One of the projects I’m now working on is a DVD video meditation entitled The Loveburst The Story of Ongoing Creation. It’s my attempt to tell what many call “The Great Story” of our history from the Big Bang to today.
I recently came across this video from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series that inspired my approach to the last segment of The Loveburst. I’ll share this with you, until I can get my efforts up on YouTube.
Sagan compressed the history of the Cosmos into one calendar year. The Big Bang of creation takes place at the ist second of January 1. Today is at the last second of December 31st.
Our sun, like any other star, is held together by the constant push and pull of complementary forces. Without this ongoing tug-of-war, stars wouldn’t be stars at all.
It takes the constant outward push of a star’s inner fires to keep it shining.
And it takes the restraining force of gravity to keep these energetic balls of fire in shape.
If a star gets too pushy, it can blow itself away in a supernova explosion.
If a star caves in to external pressures, gravity crushes it into a lightless space cinder.
Without doubt, we need our inner energies to fire our enthusiasm. But to keep us in creative balance, we also need to accept the restraining pressures of life.
Compared to leaves like the maple or oak, pine needles couldn’t be more unimpressive. Yet these humble creations can keep their green, long after other leaves are becoming compost.
The hearty pine survives where no other trees can, because their needles are designed to stand up to all kinds of privation. Since they’re long and thin, snow can’t weigh them down. Since they contain little sap, they don’t freeze. And the groove along the bottom of each needle insulates the pores through which the pine draws breath.
That’s why, from a mountain’s barren peaks, the first trees we encounter are the pines. In the near drought conditions of high altitudes, pine needles live full and productive lives for as long as seven years. It’s a tough life out there for all of us. But we’ve been designed to take whatever this life throws at us, because we’re destined to outlive it.
When brush fires ravage a tinder-dry landscape, grass is scorched but not destroyed. When droughts kill off other vegetation, grass withers but doesn’t die.
Through the thick and thin of life, grass springs back to life with the next rain, because it grows from ground-level — not from the leaf-tips like other plants.
And rather than branching out at the top like other plants, grass sends out new stems along the ground, sprouting new roots and leaves at every joint. That’s why grass can stand up to grazing cattle and mowing suburbanites.
For grass, and for the rest of us, there’s no better survival strategy than staying close to the Ground of our being.
There’s nothing like a volcanic eruption to transform an idyllic landscape into a barren moonscape.
Yet life quickly launches a comeback. Seeds, riding the winds for hundreds of miles, quickly blanket the wasteland. Before long, life again sprouts from the desolation.
Waist-high triumphal spikes of the fireweed, one of the first plants to rise from the desolation, soon declare that life has made another dramatic comeback.
Comforting news, next time we find ourselves trying to rise from the ashes.
