Solstice dawn prayer

The sun creaks through the gray dusk, etching the branches of a tree I did not plant. The branches are orderly but not symmetric, each fork with its own story of past light and winds, crafted from air and rain.

Every tree is different. Every branch is different.
Every tree is the same thing, whatever that same thing is, being a tree.

I am, for a moment, wordless, as I watch a world etched by purpose but not understanding. Wildness everywhere.

There is nothing to understand, but there is something to remember. We did not arise from wilderness.

We are wilderness.

We have as much purpose as a leaf on a tree.

No more, but far more important, no less.

A cherrystone's guide to the universe

These were alive today, and now they are not--much of what they were leave my body as exhaled breath even now.

Some of what they were now rests in an injured thumb, sliced open a week ago, filling in the gaping hole left by my carelessness. Stuff comes from stuff--no matter how spiritual your guru may be, he is made of dust and air.

Some of what they were sits in a bucket, shells waiting for the garden. Look at each line marking their growth, years sitting in the mud, years being clams, eating and breathing and (occasionally) releasing millions of sperm or eggs to make more of themselves, because, well, no one knows for sure, just because.

They were alive, and they are no more, as I was once no more and am now alive and will be no more again.

It's the same stuff put together by the same sun, broken apart by other critters for the same reasons. Like sleep, like sex, like any of the great mysteries so common to all of us, we ignore death as we prattle on about the thisses and the thats, while young humans pass from larval to adult forms before our eyes.

We teach as though we know something, when it's clear to the young ones we know nothing.

The only things that matter in any true economy is how stuff moves from here to there, where it came from, where it goes, and what free energy was used to make this happen. All of biology can be reduced to this. So can history or economics or music or anything else we do.

And that's OK....

It's all there for those who care to look

 This was posted two years ago. I liked it then, and I still do.

It's  late June.

Light life and more light and more life. Little makes sense, but in June the abundance pushes aside the questions.

I have tooth marks in my thumb from a fluke. A snake no longer than a ruler tried to strike me a few hours later. A lone bat heralded dusk.

School winds down in June.

Next year I plan to start with Darwin's idea of descent with modification. He did not invent evolution. He did, however, figure out that the raw beauty of life's symphony here can be explained without appealing to some central plan that places humans above all else.

It's all there for those who care to look.

If you are going to acknowledge something is unknowable or incomprehensible or too powerful to comprehend, hey, I'm right there with you. Many things will remain unknowable in any scientific sense.

When you try to explain the inexplicable, when you presume to know the "meaning" of existence, though, keep it outside my classroom door. I teach biology, not metaphysics.

I'll be glad to discuss the "unknowable" with you,
ideally by a lake at dusk,
watching bluegill sucking down lightning bugs
enamored by their own reflection.

Just not in class.


Photos taken a few moments ago--grapes, honeysuckle, and sage.