How many showers have we taken? How many baths?
A good place to think.
You’re an animal standing there washing your naked
skin. Bathe your dog, and he acts like you are doing something terrible to him.
He likes the way he smells. But think how frisky he acts afterward.
We humans have denied for eons that we are animals,
yet we have skin, bone, muscles, and organs just like theirs. Why do you think
schools teach comparative anatomy to doctors?
Parents have said, “We made a baby.” But they didn’t.
They started the ball rolling, and LIFE took over.
Those two cells began to divide. They made other
cells. Those cells formed a ball. That ball rolled in on itself, forming the
two sides of an animal. We have dominant and recessive sides, yet a heart in
the middle. Some conservation was necessary. A circulatory system was necessary
to feed the cells, and a heart was born. Now how did that happen?
Cells within those two sides began to differentiate;
that is, they became specialized. They knew which ones would be the eyes, the
brain, the limbs, the organs, the nerves, the veins, the arteries, the
toenails, the fingernails, and the eyelashes. And let’s put some hair on that
naked little thing.
And we were born a chemical, electrical, neurological
factory. We are a thinking, breathing, eating, drinking, reproducing system—one
that can get the next ball rolling.
What a system.
LIFE is so amazing, I wonder why we aren’t all rolling
on the ground laughing with joyful exuberance that we made it.
Theology tried to convince us that we are the supreme
beings on the planet and that gave us dominion over the whole of the earth. So
what did we do? We began using up its resources. We cut the trees. We killed
animals for sport. We threw our trash in the rivers and ocean.
But why did we get naked?
Remember the book, The Naked Ape?
I think its basic conclusion was that men liked naked
butts, and natural selection brought it about. I don’t know; I think males bred
with women who had hairy butts as well as naked ones. But then, individuals try
to mate with the most attractive, strongest, or most cherished person in their
society. And women try to make themselves more attractive and desirable.
It’s an age-old story.
Even wolves want their pups to be beautiful, strong,
and capable of making the tribe better, smarter, and stronger. That is
desirable in a species.
Being hairless helps keep parasites at bay, making it
easier to get rid of mites and fleas. Gosh, those people lived before soap and
insecticides. Praise the scientists.
Forget about all those smart-ass people who tried to
exalt themselves and preach that we have dominion over all of the earth. They
were pushing their agenda. Oh yeah, part of our animal nature is to have a
pecking order, where the biggest, strongest, most powerful, or meanest can
rally others to their cause and thus gain power over the people.
It’s a push/pull sort of thing. Humans have labeled it
as a war between good and evil. They say we live in a dualistic world.
But there are moments when we are a sharing world.
There are people whose basic desire is to wage PEACE.
Sometimes the strongest don't survive; the most
cooperative do.
Some cultures don’t throw out their post-menopausal
women, and they know that the grandmothers can help a family thrive. The whales
do that as well.
Bachelor wolves who don't produce offspring because
the alpha male and female have that job tied up, yet they help the tribe by
being uncles to the young. Some people have given their lives for
others—doesn’t the military use people’s altruistic desire to convince men and
women to be soldiers? They are protecting the homeland.
Some individuals have willingly laid down their lives
for a cause they believed was worth the loss. Some have given their lives,
their most precious commodity, for a friend. Others have deliberately driven
their plane into a boat or a building because they were either following orders
or believed in their rightness so strongly they thought it was worth it. Some
were ignorant enough to believe they would be rewarded with 100 virgins.
Some cherish the earth so much it hurts their hearts
to see it ravished.
It has taken us lifetimes to realize there was more to
the story. (Although, through the ages, some individuals have seen it.)
It’s a nebulous thing. We see it. Then we question it.
We don’t want to be fooled. Neither do we want to be foolish enough to believe
anything. It’s tough. We see, we question. We've been taught to trust what can
be proven, the nuts and bolts of it: show me the evidence. We have glimpses of
this something, but no handle on it.
We sometimes have out-of-body experiences. We
sometimes have near-death experiences. Poo-pooed or not, many believe. And many
believe their own experience when they have a ”Knowingness” that turns out to
be true. It is a nebulous thing: like why so few people missed work the day the
World Trade Center fell.
Why do some people miss a plane that crashes?
Were they the chosen ones? Or did they listen to a
small voice others of us are too busy or too distracted to hear?
Men of the Bible wrote of the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, and tried to push it into one God.
Now we speak of the Body, Mind, Spirit connection and
call it Holistic.
People have long believed in a power outside of us,
and we have glimpses of it, but no proof. Still, some of us see that as
miraculous.