Peter Adair ([email protected]) is the creator of the stations of "Elemental Elders" (earth, water, life, air, fire) in the Sanctuary Garden.
WESTMINSTER WEST-Thich Nhat Hahn, a revered Thai Buddhist monk and teacher, wrote, "The true miracle is not walking on water or walking in the air, but simply walking on this earth." Albert Einstein, the preeminent scientist of the 20th century, stated, "You can move through life seeing nothing as a miracle, or seeing everything as a miracle."
Our luminous Earth is the miracle, and we are integral parts of this wonder.
Four billion years ago, Earth unveiled one of its startling miracles: the appearance of single-celled life in the oceans. These single-celled organisms are our true forebears.
Each time a human life is newly generated, we return to our ancestors. We present ourselves in the form of single cells of egg and sperm. Our life begins as Earth's life began.
The amniotic sac of our mother's womb is an internal sea within which the single cell develops into an embryo - a multicellular being. When Earth formed multicellular organisms in the ocean 600 million years ago, there was also seeded an impetus to break away from the sea, and enter land and open air. After nine months of gestation, we, too, must break free of our ocean-womb, and arrive in a new world, breathing new air.
Earth creates the miracle of life with a particular evolutionary trajectory. In our own conception and birth, we embody this unfolding mystery.
* * *
With each breath we take, we inhale Earth's omnipresent sky. The air of Earth then becomes our internal wind. Qualities of the atmosphere - whether breezy, calm, heavy, glowering, steady, sultry, fierce or blustery, among many others - circulate as moods within us. The word atmosphere, from the Greek, derives from the Sanskrit atman, meaning "breath, soul." Our planet's atmospheric halo is Earth's soul sphere.
Birds are emissaries of Earth's wider soul. We know that the sounds and songs of birds stimulated the brain structures of humans that are related to singing and spoken language. Birds, it could be said, transmit the language of the sky.
In the human arena, there are envoys from the sky domain - harbingers of a lofty realm - possessing musical ability and feathered wings. They are called "angels." From the Greek angelos, the word means "messenger.'" Humans and birds join as vocal expressions of the encompassing mystery of air.
For humans, the language of the sky achieved a sophistication between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago. That is, the sounds of thought took on a body and structure capable of complex expression. At the end of this period, visual language also found complex expression in the magnificent cave art of paleolithic humans.
The vivid and vivacious paintings of animals on cavern walls are revelations. They are internal visions given physical reality.
With the development of human imagination, Earth is able to hold a mirror to itself, as it were, and ponder its own astounding creativity. Earth's presentation is echoed in the miracle of human re-presentation. With the advent of human consciousness, a profound mystery is broached: Earth has matured into self-awareness.
Paleolithic humans crawled along deep narrow tunnels, as if through a birth canal, carrying the flickering flame provided by burning animal fat, to approach in homage the numinous revealed images.
Eons later, humanity will create aboveground caves in the form of stone henges, grottoes, churches, synagogues, cathedrals, mosques and temples, which house other revelations, often lit with candles. The worship will be by kneeling, bowing or prostrating, rather than crawling.
Human awareness emanates from Earth's self-awareness. Self-reflection enabled us to know ourselves and our environment in material and spiritual dimensions. Physically, we belong to the elemental miracles of Earth: earth, water, life, air, fire. Spiritually, we can realize aspects of wonder and oneness that open unto realms of sacredness and holiness.
With the Earth-given capacities of awareness and imagination, humanity progressively discovered and harnessed Earth's physical energies. This endeavor began with the domestication of fire more than one million years ago. Fire inaugurated a distinctively human culture. It is around the central fire, which provided safety and warmth for early humans, that singing, dancing and storytelling took place - activities that ignited human imagination.
With the rise of civilization, additional physical energies were corralled: water, wind, steam and fossil fuels, and the forces of electricity, magnetism and nuclear and solar energy. In the history of our use of these powers, we have demonstrated a peak of invention and creativity, and a nadir of persistent destruction and exploitation.
Humanity has now grown into a global geologic force, responsible for powerfully impacting Earth's oceans, forests, soils, atmosphere, plants and animals to such a degree that many report that we are instigating Earth's sixth major extinction.
Extinctions are transformative and - temporarily - traumatic events in Earth's journey. Following upon each extinction episode, life has rebounded, becoming more widespread, more diverse and more complex. The most recent extinction event, 65 million years ago, led to the demise of the dinosaurs, and from that calamity arose birds, mammals and hominids.
In forming a being with the sensitivity of a human - a being vulnerable to distortion and disorientation - Earth wounded itself. We are squandering an opportunity to augment the life and beauty of the planet, and it is likely that our current acquisitive and ism-based version of human society will need to become extinct. Earth may then reestablish itself on a foundation of interconnection and wholeness, qualities that reflect our innermost reality. There are already budding communities holding templates for an enhanced and nourishing relation to Earth.
"Someday," wrote the visionary paleontologist and Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin, "after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness […] the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
Mystery unfurls, and a renewed human–Earth culture beckons.
This Voices Essay was submitted to The Commons.
This piece, published in print in the Voices section or as a column in the news sections, represents the opinion of the writer. In the newspaper and on this website, we strive to ensure that opinions are based on fair expression of established fact. In the spirit of transparency and accountability, The Commons is reviewing and developing more precise policies about editing of opinions and our role and our responsibility and standards in fact-checking our own work and the contributions to the newspaper. In the meantime, we heartily encourage civil and productive responses at [email protected].