in the words of Mike McHargue
In the beginning, there was a rapid expansion of a Singularity. 380,000 years later, there was light. And when there was light, there was hydrogen and there was helium and there were stable, fundamental forces of physics. They worked together to birth the first stars and those stars lived for hundreds of millions of years before they died and exploded and spread their essence across the sky into clouds of heavier dust than existed before.
The forces of physics worked together once again to craft new stars now tightly packed into the first galaxies.
And the cycle repeated. That cycle had to happen several times before we could have planets. Planets could only exist because a few generations of stars died and were reborn. And it was from that process that this planet that we live on was allowed to exist.
And this planet we live on is covered with a film of life unlike any we’ve seen in the universe. As far as we know today, it’s unique.
That life is fed by a process where carbon from the air, minerals in the soil are attached together with the energy of photons through photosynthesis. So everything on this planet lives by the constant sacrifice and dying of the nearest star. Every single blade of grass, every tree, every bush on this planet is a resurrection of the Sun’s energy.
And I exist because I steal that energy by consuming other things that have died. That dead matter literally returns to life in my body through my metabolism. And one day, I will die, and a lot of my atoms will go right back to being alive in something else.
One day, our Sun will explode and spread its guts and essence across the sky and will then form new planets and new stars. Resurrection is the pattern of the physical reality we see today. Resurrection is the language of creation, death, burial, and renewal is the way that change occurs. And so… do I find it that incredulous that somehow the Source of all left his signature on our civilization through resurrection? I don’t know, that seems to be poetically appropriate.
McHargue, Mike, host. “Episode 22 – Who Am I.” the liturgists podcast, 25 August. 2015. http://www.theliturgists.com/podcast/ (36:34-39:22)
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