Saturday, August 16, 2014

The Miracle of Life

The fragility of life has been obvious to me over the years; from childhood friends dying to learning about how destructive World War 2 was, I've always known how easy it is for bad things to happen. But only as I've grown older have I come to appreciate how unfathomably miraculous it is also.

There has been discovered to be a self-organizing principle. The Universe is evolving harmoniously, consciously.

The best proof for me that there is a power of good in the world is how Nature (if allowed and given encouragement) can take a damaged piece of land and turn it into a productive place that's a joy to visit. What was the aftermath of the demolition of a three-story apartment building at the corner of West Elizabeth and Lytle Streets is now a tiny bit of ecosystem whose plants clean the air a little. It has a place to sit and eat what grows there. From a basement foundation full of bricks (covered with sand, leveled off, and some straw and grass seed thrown down) has grown a corner full of living things that are part of the healing of the planet.

By nurturing the widest variety and the greatest quantity of life - and adding organic material such as wood chips, cardboard, leaves, grass clippings, newspaper, kitchen scraps, and manures - the land has been healed and is hosting honeybees and other insects, earthworms, beneficial molds and bacteria, and other living things large and small which work together to biodegrade pollution. Is this not a miracle?

From a government publication called "Compost - New Applications for an Age-Old Technology", which can be found at http://www.epa.gov/composting/pubs/index.htm , it is clear that an enormous amount of good can come of simply changing what we do with the biodegradable sectors of our waste.

All over the world, humankind's increasingly powerful hand has been causing undesirable side effects. And everywhere new applications of ancient scientific/spiritual principles are coming to the fore to restore balance to an Ecosystem clearly in danger of capsizing. We are in an extinction event, and we are one of the species in danger of extinction. We need to respect all life. We are all connected. Love is the answer.
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"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security."
~Albert Einstein (1950)
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Jim McCue
412-421-6496

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