On the side of Sugarloaf Mountain, we thought
construction had all but destroyed the meadow fronting our Cabin. It was
scraped clean, down to the granite substrate. We worried that it might never fully recover on that new
surface of what appeared to be granitic sand. But, Life itself has taken charge, and the flora of the
mountain has returned with haste and with it, flowers that disappeared years
ago. Nature is incorrigible.
As if to cover its mineral nakedness, Planet Earth
imagined LIFE and wrapped itself in a lavish kirtle of it, from the microscopic
to the mammoth. And it was beautiful.
Earth expresses itself to the universe as sheathed, covered, wrapped,
obscured, by Life.* Life
everywhere-- all of it, striving for increase, expression-- and for
consciousness.
And, in the most superb of Life’s combinations,
we humans appeared with a brain-deluxe and found that we could know about ourselves and, what’s more, enjoy
that knowing. We began that most
human of enterprises: organizing our knowing into a myriad of narratives. I for
instance have told the story of brown trout in the Garden of Eden. But, just
think what Mozart did with what he knew!
When I look out into the night sky, I do not, as
conventional wisdom would advise, feel insignificant and tiny in the face of
all that majesty. I think the cosmos is a lovely, if mysterious, expanse of what,
we cannot be sure. I am, meanwhile, overwhelmingly proud to be of Earth’s Order
of Mozart. I see no reason to believe that there is his like anywhere “out
there”.
We are here to report on the universe to its self. If
we don’t do it, it will not get done.
We on Planet Earth, with Life on our side, have
the universe under siege, demanding that it come forth with its secrets and
hear the music.
* Ira Feit,
Professor of Biology, Franklin and Marshall College, c.1983.
