The Miracle of Life

Life is amazing.

As Spring is underway, I wonder at the new shoots of life in the trees and plants.

The trees are full of new life as newborn chicks call for food. Lambs, full of the joys of life, hop and skip in the fields.

Life is a miracle of nature or the divine, and I would love to declare how my consciousness has evolved to the point where I avoid harming flies.

But I do harm flies.

When a bluebottle enters the home its minutes of life are numbered. But the act of killing a fly pricks my conscious. I pause and reflect because the insect represents existence.

It is life—a precious living creature.

When one of my cats has a mouse cornered, I take pity on the tiny victim and rescue it from being killed in the bite of sharp teeth. That is if I can get my gardening gloves and can catch the thing.

To some, the tiny mouse is vermin. In the seven years, Jasper and Jules have been part of the family, no mouse has dared enter our house.

But let's consider the mouse.

The mouse has two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. It formed in a womb, the egg divided, grew from two to four cells. Multiplied from four to sixteen. Cell after cell, a mouse is born after 21 days. Well, likely five to eight mice.

Life Begins With a Cell

When you go to pull a flower from the ground, imagine for a moment the energy it took to reach the stage of bloom that attracted you.

From seed, the flower sprouted. A new leaf, followed by a blossom. The nutrients in the soil provided nourishment, the sun shone its rays of light, and the rain came.

Nature worked its magic.

Sorry to return to flies but while running, I was tormented by a few flies buzzing around my head. To avoid appearing like a mad man running through the countryside flapping his arms about, I had the ingenious idea of breaking a branch from a tree to use as a swat.

I wanted to scare them.

A thought occurred to me.

The branch took weeks to grow. It had a few leaves, soft bark and when peeled, you get that fresh green woody smell.

One fine day I come and snap it like it was nothing.

The branch was a form of life. Taking time to grow, cell after cell. How can I justify harming them or ending their existence? A life force has created these plants and creatures.

It's as if the earth gave the plants and animals a moment to be awake before being snuffed out by a careless act.

Life Begins and Ends

What of the human cells that get snuffed out before their time?
On the news we hear of tragedy after tragedy. The horrors of the Ukraine conflict with untold loss of human life is beyond words.

But not every cell is worthy of protection.

The cancer that killed my Dad grew cell after cell.

The want and destruction of the Amazon forest, the lungs of the planet, is cell destruction on an unimaginable scale. Thousands of square kilometres of forest are destroyed by humans every year, and I think about a branch.

Our lives, and cells, are at risk if humankind continues to destroy 18 million acres of forest every year.

I will continue to be imperfect, but despite my ambition to improve, will keep cutting the grass cells on the lawn.