Monday, March 23, 2015

March 23, 2015 - Earth Alive


How long can we deny that when we look at trees, what we are really seeing is a complex network of arteries, veins, vessels, and capillaries?  How long will we tell ourselves that each organism is separate unto itself?  That the appearance is only coincidental?  There are those who believe that the entire Earth is just one living organism.  The typical definition of life is an entity that can grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce, and maintain homeostasis.  The Earth does all of these things.  Is the Earth alive?  I think it is.

When I look around me in winter and early spring, I see the truth.  I am not beguiled with colors and scents in the season of death.  I see the trunks and branches and twigs of the trees and I know that they are the vascular system of the Earth.  I am aware of the atmosphere, and I know it is the lungs of the Earth.  The waters are the Earth’s blood, and the countless numbers of plants and animals are the many individual cells of the Earth.

The veins of the Earth.

The mimicry is fascinating.  The macrosystem and the microsystem are strikingly similar, only different in size.  If you are a cell on the Earth--just one cell--what, then, are the cells to you in your own body?  Do they seem more important now?  On the microscale, each cell in your body is a separate living thing that, of course, depends on you for its existence.  On the macroscale, you are a separate living thing, a cell, that depends on the Earth for your existence.

We can feel small and puny and useless with this information, or we can appreciate the divine beauty in each and every cell in our body.  What we do to the body, we do to the cell.  Each of us is a tiny Earth housing its many cells and maintaining homeostasis.  If we watch the rhythms of the Earth and develop a real understanding for them, we can come to know the mysteries of our own bodies.  What happens to one, happens to the other.