Man: Mediator between Earth and Sky

You are born, you live, you die.  The story of our lives.  A classic tale, really, and our children are caught in its ties.  But allow me to alter it, slightly.  I prefer: you die, you are born, you live.  Seems a lot more pleasant to me, no?  What does it mean to die? Could it really be the end?  Is it possible for an existence to cease, or to pretend?

Let us consider, briefly, who you are.  You are a person, for one.  An individual human organism.  But you are much more than that.  You are the entire genetic history of life as it has existed and evolved on this planet.  Half of your genes are shared with bananas.  But surely, you are no banana.  Surely, you are more than a microbe.  Surely?  So what is your position, you great and wonderful human?  What role are you to play, here, in the history of life, and death?  Surely, we have agreed, you are to do more than hang around like the banana, waiting in a brilliant hue for the grasp of the ape or drift about in an infectious frenzy, like the microbe of notorious fate.  And surely, you’d prefer I would refrain from further use of the word surely.  Surely.

So I urge you, for one minute, to stop reading at the end of this paragraph.  Stop and reflect on what it feels like to be, here, alive, as a human – to be dependent on and fully connected to the ground below you – feel your feet grounded in the immensity of the Earth.  Feel the blood coursing through your arteries and veins, the cycle of oxygenation that vivifies your very being.  Feel the interface between your skin and the air.  Can you feel the difference there?

…

Did you feel it? Could you sense your own immensity?  Do you realize how powerful you are?  The Earth has sprouted many beings.  Some of them are confined, directly, to the soil.  Others are grounded, sure, but are free to roam.  Still others have been given the power of flight.  But you?  Have you considered your priveleged position?  Grounded, for certain, in the terrestrial realm, but permitted, no doubt, to roam the vastness of intergalactic space – with your mind.

There is so much energy invested in you.  So much influence.  So much creativity.  If the tree of life were a stock market, Humanity is the late 90′s dot.com sector – before the bubble burst!  Investment after investment has poured in.  4 billion years of research and development, of tried, tested, true, and false ways of living – all of this has amounted to us – the animal internet.  And what have we to show for it?  Buildings?!  Concrete?! Airplanes?!  Nuclear Reactors?! Oil Rigs?!

No.  These things may approach the sky.  But they mediate not.  They deny below, and curse above.  They sing only their internal working – and ignore everything else.  But You.  You must be the mediator.  The universe awaits.  It has invested in you, so heavily, that every night, before getting into bed, the universe kneels at its bedside, in its fluffy starlit pajamas, and prays to the trees that they should smack some sense into its most cherished investment.  That sooner or later we will see it, before the bubble pops.  That sooner or later, we will wake up, to our role.

So consider!  You will one day go to sleep, and never wake up.  Ahhh, but how you have woken up, without ever having gone to sleep!  And now, you find yourself, with eons of insight and evolutionary impetus packed into one little interval, one breath, one sigh, one ride between birth and death.  You find yourself here, with infinite energy, and a creative duty.

What enormous freedom!  You man, you woman, you mediator between Earth and Sky.  Are you anything less than a mythic creature, living!  Real!  Mystically aware of yourself and your surroundings.  You have within you the utmost potential of the universe, the infinite creative genius of the Great Mind.  So mind, please.  Mind your matter, and your manners, while you are at it.  And remember your role, you mediator, tween Earth and Sky.

For one day, should we stay grounded enough, should we stay sane enough, should we limit our over indulgence and apocolyptic tendencies enough, should we radiate compassion enough, should we hug enough, should we kneel by the trees enough, should we feel enough – then one day, we shall lift enough, more than enough for a flight from London to Chicago; more than enough for a flight over the ocean with the birds; more than enough for a flight in a balloon – how absurd!  We shall lift our souls and our spirits and our bodies into space, beyond this place, and settle on a new Earth.

And once again, we shall find ourselves mediators between Earth and Sky.