Prelude:
The Big
Blue Embryo
Out of the Womb
of the Stars,
a New Being is
emerging: Earth.
Still forming,
still uncertain what she will become,
she has great
expectations.
Her Beauty is
Immeasurable.
With the first ray of celestial fire
that rained down on the primordial stew, what had been random
chemical action became something more. It became Life.
The planet was alive.
Over billions of years, the force of
that insight, that physically expressed idea that chemicals could
self-organize and persist, developed remarkable resilience. It
survived the emergence of a new gas highly toxic to all life at the
time: oxygen. It survived the devastation of a meteor impact so huge
the fireball encircled globe. It survived the slow asphyxiation when
plants ruled as the earth's sole life. And it survived the radical
upheaval when animals finally emerged to establish the dynamic
balance that persists to this day.
Each challenge, each peril, led to the
emergence of something more resilient, more complex than before.
Life has continually walked the brink of its own destruction and
emerged stronger, more powerful.
Life is at such a brink today.
We hold in our hands and minds the
power to take Life on Earth in a new direction, to add a new
dimension that has never been seen before on this planet. We hold
the power to allow the planet to become a consciously living
entity. We, the most sophisticated thinking part of Earth, have the
power to see and know ourselves as the "mind in nature",
the brain and eyes of the Living Planet. We can follow our hearts to
our greatest adventure: to take our true place among the stars.
