A Dane County Almanac
And Other Short Stories
This little book is a revelation of the author’s most intimate feelings
and thoughts about his life on planet earth.
Convergence
August 18, 2005
In recent weeks there has appeared to me such an extreme convergence in my readings which I can only best describe as uncanny. It’s almost like somebody or some thing is taking my hand and carefully leading me along on an unknown journey. If it is not Suzanne referring me to a particular book, then it’s me suddenly discovering exactly what I need in a magazine or newspaper’s articles. It’s as if I am just stepping out into the water, and when I step out a force just in the nick of time places the next stepping stone down in front of me to take the next step. As best as I can determine at this time the most common denominator on my search has to do with life-transitions.
From reading Full Catastrophe Living, I am again introduced to Mindfulness meditation and the rhythmic transitions from breathing in (life) to breathing out (death). This leads me to Matthew Fox and Dying, Resurrection, And Reincarnation. And then, this leads me to read Paul Krafel’s Seeing Nature and I learn how the life process on earth is in a continuous re-cycling mode, as is, I also learn, is the cosmos. It too, like all living things, also undergoes this pattern of living, dying and resurrecting. I learn too that the stars, our sun, supernovas each have their lifetime and then come to an end but not before giving off their progeny. According to the big bang theory, our Solar System is born, including our Planet Earth.
In my last piece – Life on Planet Earth – I referred to Matthew Fox’s perspective of looking to God’s outward or manifest world, mainly to our own planet as one way of better experiencing God’s creation. I cited Paul Krafel’s “Seeing Nature” because in this book he puts the reader in touch, and with much vividness, with what he refers to as the spiraling life cycle of mother earth. He describes how nature maintains its vital balance through a process of constantly rebirthing herself. We talked about “Gaia Hypothesis” and how life is a self revolving and sustaining process which creates and maintains an environment favorable to life.
Today I would like to go back 4.6 billion years ago and share with you what science now knows about how our hot stony planet first generated a nascent life form. Dr. Bruce Jakosky, a geologist at the University of Colorado in Boulder estimates that it was about then that our earth cooled enough to have atmosphere, oceans, and some dry land. In his forthcoming book, “Astrobiology, Science and Society,” Jakosky notes that the rock record is still too sparse to allow us to clearly determine the processes that were associated with the origin of life.
At a recent workshop held in Yellowstone National Park for science writers, researchers described their latest thinking about the origin and development of life on earth. Most briefly, their hypothetical scenario places our earth’s beginning at about 4.6 billion years ago. By between 4.0 and 3.8 billion years ago inorganic molecules (composed of clustered atoms) grew and clotted together into “protocells,” (little bags of chemicals that took in nutrients and discharged wastes) which formed organic compounds needed for early life.
In this pre-biotic stage before living organisms appeared, volcanoes spewed lava and gases rich in hydrogen, sulfur, iron and other minerals. Chemical reactions between hot water and rocks produced more and more complex molecules. From this clumps of inorganic molecules eventually became living cells containing an early version of DNA known as RNA. (DNA contains the instructions to make proteins, the building blocks of every living thing.)
Now I want leave this brief scientific description of the geologic and chemical origin of our planet and return to Paul Krafel, and once again, pick up at the point when after the earth cools, and the oceans and atmosphere makes their appearance, we soon see that out of the algae and moss arises other small plant life. Soon shrubs and small trees appear, along with insects, flowers, toad stools and an abundance of life. From small single cell animals become more complex and advanced mammal forms and ultimately human life
evolves as well.
Life on Planet Earth
