The Miracle of You (dedicated to my family)

EXPLOSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(14 billion years ago)
The laws of physics exert their power over the young cosmos. Gravity begins to coalesce matter into clumps that ignite to form the first stars.


SOL (4.5 billion years ago)
Our solar system forms including the planet that becomes our future home.


LIFE (3.5 billion years ago)
The first thermophilic microbial colonies form. They exist without much change for 3 billion years. Eventually the vast diversity of life begins to rapidly evolve 500 million years ago.


Looking Forward
Looking Back....

THE PRESENT:
Here each of us stands; Here and Now. Each of us a living, breathing miracle embodying the processes of time, chance, nature and struggle. Think of ALL who have come before...

Your parents' urge to strike out on their own and then... a chance meeting. Your grandparents meeting in a much smaller world, falling in love and then starting families. Your great grandparents or great-great grandparents coming from Germany and other countries on a ship; all of them making the crossing of a vast ocean successfully and without dying of a disease before having children. The Smith's, Olson's, Heck's, Ritz's, Boggs', Phipps', Copelands's, Gilbert's, Thiel's, Peppenhagan's, Wiepert's, Wilde's, Haack's, Schultz's, Peck's, Dorwald's, Blum's, Jarmillo's, Griffith's, Hash's, Boone's, Van Bibber's, Bryan's, Van Cleve's, Maugridge's, Uppey's..George Boone I and Ann Fallace (Anali and Mallory's Great X 11 grandparents). These ancestors cover just 350 years and represent only a partial list of those who came before. If Governor Bent hadn't stalled the Indians long enough, his wife would have been killed too. She would never have lived to re-marry and have more children. If that famous BAER had KILT D. BOONE instead of the other way around then he would have never had children. If disease or accident had felled any of these ancestors before they had sired children the chain that leads to you would have been broken. We wouldn't be here.

Now look further back in time, through wars, invasions and occupations of Norhtern and Middle Europe. Conquests, poverty, eking out a living just enough to survive and procreate, not succumbing to plagues or famine. Having children in sometimes horrible circumstances; rarely out of romantic love like we are able to today. Further back to the days of the Roman Legions and before that into pre-history. Generation upon Generation of our ancestors living, reproducing, dying. For thousands of years living during and before the ice ages in primitive villages. Huddling around fires for warmth, telling long forgotten stories of their ancestors; watching the stars and waiting for the return of the sun. The great expansion of humankind from the golden crescent and long before that the original exodus from Africa; our earliest Human ancestors. It all points, through countless generations, unerringly to YOU.

Now consider the eons of hominid progression and survival. The earliest primates and before that the first mammals; shrew-like creatures in the forest canopy. Their reptilian and amphibious ancestors evolving and passing on their DNA to the next individuals over the vast periods of time that our human minds have difficulty fathoming. Earlier and earlier this scenario unfolds until the earliest life, those mats of microbial cells clinging to a thermal vent under and unnamed ocean on the primordial Earth.

If ANY of those links had been broken YOU, WE wouldn't be here. YOU are the miracle of miracles. The unbroken chain since the begining of Life! Let not a day pass that you do not feel the powerful force of life coursing through your veins. The complete, undeniable special-ness of each of us.

"We are made of star stuff, contemplating the stars" - Carl Sagan

December 21, 2009