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Bubbling Up Everywhere

The earth formed about four-and-a-half billion years ago.   That is to say, about ten billion years after the Big Bang, and about four-and-a-half billion years before The Creation.

At first, earth was a very cold place, ducking its head to avoid a hailstorm of meteorites, to no avail, and later on earth became so hot, under the bombardment, that it might have been molten.

Even so, life formed not long after, as the age of the universe is measured.  Life seems to be something the universe does rather easily.  That we don't know exactly how it happened does not mean that the universe is not good at doing it.

* * * 

Yesterday, some dear friends visited us.  Gene and I went to college together, and then to a theological seminary.  When our families were new, we lived in the Bay area of California, and saw each other regularly.  With rare exception, we have not seen each other for about half a century.

Gene said, when he first phoned, that he had been attending funerals of his old friends "about one a week", and suggested we might get together.  I will admit I wondered if he knew something.

We are both in our eighties.  It is rather difficult to be eighty-something years of age, and not know, as surely as we know anything, that we shall not live forever.

* * *

Someone wrote, recently, that a child had asked him what it was going to be like when we die.  "Do you remember," he had answered, "what it was like before you were born?"

* * * 

All of that in mind, I woke up this morning, thinking especially about how easily earth creates life:  "I wonder if the universe thinks."

I am content to let you figure out what it is for matter to be alive--both of us are good examples of it--and what it means to say that matter--certainly living matter--thinks, but we do.  And there are ten javelinas under the Palo Verde tree outside our kitchen window, right now, and while I do not know how consciously they think, it is plain that they do think.

The javelinas are alive, too.  I do not think any of them will make it to eighty-three, but no matter, they are alive, and they think, and they will all die, as will I, and perhaps even as you.  But life is everywhere!  I have not the tiniest doubt that life of uncounted sorts of life exists throughout the universe.  It is what matter and energy do.  And if I can think, and the dog can, I wonder whether life in the largest imaginable sense can.

It must do something.  If thought is somehow related to the complexity of life processes, then I wonder whether it might make sense to admit that all of life, together, might be very complex, indeed.

* * * 

I want to add that I have not heard from Gene and Shirley since their visit, but it has not yet been a week.







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