Life

Sitting looking out the large bay window in the back of our trailer home, Sinni, I look at mountains and mesa, buttes and canyons that are the result of billions of years of wind and water. The desert landscape is scattered with clumps of grasses and scraggly shrubs struggling to survive. The scene is beautiful, made more awesome by the cooperation of cloud and sun constantly changing the appearance of the land. A distant butte goes from a solemn dark giant to a shinning monolith of dark chocolate brown topped with white. It is almost a flashing beacon or sign saying 'I will not give in. I am strength.'

Looking across the Colorado River at the massive walls hundreds and hundreds of feet thick cut by the persistent river I can see layers of time designated by color and texture. The story of this land lies exposed for all to see. Sadly I do not yet have the skill to read it but I will try to learn. I will seek to understand. Even sadder, however, is that so many people, even those who will admire the land's beauty, will not give a thought to what it tells us.

The land tells us a great deal. It teaches us and will guide us if we but stop and listen. We humans are poor listeners. Perhaps that is because we don't believe that anything but humans have anything to teach. In a way that is ironic since we are the newest creature here and have the most to learn. Perhaps that is why we have made such a mess of everything we get near.

Sit and watch and listen to the land. Watch that strange shaped rock at the top of the mesa. Watch it closely and listen carefully. So many would tell me they head nothing and saw no change, no movement, no life. That is so far from the truth. That boulder changed and the sound of the wind attests to that. It may have lost some of its mass to the wind while you actually watched. It may have accepted a fine layer of dust from the wind that was once a part of another rock many miles away. But that boulder, like all the land, is ever changing. It tells us "even though I'm a mountain I will not be here forever. I had a birth which lasted thousands of millennium and I will some day be gone. Only my story, written in the layers of the land, will tell of my existence. Yet I will not die. I will always be a part of the land. Only my form will change."

The rock that changes over billions of years may not be organic life but it is a part - a vital part - of the life of this planet. The land is alive. It isn't sentient life but that does not make it any less alive. Like an animal or a plant, the land is a complex combination of molecular, atomic and sub-atomic activity. We can not adequately define life scientifically. Even philosophy fails. How can we exclude that which shares so much with us? The more I read quantum physics the more I am convinced that the magnificent, strong and seemingly indestructible mountains around me are nothing more or nothing less than a different manifestation of our oneness. We are both the manifestation of the sum total of elements that cling together, by forces yet to be understood, flying through space at an unimaginable speed. Quantum physics is seeing more and more evidence that even this planet has a oneness with the universe and what appears as empty space is really quite full.

The land tells me this. Even as I learn to read its story. Even as deep canyons and giant mountains tell us about ancient seas, long forgotten creatures, atmospheric change, bombardment from outer space, continental migration and much more, it tells us about life. It shows us that time, as commonly understood by humans, is merely an abstract we use to get to our next appointment. Time has a very different purpose and definition in quantum physics which I will not try to relate here. But

the life around me - the life of which I am one - tells me that human time is really inconsequential.

As a sentient creature in this collective life I, unlike my animal sisters and brothers and unlike the rock and plants around me, can decide whether I am to be a deadly, destructive cancer cell or a cell with the goal and purpose of protecting the whole organism - the life of the universe.

The mountains, my kin - a part of my being, have so much to teach me about patience and endurance. I will endeavor to watch and listen carefully to the lessons they have for me.

Plants, many of whom have been killed by human negligence yet struggle and re-emerge fifty to one-hundred years latter, have so much to teach me about perseverance. I stand in awe and hope to learn from them as I struggle to keep my fellow humans from destroying life on this fragile planet.

All other sentient beings, all of whom have been a part of this collective life and this world much longer than humans, have so much to teach us about survival and being a productive part of nature. I will treat them with respect and love, and learn from them.

Life is not my personal beginning and end in this human form. Life is not a collection of organic specimens which I decide are worthy of existence. Life is the entire planet as a part of the cosmos, and you and I are called upon to decide whether we are a cancer or the means of future life.