as they may have been...
But the world of mutual respect and beauty
We now are a part of...?
A world with innumerable facets of life...?
Can it not be said then,
That nature is fulfilling some mysterious truth...?
And that... wholeness is truth...?
Perhaps, expressing some eternal truth...?
And that... wholeness is peace...?
And that life is still unfolding as we watch...?
Still coming to peace...?
Can we then... ever separate "life"
From respectful survival...?
From the unfolding of truth...?
From the coming to a peace...?
With each creature fulfilling a place within life...
Defining life...
Can it be... even as each part of life has its own singular will...
A will that defines all that it is...
A will that enables it to survive...
That... the force of life itself has a will to survive...?
Is "life", even the will to live... to survive...
The cord that connects us all together...?
Connects all life together...?
A cord that we have yet to fathom...?
In Matthew 10:29, Jesus says,
"Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and one of them
shall not fall on the ground without your Father's knowing.
But the very hairs of your head are all numbered."
Tragedy and death occur within all life...
Each having its time... each its vulnerabilities.
Even so, we see that the ways of nature are full of mercy,
With glands and hormones aiding endurance
And numbing a creature's pain...
And with plants that have the power
To dull pain and suffering for us.
Life has done its part in providing for itself,
But each of its parts must function within its own purpose.
The pieces need to be put together...
All of the pieces...
All are part of the whole of this great truth.
Knowing that respect is ingrained into life...
That suffering is abated or can be attended to...
That all life moves towards a mystical wholeness...
That peace is a perpetual goal of life...
We can believe that humanity, too,
Is part of this wholeness of life...
That humanity, too,
Was begotten of this life.
We are an integral part of that wholeness...
A part of that balance and that mercy in life.
With our modern knowledge and science,
One cannot really know nature and accuse it of vileness...
Or think of animals as dirty creatures that plague us...
Or think that animals have no capacity for intellect
Because they do not speak a human language.
We cannot look down on nature from a high perch
And use animal life as a kind of a scapegoat
To define what is wrong with the earth and with ourselves...
Calling them base creatures that behave without morals.
On the contrary,
Each of those creatures is unique
And can tell us much about life and ourselves.
They are an unfolding and an expression of the force of life...
Just as feelings and emotions express that same force of life.
And we...?
We are marvelous flowering beings
Full of colors and differences.
We unfold into different characters and colorful personalities.
We have a universal... or eternal... nature.
We fulfill the whole realm of what life is.
Our unique combinations of energies
Among the whole of us,
Themselves become a human ecosystem,
Fulfilling life and wholeness and truth...
Wholeness with many facets.
We...
Each one of us...
Is a singular form of life.
We...
Each one of us...
Has a sense of all we are.
We...
Each one of us...
Can fulfill a singular purpose
As all participate in the wholeness of life...
As all live the truths of life.
We are living truth,
In the sense of all we feel
And all that we know that is true to us.
We each are a combination of life within life...
A combination of what we are as individuals
And the places in which we find ourselves.
But whatever it is that each of us are,
There is an over-riding truth in us...
We are linked one human to another
With an aura of understanding...
An innate sense of knowing one another...
Just by the fact that we share what we call "humanity."
But most of all...
Human beings are brilliant creatures.
That brilliance loves to express itself in all we do.
All that we are... speaks.
We talk in so many ways that we may not even know it.
We are the zenith of this massive and wondrous creation...
This creation of millions of singular facets...
Singular facets of a whole.
We, each, too... are singular among the whole of life.
The nature of truth is born in us.
We are creatures of light...
Who have been journeying a long, long way
To fulfill this unfolding of life
For all of the creatures of this earth.
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