{"id":59508,"date":"2024-06-25T07:29:34","date_gmt":"2024-06-25T13:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=59508"},"modified":"2024-06-25T07:33:14","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T13:33:14","slug":"context-for-election-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=59508","title":{"rendered":"Cosmic Context for Election 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon<\/p>\n

Tuesday gratefuls: Irv. Tara. Veronica. Her Bat Mitzvah party. Blazing light from Great Sol. Black Mountain’s gentle curve against a Colorado blue Sky. My Lodgepole Companion, among the Lighteaters. Monkeys in Bangkok and K.L. Primates. Gorillas. Bonobos. Chimpanzees. Orangutans. Lemurs. Gibbons. Humans. Monkeys. Baboons. So many relatives.<\/p>\n

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Our order among living things<\/p>\n

One brief shining: Sunlight filtered down to Earth after its 93 million mile journey, some eaten by Coastal Redwood crowns, some by Kentucky Blue Grass on unnecessary lawns, some by the Saguaros in Arizona, some by fields of unnecessary Corn in Iowa, some by Moosehorn and British Soldier Lichen, photons into carbohydrates, raw energy into matter, a transubstantiation so real and true that it supports life of all kinds on the surface of Mother Earth.<\/p>\n

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Here is the best piece of theology I’ve read in quite a while: Earth’s Mysterious, Deep Dwelling Microbes That Sculpt Our Planet<\/a>. Ferris Jabr, NYT, June 24, 2024. If you choose to read it, you will learn that the Gaia hypothesis has infiltrated much of contemporary science that deals with matters biological, ecological, and, yes, even geological. Life shapes our Earth. Our Earth shapes Life. Here’s the closing paragraph:<\/p>\n

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“For more than two centuries, Western science has re\u00adgarded the origin of life as something that happened on <\/em>or in <\/em>Earth, as if the planet were simply the setting for a singular phenomenon, the manger that housed a miracle. But the two cannot be separated in this way. Life does not merely reside on the planet; it is an extension of the planet. Life emerged from, is made of and returns to Earth. Earth is not simply a terrestrial planet with a bit of life on its surface; it\u2019s a planet that came to life. Earth is a rock that broiled, gushed and bloomed: the flowering callus of a half-sealed Vesuvius suspended in a bubble of breath. Earth is a stone that eats starlight and radiates song, whirling through the inscrutable emptiness of space \u2014 pulsing, breathing, evolving \u2014 and just as vulnerable to death as we are.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n